On September 30, 2020, KuCoin Global CEO Johnny Lyu hosted a livestream on YouTube, Periscope, and Dlive, in which he announced that KuCoin will launch a new initiative: the “Safeguard Program”. The program is committed to providing comprehensive protection and support for individuals and institutions who are affected by “security incidents”. This includes but is not limited to assistance with technical support, evidence retention, asset confirmation and offering preferential policy.
On September 26, KuCoin detected some large withdrawals. Part of the Bitcoin, ERC-20 and other tokens in KuCoin’s hot wallets were transferred out of the exchange. Since the incident, KuCoin has been acting quickly and transparently to deal with it. In the livestream, Johnny stated that 10 coins with a total value of over $140 million are now out of the control of the suspicious addresses. As of October 1, KuCoin has reopened the withdrawal and deposit services for ORN, NOIA, KAI and OCEAN. A growing number of the affected digital assets are to reopen deposit and withdrawal services over the coming days.
Although deposit and withdrawal services have not been fully enabled, other services KuCoin provides have not been affected, including: Spot trading, Margin trading, Futures trading, P2P Fiat trading, Red Envelope function, Pool-X Staking, Pool-X Liquidity trading platform, Kratos voting and governance function, and the Instant Exchange function.
Johnny stated, “We hope, starting from this incident, when someone encounters a security threat, a dedicated multi-force will be easily and swiftly pulled together to offer security, legal, and asset recovery assistance, and ultimately reduce the risk of cyber crime. We will establish a dedicated team, which will preach the spirit of the “Safeguard Program”. Let’s join hands to fight for security, as security breeds prosperity. We sincerely hope for more and more institutions, experts, and tech teams to join the “Safeguard Program”, and fight side by side with us against future cyber security wars with the strongest determination.”
Founded in September 2017, KuCoin has grown into one of the most popular crypto exchanges, and it currently provides a series of financial services including fiat-to-crypto, crypto-to-crypto, Futures, Staking, Lending, token launch and more to its 6 million users across 207 countries and regions around the world.
