Crypto News: MEXC Sanctions Move and Binance $6.3B Hack

The latest crypto market snapshot showed Bitcoin up 1.05% at $76,003.09, Monero up 0.42% at $610.84 and HYPE up 0.93% at $79.25. BNB fell 1.10% to $695.38, while XLM declined 0.63% to $0.1529 and SOL slipped 0.59% to $90.25. The day’s major developments centered on US sanctions against MEXC and concerns surrounding Binance’s reported $6.3 billion security incident.

The US Treasury issued an order cutting cryptocurrency exchange MEXC Global off from the US financial system, according to a report by Cointelegraph. The Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network alleged that MEXC facilitated at least $16 billion in transactions linked to sanctions evasion, cybercrime and other illicit activity between May 2021 and May 2026, including roughly $1.5 billion tied to Russian sanctions evasion. The restriction prohibits US financial institutions from processing transfers involving MEXC and takes effect 30 days after publication in the Federal Register. DefiLlama listed MEXC’s total assets at approximately $4.48 billion as of Friday, while the exchange had not responded to Cointelegraph by publication time.

The action forms part of Operation Economic Outcast, a Treasury campaign launched in August to restrict financial entities that help Iran evade sanctions. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said digital assets must not be used to circumvent US restrictions on sanctioned regimes. Meanwhile, Binance’s reported $6.3 billion hack has raised questions about the controls governing its exchange-operated hot wallet. Co-CEO Richard Teng said on October 30 that the incident affected Binance’s own hot wallet, while most customer assets remained in offline cold storage and were transferred to hot wallets only when users requested withdrawals.

Public wallet balances can reveal the movement of funds on-chain, but they do not show the internal policies and authorization procedures governing transfers between an exchange’s wallets. That limitation has prompted other crypto exchanges to disclose their cold-storage reserves in an effort to reassure customers that user funds remain segregated and protected from hot-wallet exposure. The disclosures came as regulators and market participants scrutinized whether exchanges have sufficient safeguards against unauthorized withdrawals after the reported Binance incident.