BKEX exchange's contract trading is defined as gambling, and multiple employees and agents have been sentenced

ChainCatcher news, recently, the People's Court of Pingjiang County, Hunan Province announced multiple criminal judgments involving the BKEX exchange, clearly defining the platform's contract trading as gambling behavior, and holding relevant employees and agents criminally responsible for the crime of operating a casino.

The judgment shows that BKEX was founded by Ji Jiaming in 2018 in Chengdu, mainly providing virtual currency exchange and spot trading services. In 2021, the platform launched perpetual contract trading features, allowing users to bet on the price fluctuations of virtual currencies like BTC and ETH using USDT, suspected of using the internet to gather crowds for gambling. By the time of the incident, BKEX had accumulated a net profit of approximately 54.798 million USDT (equivalent to about 300 million RMB), with 270,000 contract trading users, of which over 60,000 were active users.

Due to the founder Ji Jiaming being on the run, this case mainly targets platform employees and agents. The judgment involves 2 employees and 6 agents, among them, an employee named Zheng Lei, who served as a wallet engineer responsible for technical support for fund circulation, was sentenced to 2 years and 1 month in prison, with a 2-year and 1-month probation, and fined 150,000 yuan; another employee, Wang, was responsible for KYC verification and fund settlement, sentenced to 1 year and 11 months in prison, and fined 52,000 yuan. Agent Dong was sentenced to 1 year and 6 months in prison, with a 1-year and 6-month probation, and fined 35,000 yuan for developing downline participants for gambling profits. The related illegal gains have been confiscated and turned over to the national treasury.

The court determined that the defendants were all accomplices, and some individuals received lighter penalties due to pleading guilty and actively returning stolen goods.

Earlier in 2023, news from BKEX exchange: due to suspected "money laundering" and cooperating with the police for evidence collection, it will suspend withdrawals.