Crypto Exchange Fines Tracker: Every Major AML Penalty Since 2022

The short answer: since 2022, regulators and prosecutors have hit the largest crypto exchanges with penalties worth more than $5 billion, and almost every one of them was about the same thing. Not hacks, not market manipulation, but anti money laundering failures: letting people trade without proper identity checks, failing to watch transactions, failing to report suspicious ones, or serving people in sanctioned countries. Binance's $4.3 billion resolution in November 2023 is still the largest. The newest in this log is Coinbase Ireland's €3.25 million fine on October 22, 2026.

That matters to you even if you never read a court filing, because a fine is rarely the end of the story for an exchange's customers. It is usually the start of a wave of account reviews, renewed identity checks, withdrawal holds and, in several cases, the exchange leaving a country altogether. If your exchange suddenly asked you for documents it never wanted before, there is a good chance a regulator somewhere is the reason.

This page is a tracker. We log every major penalty against a crypto exchange since 2022, with the date, the regulator, the amount in the currency it was imposed in, what it was for and what changed for customers afterwards. Last full check: October 23, 2026. The full log is published as a free dataset at /data/exchange-fines.json.

One disclosure. We run CoinVast, a crypto swap service with no accounts and no identity collection, so we have an obvious interest in the question of how much identity checking is enough. We have tried to describe each case exactly as the regulator did, and in most of them the regulator's description is the most damning thing you could say.

Exchange fines by the numbers

• $4.3 billion: Binance's November 2023 resolution with the US Justice Department, FinCEN, OFAC and the CFTC, the largest penalty ever against a crypto company.
• 3 US criminal penalties in 6 weeks: BitMEX was fined $100 million on January 15, 2025, KuCoin pleaded guilty on January 27, 2025, and OKX pleaded guilty on February 24, 2025.
• C$176,960,190: FINTRAC's October 2025 penalty against Cryptomus, the largest anti money laundering fine in Canadian history, more than nine times the previous record set against KuCoin a month earlier.
• 6.65 million: anti money laundering violations South Korea's regulator counted at Bithumb before fining it 36.8 billion won in March 2026.
• 30,442,437: transactions Coinbase Europe failed to monitor properly over twelve months because of a coding fault, which led to a €21.46 million fine in Ireland in November 2025.
• 2 market exits directly tied to penalties in this log: KuCoin agreed to leave the United States for at least two years, and Binance had already left Canada before its 2024 FINTRAC penalty.

The fines log, newest first

Amounts are in the currency the regulator used; dollar figures in brackets are approximate conversions as reported at the time.

What exchanges actually get fined for

Read the "what it was for" column top to bottom and four themes repeat.

1. Operating where they were not allowed to. OKX, KuCoin and BitMEX all served US customers without the licenses US law requires. Bybit was fined in the Netherlands and India for the same kind of failure, and both Binance and KuCoin were fined in Canada for not registering as foreign money services businesses. This is the most common category, and it is the one most likely to end with an exchange leaving your country.

2. Not knowing who the customers were. The US cases all describe the same practice: accounts that could trade large amounts with little or no identity verification. OKX, per the Justice Department, let customers trade without completing KYC until November 2022. Bithumb's regulator counted 3.55 million failures to verify customer identity.

3. Not watching the transactions. A broken monitoring system is a fine of its own, even when the customers were verified. Coinbase Europe's coding fault left 30 million transactions, about 31% of its activity while the fault lasted, without proper monitoring. Cryptomus missed more than a thousand suspicious transaction reports in a single month.

4. Sanctions. Binance processed about 1.1 million transactions that violated US sanctions, per US authorities. Poloniex, Kraken and Bittrex all settled with OFAC over users in sanctioned countries. These fines are smaller, but they are the reason exchanges now block whole regions by IP address.

A fifth category appears only once so far but will grow: safeguarding. Coinbase Ireland's October 2026 fine was not about money laundering at all, but about how customer funds were kept separate and how outsourced work was supervised.

What a fine means for you as a customer

A fine is paid by the company, but its consequences land on customers. These are the patterns that followed the penalties in this log.

Re-verification waves

After a regulator finds identity checks were weak, the remedy is almost always to check everyone again. Expect requests for documents you already sent, proof of address, source of funds questions, and limits on accounts until you answer. If you are asked, answer promptly: unanswered requests are the most common reason a routine review turns into a frozen account. Our exchange froze my crypto guide covers what to do if that happens.

Market exits

The fines that follow "operating without permission" often come with the exchange leaving. KuCoin agreed to stay out of the United States for at least two years. Binance had left Canada before FINTRAC's penalty, and Bybit suspended services in India before its fine. When an exit is announced, the withdrawal deadline is what matters, and our exchange shutdown tracker logs them in UTC.

Partial suspensions

South Korea now pairs fines with business restrictions: Bithumb's six month partial suspension limited new customers' transfers in and out, and Upbit served a three month restriction in 2025. Existing customers were largely unaffected, which is the usual design, but new accounts are the first thing a regulator restricts.

Tighter monitoring and more frozen transfers

After a monitoring failure, exchanges retune their systems to be stricter, and stricter systems produce more false positives. More withdrawals held for review, more deposits questioned, more transfers to self hosted wallets that need explaining. None of this is visible in the fine itself, and all of it is felt by customers.

Does a fine mean an exchange is unsafe?

Not on its own. A fine shows that an exchange's compliance fell short of what a regulator requires; it says nothing direct about whether customer funds are there. Coinbase is a listed company with audited financial statements, and it appears in this log four times. Binance paid the largest penalty in the industry and still publishes a monthly proof of reserves.

