How sanctions quietly demote crypto exchanges instead of shutting them down

Crypto analyst Viktor Pershikov examined the real fallout from UK and US measures on HTX and MEXC. Five months after Britain blacklisted Huobi Global over Russian crypto links, HTX’s trading volumes dropped roughly 40 % to $70 billion and its share among the top eleven platforms halved to 1.44 %.

On 6 November FinCEN issued an order that will bar US financial institutions from handling any transfers involving MEXC after thirty days. The regulator flagged at least $16.7 billion in suspicious activity on the platform, including $1.5 billion tied to Russian sanctions evasion. MEXC had already announced it would stop serving users from Russia and Belarus on 20 October.

The key takeaway is that sanctions rarely kill a large exchange outright; they push it into the second tier. HTX has already seen its derivatives business nearly halve and slipped from seventh to ninth place on CoinMarketCap. Leaving a market voluntarily does not erase the transaction history that counterparties and regulators continue to scrutinise.

Based on information from cryptonews.net