KuCoin sees nearly $800 million in net outflow following DOJ indictment

KuCoin saw a net outflow of over $780 million across multiple chains over the past 24 hours after the U.S. Department of Justice lodged charges against it on Tuesday, according to on-chain data.

Data from crypto analytics firm Nansen showed that KuCoin experienced a total outflow of $882 million in the last 24 hours as of Wednesday noon in Asia on several networks and inflow of $99 million, with a net outflow of $783 million. The data set covers flows on Ethereum, BNB Chain, Avalanche, Fantom, and Polygon chains. 

The notable exodus from KuCoin comes after the DOJ unveiled the indictment on Tuesday against KuCoin and two of its founders, alleging that they violated anti-money laundering laws. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission also reiterated in the KuCoin complaint that ether and several other cryptocurrencies are commodities.

“Given past incidents, it’s expected that any large regulatory crackdown would result in a surge in outflows, but as long as the exchange has held customer deposits and funds 1:1, it should remain solvent even under such stress,” Martin Lee, Content and Communications Lead of Nansen, told The Block.

The exchange has crypto holdings of $5.1 billion, according to Nansen.

Small impact on exchange reserves

KuCoin’s bitcoin reserve stood at around 6277 bitcoin, while its ether reserve amounted to 99,359 ether as of Wednesday noon in Asia, according to CryptoQuant data. 

“On-chain wise, [KuCoin] is fine,” Ki Young Ju, founder and CEO of CryptoQuant, wrote in an X post. “BTC and ETH withdrawals surged, driven mainly by retail users, with a small impact on the overall reserve. They appear to not commingle customers' funds and have sufficient reserves to process user withdrawals.”