Crypto Exchange BitMEX Pleads Guilty to Violating Bank Secrecy Act

[Yamane_Keto]

On Wednesday, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced that BitMEX has pleaded guilty to violating the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA).

According to newly published court documents, the exchange failed to implement an adequate know-your-customer (KYC) and anti-money laundering (AML) program from September 2015 to September 2020.

During this period, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) charged the platform with offering U.S. customers illicit crypto derivative trading services. Additionally, the DOJ charged four of the exchange’s employees with violating the BSA.

U.S. Attorney Damian Williams stated, “As BitMEX’s founders and long-time employee admitted in federal court in 2022, the company, one of the leading cryptocurrency derivatives platforms in the world from 2015 to 2020, operated in the United States without any meaningful anti-money laundering program, as required by federal law.”

Williams explained that this made BitMEX a tool for large-scale money laundering and sanctions evasion schemes, which posed a severe threat to the financial system’s integrity.

https://cryptopotato.com/crypto-exchange-bitmex-pleads-guilty-to-violating-bank-secrecy-act/

The authorities have begun looking into the past of services that did not provide KYC, as the guilty plea included a time from 2015 to 2020, during which many services did not request KYC data.

[Charles-Tim]

Which means almost all other exchanges will later be sued to court for this same reason. Almost all the exchanges including the well known exchanges started by making their customers to have options of not getting verified but with low withdrawal limit which is still high for people and not get verified at the time. It was regulations that made the exchanges had no option again than to demand for verification from their users. I do not know why United States Commodity Futures Trading Commission will take this to court.

[Yamane_Keto]

Which means almost all other exchanges will later be sued to court for this same reason.

This is approximately what will happen, and since the data is recorded, USA citizens may be the one harmed if they incorrectly reported his tax record or hid this data because he did not submit the KYC and submitted it recently.
If you have an old account, it is better to close or delete it and start KYC with a new account, otherwise the government will know all your past.

[Z-tight]

They have also charged KuCoin for similar reasons some months back, Binance also decided to settle with the DOJ, paying the sum of $4.3B for money laundering offenses. They are not going to stop here, there would be more charges, fines and settlements from more exchanges, because so many of them will fall guilty based on these charges that date back to many years ago. So many exchanges started as no-kyc, before they made kyc mandatory, so that's that.

[Yamane_Keto]

They are not going to stop here, there would be more charges, fines and settlements from more exchanges, because so many of them will fall guilty based on these charges that date back to many years ago. So many exchanges started as no-kyc, before they made kyc mandatory, so that's that.

Central exchanges can be harassed with such legislation, and then they either provide all the data or prevent users from the United States from accessing the service, but I wonder what will happen to the decentralized exchanges and bridges, will they move to them next?