A court in Pingjiang County, Hunan Province, has ruled that BKEX, a cryptocurrency exchange, operated an illegal gambling platform through its contract trading feature.
The ruling stated that BKEX allowed users to place bets using the stablecoin USDT
On January 29, the court determined that these transactions qualified as gambling under Chinese law, involving people placing wagers on financial outcomes.
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Before authorities intervened, BKEX had attracted more than 270,000 users, including 60,000 active traders, and generated profits of over 54.7 million USDT. As a result of the investigation, eight individuals were charged with criminal offenses.
One of them, Zheng Lei, a former wallet engineer and department head, was found guilty of providing technical support for the operation. He received a prison sentence of two years and one month, along with a fine of 150,000 yuan (about $20,900). Authorities also confiscated his earnings of 1.34 million yuan (around $186,600).
Another individual, Wang, who managed BKEX’s audit department and oversaw transaction processing, was sentenced to one year and 11 months in prison and fined 52,000 yuan (about $7,250).
Meanwhile, Polymarket, a cryptocurrency-based prediction market, was recently restricted in Singapore. What happened? Read the full story.
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