As I mentioned on Sunday, big news this week.

MiCA is imminent. The final deadline for certification that less than 20% of crypto entities have done is 1st July.

This means over 80% of crypto sites could get their arses fined (or shut down) if they serve EU residents after that date.

This is an obvious nightmare for people in the EU, but the implementation potentially makes it worse.

Ideally, exchanges and other sites holding your crypto - not your keys, not your coins - will notify their EU users and allow them to withdraw their funds in the next week. That's assuming those sites have some way of detecting which users are EU-based and contacting them, and that there's anywhere to withdraw to!

The detection isn't too difficult, since IP addresses can be geolocated, but that raises the question of what happens to people using VPNs. Even Web3 users with wallets like Metamask are unlikely to be safe unless everything they've signed up for or set in motion has an expiry date. Put money in liquidity? That ain't coming back unless you cancel it, and you can't cancel if the site shuts you out.

Short version: if you're in the EU, right now is a good time to get your funds back into your own wallets and/or check that the sites you use are certified for MiCA. You still have a week before the storm hits.

MEXC Screws Its Users

That's a harsh headline, especially since I like MEXC, but it's true.

I have two spare MEXC accounts that I've rarely used - one's empty, the other has about $0.11 of dust in it - and have always logged in through VPN. With European locations.

Over the weekend, I received an email on one of those accounts, telling me that their system thinks I'm based in the Netherlands and therefore subject to KYC. 

"To comply with regulatory requirements, MEXC will discontinue services for users in the Netherlands effective October 23 , 2026.

Recent activity indicates your account is linked to the Netherlands. If this is incorrect, please complete KYC verification before the deadline to ensure your access remains uninterrupted.

As part of our ongoing efforts to advance platform security and compliance, we urge you to act quickly to avoid any service interruptions."

That all sounds quite reasonable, doesn't it?

There's advance warning, there's plenty of time to sort things out before 23rd October. They don't mention MiCA - I'm assuming this is because of that regulation and the Netherlands is the first to tell exchanges/sites that they're buggered if they don't certify. I searched for other NL regulation changes but didn't turn up anything for October.

So I went and logged in.

Forced KYC.

No access to balances, no access to markets, no withdrawals.

They've even edited their account security page and removed the "no KYC" part.

Not cool. Not cool at all.

For people with balances there, this comes without warning. There's no grace period, they just shut you down and force KYC.

Note that I only had $0.11 on there, so it's not a big loss. Note also that I didn't get an email for the second account, presumably because it's empty or used an unaffected country on VPN. They may allow withdrawals for people with sufficient balance; I don't know.

What To Do

[I'm basing everything here on the assumption that this is MiCA arriving and that you loathe KYC. If it's not MiCA, it's a very nicely timed alarm!]

If you have an account at MEXC, are in the EU, and don't want to do KYC, get out. Now.

If they let you withdraw, do it. Convert small coins into USDT if you have to, to make the $1 minimum, but get out.

Even if it's temporary, get out. Wait and see what happens with MiCA.

If they won't let you withdraw and you have larger balances, open a ticket.

Tell them firmly but politely that you expect them to allow withdrawals. It's your money, you signed up without KYC, they didn't warn you of forced KYC, they can't hold onto your money.

They will probably keep telling you to do KYC, like they did when I had trouble previously.

Keep telling them "no", just as I did then. 

Eventually, they should let your funds go.

And if everyone floods them with similar tickets, they'll buckle under pressure.

The same applies to any exchange/site that forces KYC you don't want to do.

Bear in mind that you only have about a week before MiCA hits and they can (try to) hide behind it as an excuse. Move fast.

Have you had any MiCA warnings yet? Moved your funds out safely? Tell me about it!