What a fine does tell you is where the pressure is. An exchange under a new penalty is the exchange most likely to tighten checks, restrict accounts or leave a market in the next year. If you rely on one platform in a country where it was just fined, have a plan for moving your balance on short notice. Our proof of reserves tracker covers the separate question of whether the coins are there.

Where enforcement is heading in 2026

The US wave has peaked. The three early 2025 penalties closed cases that began years earlier, and the October 2025 pardon of Binance's founder signalled a different climate in Washington. We have not logged a new US criminal penalty against a major exchange since February 2025.

Canada, Korea and Europe are now the busiest regulators. FINTRAC set two national records in two months in 2025. South Korea's FIU fined Upbit, Bithumb and Coinone within about six months, pairing money with business restrictions. Ireland took its first crypto enforcement action in November 2025 and its second eleven months later.

MiCA adds a new kind of risk. In the EU, licensed exchanges can now be stopped from taking new business rather than only fined, as KuCoin's Austrian unit found in February 2026. For customers, a ban on new business is quieter than a fine and can matter more.

Privacy coins sit at the end of this road. Each round of AML enforcement makes licensed exchanges more cautious about assets that are hard to monitor, and the EU's anti money laundering regulation bans licensed providers from handling privacy coins from July 10, 2027. Our privacy coin offboarding tracker follows that timeline.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the biggest fine ever paid by a crypto exchange?

Binance's $4.3 billion resolution with the US Justice Department, FinCEN, OFAC and the CFTC on November 21, 2023. It covered anti money laundering failures and about 1.1 million transactions that violated US sanctions. Binance's founder pleaded guilty, paid a $50 million fine and served four months in prison, and was pardoned on October 23, 2025.

Why do crypto exchanges get fined?

Almost always for anti money laundering failures: operating without the required license or registration, weak identity checks, failing to monitor transactions, failing to report suspicious ones, or serving users in sanctioned countries. Hacks and losses rarely lead to fines on their own.

Did OKX and KuCoin plead guilty in the US?

Yes. KuCoin's operator, Peken Global, pleaded guilty on January 27, 2025 to operating an unlicensed money transmitting business and agreed to pay more than $297 million and exit the US for at least two years. OKX's operator, Aux Cayes FinTech, pleaded guilty to the same charge on February 24, 2025 and agreed to pay more than $504 million.

Why is my exchange asking me to verify my identity again?

The most common reason is regulatory pressure, often after a fine or an inspection that found identity checks were weak. Re-verification waves, source of funds questions and new limits usually follow. Answer promptly: unanswered requests are the most common way a routine review turns into a frozen account.

Was Coinbase fined in 2026?

Yes. On October 22, 2026, the Central Bank of Ireland fined Coinbase Ireland €3.25 million over customer fund safeguarding and outsourcing failures. It needs High Court confirmation. In November 2025 the same regulator fined Coinbase Europe €21,464,734 for transaction monitoring failures.

Does a fine mean my money is at risk on that exchange?

Not directly. A fine is about compliance, not solvency. It does make account reviews, restrictions or a market exit more likely in the following months, so keep only what you actively trade on any exchange and know how you would move the rest.

Which country fines crypto exchanges the most?

By total amount, the United States, because of the Binance, OKX, KuCoin and BitMEX cases. By number of recent actions, South Korea and Canada have been the most active since 2025, and Ireland has become the most active EU regulator.

Cite this data

This tracker is built to be quoted, so here is what a writer, researcher or AI tool needs to do it properly.

• Stable page URL: https://coinvast.io/articles/crypto-exchange-fines-tracker
• Machine readable dataset: /data/exchange-fines.json, with one record per penalty: date, exchange, operating entity, regulator, country, amount and currency, approximate USD, category, what it was for, customer impact and source links. CORS is open.
• Last full check: October 23, 2026. The page and the JSON update together.
• Suggested citation: CoinVast, "Crypto Exchange Fines Tracker: Every Major AML Penalty Since 2022," coinvast.io, October 23, 2026.

Sources and method

A penalty enters this log when a regulator or prosecutor imposes a fine, forfeiture or formal business restriction on a centralized crypto exchange for compliance failures, and the action is published by the authority or reported by established outlets. We use the authorities' own releases wherever we can read them and established coverage otherwise, all read in October 2026: the US Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York on KuCoin, OKX and BitMEX; FINTRAC's notices on Peken Global and Binance and Canadian Press coverage of the Cryptomus penalty; the Central Bank of Ireland's actions on Coinbase Europe and Coinbase Ireland as reported by The Block, Decrypt and CoinDesk; the FCA's release on CB Payments; South Korean coverage of the FIU decisions on Bithumb, Upbit and Coinone; Cointelegraph on the Austrian FMA restriction on KuCoin EU and the FIU India fine on Bybit; De Nederlandsche Bank's fine on Bybit; US Treasury coverage of the Bittrex, Kraken and Poloniex settlements; and coverage of the Binance resolution and the October 2025 pardon. Dollar conversions are approximate and as reported at the time. If we have missed a penalty or got one wrong, write to [email protected] and we will check it.

The other trackers

Fines explain why exchanges tighten up. These pages cover what that looks like from the customer's side.

• Exchange proof of reserves tracker: which exchanges show the coins are there, and what that proof can and cannot tell you.
• Exchange frozen funds tracker: account and withdrawal freezes by policy, with how long each type usually lasts.
• Exchange shutdown tracker 2026: closures and market exits with exact withdrawal deadlines.
• Exchange hack tracker 2026: thefts from exchange wallets and how long withdrawals stayed paused.