The Pingjiang district of China’s Hunan province described the futures trade trade on a crypto currency exchange as a gambling. This decision led BKEX Stock Exchange employees to be found guilty of opening a casino. However, most defendants’ penalty was postponed.
Bkex Exchange and Gambling Charges
Founded by Ji Jiaming in 2018, the BKEX Stock Exchange is located in the center of the case. According to Wu Blockchain, Ji Jiaming is currently running out of leakage. Initially, Chengdu Dechen Bike Tianxia Technology Co., Ltd. Bkex, which operates within it, stepped into the market by trading crypto currencies and then headed for futures trade. Especially between July 2019 and 2022 January, the company has changed its registered name more than once and finally came to the closure stage. In 2021, BKEX introduced the continuous contract trade function, which offers leverage trade with USDT Stablecoini.
The court said that BKEX’s trade model is based on gambling. The court said that Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) encouraged leverage transactions on price movements and that the leverage rates could rise up to 1000 times. “BKEX encouraged people to gamble over the internet,” local media referred to the court decision.
According to the report, Ji Jiaming collaborated with Lei Le, who managed the contract trade module in Shenzhen, due to operational inexperience. According to the agreement between them, 58 %of the net profit was given to Ji Jiaming’s Chengdu team and 42 %were given to Lei Le’s Shenzhen operation. The court announced that more than 270,000 users participated in the contract trade and made a net profit of 54.7 million dollars (approximately 300 million yuan).
Judicial decision for crypto money transaction announced
The founder Ji Jiaming focused on employees and agencies because he was still fugitive. According to the court documents, two of the eight defendants were employees and six were agents. Zheng Lei, one of the penalties, was sentenced to 25 months in prison as a wallet engineer and president of the wallet department. However, the penalty was postponed and a fine of 150,000 yuan (about $ 30,000) was fined. In addition, Zheng Lei’s illegal earnings were confiscated and asked to pay 1,34 million Yuan (approximately $ 200,000) compensation.
Another employee Wang was sentenced to 23 months in prison for KYC verification and crypto money transactions and fined 52,000 Yuan (about $ 10,000). In addition, agencies responsible for attracting users to the platform were punished. For example, Dong has developed more than 10,000 vehicles and won 33,558 USDT commission. Dong was sentenced to 18 months of imprisonment after surrendering, his sentence was postponed and a fine of 35,000 Yuan (about 6,400 dollars).
This decision is another development that reflects the pressure of China against risky activities related to crypto currency. The Chinese government has recently brought more strict banking regulations to prevent crypto currency trade. However, China’s arrangements on crypto currency have a complex structure. In the last decision of the court, crypto money trade was considered as gambling, while the Chinese Supreme Court previously recognized crypto currencies as a legal property and accepted their commodity status. Although the regulations in China have increased, the acceptance of crypto money is still continuing. Asia, 60 %of crypto users around the world, is the leading position in the global crypto market.
