He paid to spoil the reputation of the exchange, forcing them to return coins without KYC!!! Blackmail!! Do not be stupid, no one spends money when already lost.
Reason for not going through kyc with anybody is not good enough to hold funds hostage.
Blackmail? where? the only partie who lost here is OP.
Op clearly have issue with all this change...corp and therefore has every right to go public about it.
They do selectively scamming using aml and kyc and should be clealry avoided.