India cracks down on 25 crypto exchanges including BingX, LBank, CoinW over compliance failures

Offshore crypto platforms with billions of dollars successful assets are successful the Indian government’s crosshairs, arsenic the government’s fiscal watchdog moves against 25 exchanges for failing to registry and comply with anti-money laundering obligations.

The Financial Intelligence Unit India (FIU-IND) issued notices to 25 crypto exchanges — including BingX, LBank, CoinW, ProBit Global, BTCC, AscendEX, Zoomex, and Poloniex — for failing to comply with the country’s anti-money laundering rules, the Indian concern ministry said connected Wednesday. The regulator besides ordered the platforms to retreat their apps and websites from nationalist entree successful India. However, astir remained accessible arsenic of property time.

Of the 25 exchanges, 14 unneurotic clasp much than $9 cardinal successful assets and recorded astir $20 cardinal successful trading measurement implicit the past 24 hours, according to information from CoinMarketCap.

The affected crypto exchanges including BingX, LBank, CoinW, and ProBit Global did not respond to requests for comments.

While India does not person a dedicated regulatory model for cryptocurrencies, the Indian concern ministry successful March 2023 notified that virtual plus work providers would autumn nether the Prevention of Money Laundering Act of 2002. This made it mandatory for crypto exchanges serving Indian users to registry with the FIU-IND and comply with its reporting and compliance requirements.

The Indian concern ministry has stated that astatine slightest 50 crypto exchanges person truthful acold registered with India’s anti-money laundering watchdog, which has previously taken action against large platforms specified arsenic Binance, Coinbase, KuCoin and OKX. OKX exited the Indian market past year, whereas Binance, Coinbase and KuCoin registered with the FIU successful caller months to resume operations.

Binance restarted its India operations successful August 2024, portion Coinbase re-entered India earlier this year. Recently, Coinbase besides launched an early-access program for Indian users who had already signed up, though the exchange’s services are not yet afloat operational successful the country.