"This can sometimes happen with small businesses with no real assets, but there are laws against it."

What "laws" are those? There are no laws against a company shutting down in order to escape some liability that it may have. It happens every day!

"Large exchanges with licences and huge asset bases can't practically do this."

Perhaps not! But do you realize just how low the chances are of ever winning such a lawsuit against a giant company like Binance? Do you know how many lawsuits are on the books against companies like Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and other such giants? Such companies have teams of lawyers who can make sure that cases are never heard before the plaintiffs either go broke, give up, or just die.