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KuCoin’s parent company, Peken Global Limited, will pay a $500,000 civil penalty to settle a case brought by the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission over its offshore trading platform. The settlement resolves the regulator’s claims that the company operated an unregistered commodities exchange and allowed US users to access services that required registration. Peken Global agreed to the order without admitting or denying the claims.
The CFTC said the US District Court for the Southern District of New York entered a consent order against Peken Global Limited on Monday. Under that order, the company will pay a $500,000 civil penalty, which closes the agency’s claims in the case.
The regulator said the company cooperated with the investigation, and for that reason, it did not seek disgorgement for the period from July 2019 to around June 2023. The CFTC also said the penalty took into account KuCoin’s earlier criminal resolution in the United States.
That earlier case ended in January 2025, when KuCoin pleaded guilty in a parallel Department of Justice matter. In that case, the exchange agreed to pay nearly $300 million in fines and forfeitures after pleading guilty to operating an unlicensed money transmitting business.
The latest settlement also places a direct restriction on future access to the platform. Under the agreement, Peken Global cannot allow US residents to trade on KuCoin unless it registers with the CFTC as a foreign board of trade.
The CFTC first filed its lawsuit in March 2024 against Peken Global and three other entities tied to KuCoin’s operations. Those entities were Mek Global Limited, PhoenixFin PTE Ltd., and Flashdot Limited. In the new order, the agency dropped its allegations against those three firms.
In its earlier complaint, the regulator said KuCoin solicited and accepted orders for commodity futures, swaps, and leveraged transactions without registering with the CFTC. It also said the platform failed to register as a futures commission merchant or foreign board of trade.
The agency further alleged that KuCoin used “sham” know-your-customer procedures and failed to stop US customers from using the exchange. According to the CFTC, American users generated about $110 million in trading fees for KuCoin during the period covered by the case.
The court order now bars Peken Global from offering access to US participants unless the firm completes the required registration. As a result, the settlement closes the civil case while keeping the restriction on American access in place.
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The civil settlement came after KuCoin’s criminal case in the United States. In January 2025, the company agreed to pay almost $300 million in penalties and forfeitures as part of its resolution with the Department of Justice. That case focused on the exchange’s operation as an unlicensed money transmitter.
The CFTC said the court’s penalty reflects that earlier payment and also reflects the company’s cooperation during the civil investigation. For that reason, the agency did not pursue additional recovery tied to profits from the period named in the complaint.
KuCoin, which has operated from the Seychelles, the Cayman Islands, and Singapore, remains one of the larger spot crypto exchanges by trading activity. CoinMarketCap data cited in the source material placed its daily trading volume at about $1.7 billion.
Even so, the US settlement makes clear that Peken Global cannot provide derivatives access to American users without registration. The order closes one part of the company’s US legal matters, while the trading restriction for US residents remains in force.
