On-chain investigator ZachXBT has issued a fresh warning about the East Asian centralized exchange JuCoin, citing a wave of user withdrawal issues over the past week and casting serious doubt on the platform’s reserves and corporate transparency. The alert comes as JuCoin has been a visible sponsor at the Token2049 Singapore event, a fact ZachXBT first flagged as a red flag in March 2025.
According to ZachXBT, JuCoin’s publicly reported total reserves of $511 million may be vastly overstated. An independent analysis shared on X claims that a large majority of those reserves consist of USDC and USDT tokens issued on JuChain, the exchange’s own proprietary blockchain, without any clear external backing. “Stablecoins issued on a platform’s own chain and counted as reserves are only as credible as the issuer’s backing,” the researcher noted, emphasizing that if these assets are not verifiably collateralized by equivalent real-world funds, the $511 million figure does not reflect true solvency.
Ownership opacity compounds the concern. ZachXBT stated, “Ju’s ownership is opaque. The publicly listed team does not appear to actually control it. That fits a pattern seen with fraudulent offshore exchanges, where the actual principals, often Chinese, stay hidden.” He argued that a basic requirement for centralized exchanges is full ownership transparency and registration in high-quality jurisdictions, both of which JuCoin fails.
The platform’s track record adds further weight to the warning. In September 2025, an entity linked to the Ju ecosystem, JuDAO, lost approximately $20 million after a misconfigured proxy contract left 77 million POL tokens stuck and unrecoverable. In April 2026, JuDAO suffered a $225,000 smart contract exploit on BSC Chain. More alarmingly, ZachXBT revealed that at least $5 million tied to the 2025 Bybit hack—the one attributed to the North Korean Lazarus Group—was funneled through JuCoin. This occurred during the same period that JuCoin’s team publicly declared it would offer up to 1,000 BTC in financial support to Bybit, a gesture now viewed with skepticism.
JuCoin has undergone multiple rebrandings, operating previously as Jubi, Joy Universe, and now Ju, a pattern ZachXBT has previously identified as characteristic of dubious offshore exchanges. While the platform attributed the withdrawal delays to upgrades and restructuring, it has not yet issued a comprehensive response to the reserve and ownership allegations.
