In short
- Pseudonymous crypto influencer The White Whale had his $3 million MEXC account suspended in July, and has since been on social media trying to get it back.
- On Friday, MEXC apologized, refunded its money and promised to make changes to prevent this from happening again in the future.
- However, several other users have reported similar issues as withdrawals from the exchange have noticeably increased since mid-July.
Centralized exchange MEXC has apologized for freezing a crypto whale’s funds for months, returning his $3 million and acknowledging that they mishandled the situation.
Pseudonymous trader and crypto influencer The White Whale had his $3 million MEXC account suspended July. The exchange told him that he had placed two orders within the same second, implying that he was not trading manually, had violated their terms of service and that the funds should be forfeited. However, he denied these claims.
De Witte Whale has since been on social media campaign to get his money back, while pseudonymous sleuth ZachXBT recently came to get his defense. Following an audience to and fro between the trader and MEXC the stock market collapsed.
“We screwed up. We apologize to The White Whale, and his money has already been released. He can claim it at any time,” said Cecilia Hsueh, CSO of MEXC, wrote on X. “I made a mistake in communicating with him. I got emotional, and I shouldn’t have done that.”
She added that after the incident, MEXC is working to create a “fast-track channel” to resolve unresolved account issues. The white whale claims having been made aware of hundreds of cases of other traders having “indefinite freezes without access to their funds.”
“[It] It took a while and a lot of hate to get you to do it. 100% sure this tweet wouldn’t exist if it was someone with 100 followers,” said pseudonymous trader Joji wrote on X.
“You’re not wrong,” Hsueh replied. “It takes a lot of effort to shake up the entire company. We are working to ensure this doesn’t happen again.”
She explains that part of the problem is the result of growing pains, going from a “very small exchange” to one top 10 exchanges by volume. Hsueh said MEXC’s “risk, operations and PR teams” have not kept up with this growth.
“We’re going to change that,” Hsueh said. “I pushed the leadership team to recognize the issues, identify the changes we need to make and improve our transparency. After this, they are now listening and they all recognize that MEXC needs to change.”
In the meantime, CryptoQuant data shows that Bitcoin withdrawals from the exchange rose from 40 per day to 1,237 per day in mid-July – around the time The White Whale’s funds were frozen. Admissions are still high, with 1,200 daily admissions on Thursday and 1,450 on Friday as of 4:00 PM ET.
Users on social media are now reporting that they cannot withdraw money from the exchange, while others claim they are in the same situation as The White Whale.
“I used to have millions on MEXC. And lately I had exactly the same problem and false accusations. I solved it all after waiting 14 days. Now I can’t trust it anymore,” said crypto trader Elja wrote on X.
“MEXC was very nice to me when I joined hedge funds and institutional firms, but then stopped being nice after they took all my [requests] for more than 365 days without explanation and without the ability to communicate with customer support to provide evidence or request clarification,” another user replied.
MEXC did not respond Declutter‘s request for comment regarding the high levels of Bitcoin withdrawals being recorded.
Daily debriefing Newsletter
Start every day with today’s top news stories, plus original articles, a podcast, videos and more.
