MEXC: Binance cuts ties four days after US Treasury ax

Four days, watch in hand. Binance closed its door to MEXC on Tuesday. Any withdrawal to the platform is refused and any deposit originating there is held for compliance review. The US Treasury on Friday designated MEXC as a “major money laundering concern” and cut off its access to the US financial system. Binance did not wait the 30 days between publication in the Federal Register and entry into force.

OKX led the way on Saturday through its founder Star Xu, and Gate clients are reporting filings held for review since the same day. The ninth global spot exchange finds itself in quarantine with the first.

Binance and MEXC: twelve entities, two directions of traffic, zero exceptions

The announcement published by Binance on Tuesday morning leaves no margin. Twelve entities are named, including MEXC Global Limited, MEXC Estonia OÜ, GIDA Technology AG, MEXC Singapore Pte Ltd and MEXC (Comoros) Ltd, plus all of their affiliates. Withdrawal requests to these addresses “will be refused”. Deposits arriving there “will be temporarily held and subject to compliance review,” Binance writes. The affected account may be restricted during the review or even closed.

According to CoinMarketCap data cited by Decrypt, Binance processes approximately $6.4 billion in spot volume per day and MEXC $812 million. Bitget Wallet had already stopped accepting funds identified as coming from MEXC to top up its cards, according to Wu Blockchain. None of these actors was forced to do so by the American text, which only targets American financial institutions, and all took the lead.

Why so much zeal? Since its guilty plea in November 2023, Binance has been fined $4.3 billion under two independent monitors imposed by the DOJ and FinCEN for three years. The exchange has been negotiating their early departure since September 2025. Letting funds pass through a platform recently designated by the Treasury would amount to testing Washington's patience at the worst time.

$16.7 billion in suspicious flows, and MEXC swears everything is fine

The Treasury file covers the period from May 2021 to May 2026. FinCEN estimates suspicious transactions carried out by MEXC at $16.7 billion, including around $1 billion exchanged directly with more than 40 Iranian platforms, $22 million linked to the central bank of Iran and the Revolutionary Guards and some $1.5 billion exposed to the circumvention of Russian sanctions. The legal basis is section 9714 of the Russian anti-money laundering law, already used against Bitzlato (dismantled on January 18, 2023, the day of the order) then against PM2BTC in September 2024.

MEXC, registered in Seychelles, repeats that withdrawals remain open and that it does not officially accept American customers. Its boss Vugar Usi recognizes increasing withdrawal volumes and affirms that FinCEN acknowledged receipt on Monday of a written request sent by an American firm. The platform has launched an independent review of its anti-money laundering controls. Complete silence on Binance.

If you have funds on MEXC, two things to remember. Withdrawals work according to the platform, but a direct transfer to Binance or OKX will end up frozen for the duration of an examination, the duration of which no one gives. And passing funds through a personal wallet is not enough to erase their origin from the eyes of chain analysis tools, which trace indirect exposure over several hops. MEXC is also negotiating with Elliptic to have its “high risk” addresses reclassified as “exchange”.