What started off as a very easy, non-privacy-invasive, and overall smooth process in regards to registration and use of a centralized crypto trading platform, may now be a thing of the past.
What was to be expected, as governments become more “crypto tolerant” and regulatory focused, has now come to fruition. KuCoin, a top ten crypto exchange based in Mahé, Seychelles of East Africa, is now implementing strict Know Your Customer (KYC) protocols into their popular platform.
This new “welcoming” of crypto by large institutions and the governments in which they reside, seems to be influencing exchanges to be more compliance-focused in this next phase of crypto governance and regulatory clarity. KuCoin has always been very lenient in regards to the KYC requirements needed to engage their trading platform. All of that is set to change on July 15th, 2023. The exchange states that this “enhancement” is in attempts to meet the AML & CFT(Anti-Money Laundering/Counter the Financing of Terrorism) requirements to legally operate.
On June 28th, 2023, per KuCoin’s
page, KuCoin announced:
“Dear KuCoin Users,
Consistent with KuCoin’s core values, we are dedicated to fulfilling ‘Know Your Customer’ obligation in accordance with
the applicable regulatory requirements. We continually protect our customer’s assets and combat money laundering, terrorist financing and related financial crimes around the world, based on this, KuCoin will enhance the Customer Identification and Verification Program.
The enhancement will officially take effect on July 15, 2023 (UTC).
Please take note of the following:
Starting from July 15, 2023 (UTC), newly registered users must complete their KYC in order to use KuCoin's products and services.
For users who registered before July 15, 2023 (UTC), if their KYC is not completed, they will only be able to use services such as Spot trading sell orders, Futures trading deleveraging, Margin trading deleveraging, KuCoin Earn redemption, ETF redemption, and will not be able to use the deposit service (withdrawals are not impacted).
The above enhancement will not impact the security of your funds in your account. However, to ensure the normal usage of your account, please submit KYC required information as soon as possible.
Protect customer’s assets is our primary duty. We will timely update the KYC requirements and corresponding limits according to the relevant legal obligations, integrate with the properties of various products and network environments.”
As reported by Cointelegraph, “A complete KYC process requires users to provide their name, identification number, and identification photo, and undergo facial recognition,” KuCoin CEO Johnny Lyu told Cointelegraph. The CEO noted that KuCoin brains and verifies the customer identification and verification data required under the laws and regulations of applicable jurisdictions. He stated:
“Typically, we require customer identification information including information on the customer’s name and
further identifiers such as a physical address,
date of birth, and national ID number.”
Pursuant to the requirements of the laws and regulations of applicable jurisdictions, KuCoin also collects additional information related to the customer’s business and risk profile. Risk profile data includes nature and volume of trading activity, origin of virtual funds deposited, Lyu added.
The CEO went on to say that KYC is a principle that “KuCoin has always adhered to,” adding that identity recognition is an existing process. Lyu also stressed that KuCoin set their KYC policy to comply with regulations in applicable jurisdictions since there isn’t a unified global KYC regulation.
"KuCoin doesn’t support the United States KYC based on our current KYC or the updated KYC rules,” a spokesperson for KuCoin noted.
The new KYC update will affect a significant number of cryptocurrency users worldwide. KuCoin says it had over 20 million registered accounts on its platform as of July 2022.
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