A federal court has approved a consent order from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission that permanently prohibits Peken Global Limited, the operator of cryptocurrency exchange KuCoin, from allowing U.S. users on its platform. The order includes a civil penalty of $500,000. The prohibition carries an exception only if the company registers as a foreign board of trade.
The ruling builds on a separate criminal case in which KuCoin entered a guilty plea in January 2025. That criminal proceeding resulted in nearly $297 million in combined penalties and forfeitures, underscoring the scale of regulatory action taken against the exchange. The CFTC consent order now adds a civil dimension to those consequences.
At its peak, KuCoin served approximately 1.5 million users based in the United States. The exchange collected at least $184.5 million in fees from those American customers during its period of operation. These figures formed a central part of the regulatory case against the platform.
The new injunction effectively converts what had previously been a temporary withdrawal from the U.S. market into a permanent shutdown of KuCoin’s American business operations. The exchange had already stepped back from serving U.S. customers ahead of the legal proceedings, but the court order makes that exit binding and indefinite. Without registration as a foreign board of trade, the company has no legal pathway to re-enter the U.S. market.
The case reflects ongoing efforts by U.S. regulators to enforce compliance requirements on international cryptocurrency exchanges that serve American customers without meeting domestic registration standards. The combined criminal and civil outcomes against KuCoin represent one of the more significant enforcement actions in the digital asset sector in recent years.
Originally reported by CoinDesk.
