KuCoin’s market share plummets as users migrate to safer exchanges.

• KuCoin returns to Play Store in India despite DOJ indictment, CFTC lawsuit over ETH trading.
• Daily trading volume fell from $2 billion to $520 million after the lawsuit, with market share halved to less than 3%.
• The amount leaked from KuCoin wallets exceeded $600 million on March 26. Users migrate to safer options.

KuCoin’s return to India’s Play Store despite recent legal issues marks a significant development for Indian cryptocurrency investors. Despite prosecution by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) for violating anti-money laundering laws and a lawsuit by the U.S. CFTC over its ETH margin trading, KuCoin is working to continue operations.

However, Kaiko’s data shows that the impact of these fees is significant. Since the lawsuit announcement on March 26, KuCoin has seen its daily trading volume and market share decline significantly. Daily trading volume fell from about $2 billion to $520 million, and market share was halved from 6.5% to less than 3%.

According to Kaiko’s wallet data, KuCoin users send Transferring your funds to other centralized exchanges such as Coinbase, Binance, OKX, MEXC, and Gate.io are perceived as safer options. Some outflows may also be due to market makers leaving the exchange. Users are also sending funds directly to on-chain wallets.

The outflow from wallets belonging to KuCoin far exceeded the inflow, exceeding $600 million as of March 26. The majority of outflows consisted of USDT and ETH. It is worth noting that these inflows and outflows exclude transactions between KuCoin addresses and only include on-chain transactions between KuCoin and other exchanges or wallets.

Interestingly, despite DOJ’s claims, there is no direct interaction between KuCoin and Tornado Cash on the Ethereum blockchain. However, all funds stolen in the 2020 KuCoin hack were “privatized” using Tornado Cash, which is equivalent to a significant amount of ETH.