The United States has moved to cut one of the world's largest cryptocurrency exchanges off from its financial system, accusing MEXC Global of handling at least $16 billion in transactions linked to sanctions evasion, cybercrime and other illicit activity over five years.
The order was issued on Friday by the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, known as FinCEN, the anti-money laundering arm of the US Treasury. It bars American financial institutions from processing any funds transfers involving MEXC Global, a convertible virtual currency exchanger incorporated in the Seychelles. The action is part of a Treasury campaign called Operation Economic Outcast, launched in August to choke off the financial networks that help Iran evade sanctions.
According to the Treasury, MEXC facilitated the movement of at least $16 billion in funds connected to sanctions evasion, cybercrime and other illicit activity between May 2021 and May 2026. The flows included nearly $1.5 billion tied to Russian sanctions evasion and around $22 million linked to Iran's central bank and the Qods Force, the overseas arm of Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps. The exchange also carried out $232 million in direct transactions with sanctioned entities, FinCEN said.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent framed the move as a warning to the wider financial system. In the department's announcement, he said the United States would act against institutions that allow sanctioned regimes and criminals to move money through the global financial system, and that no exchange was too large to escape scrutiny. The Treasury said MEXC had transacted directly with sanctioned actors, including doing business with the Russian exchange Garantex and its successor Grinex as recently as June 2026, more than four years after Garantex was first designated by the United States.
The scale of the exchange makes the order significant. Founded in 2018, MEXC processed more than $1 billion in transactions a day and held reserves of about $5 billion as of September 2026, according to the Treasury, ranking it among the world's 20 largest crypto exchanges. Data provider DefiLlama put its total assets at about $4.48 billion on Friday. The Treasury noted that the exchange operated without a virtual asset service provider licence in the Seychelles, its place of incorporation.
FinCEN's order rests on section 9714(a) of the Combating Russian Money Laundering Act, a provision that allows the Treasury to impose special measures on a foreign financial institution found to be of primary money laundering concern in connection with Russian illicit finance. The order names MEXC Global and its affiliates, including entities in Estonia, Switzerland and the United Kingdom, along with any successor that acquires its assets or carries on its business under a new name.
The ban is not an outright sanctions designation, and the distinction matters. MEXC has not been placed on the Treasury's sanctions list, and the order does not rewrite existing Bank Secrecy Act duties or sanctions rules. Instead, it is a funds-transmittal ban: once in force, no covered US financial institution may send or receive money to or from the exchange, and the prohibition has no end date. The order takes effect 30 days after it is published in the Federal Register, a step that had not yet happened by Friday evening in Washington.
The MEXC action came on the same day the Treasury imposed sanctions on eight money services firms based in Canada, which it accused of facilitating transactions with sanctioned Iranian entities. The firms, operating in Ontario and British Columbia, had their US assets blocked and were cut off from dealings with US persons. Bessent said Canada could not be allowed to provide a safe haven for facilitators of illicit finance, a message aimed as much at other jurisdictions as at the firms themselves.
For the crypto industry, the move is the latest in a series of blows. Only last week, Binance, the world's largest exchange, disclosed a $6.3 billion hack that the FBI has blamed on North Korean hackers, and its customers have since withdrawn billions of dollars. Bitcoin, meanwhile, slid below $75,000 on Friday for the first time since August, as a Wall Street sell-off in technology shares spilled into digital assets and more than $1 billion of leveraged crypto positions were liquidated in a day.
MEXC had not responded publicly to the order at the time of publication, and it was not immediately clear how the exchange would handle the coming ban. The 30-day window before the order takes effect gives US institutions time to wind down any exposure, but for an exchange of MEXC's size, losing access to the dollar-based financial system is a severe blow, even if its trading operations continue elsewhere. Analysts will now be watching whether other offshore exchanges with similar exposure come under the same treatment, and whether the Treasury extends Operation Economic Outcast beyond its current targets.
The episode also underlines how Washington's approach to crypto enforcement has shifted. Rather than relying solely on sanctions designations, the Treasury is using anti-money laundering tools to sever entire platforms from the US financial system, a step that reaches further than a fine or a warning. For an industry that has long argued it should be judged on its technology rather than its worst actors, the MEXC case is a reminder that the compliance gap at the largest offshore exchanges is now being treated as a national security issue.
Figures in this report were checked at 13:51 PKT on 07 November 2026 against the US Treasury press release, Cointelegraph, Bitcoin Magazine and the Economic Times.
This post is market news information only, not financial advice.
