The MEXC Netherlands wind-down now has a signposted way out. Kraken and MEXC confirmed a commercial partnership on 12 August 2026 under which MEXC refers its Dutch clients, spot and derivatives alike, to Kraken, a platform authorised under both MiCA and MiFID. For users in the Netherlands the practical questions are what moves across, what cannot, and on whose clock.
| What you need to know |
|---|
| 1Kraken and MEXC confirmed a referral and transition agreement on 12 August 2026; MEXC clients in the Netherlands, including derivatives users, are pointed to Kraken. |
| 2Kraken's European permissions carry public register numbers: CASP C468360 and e-money C453020 at the Central Bank of Ireland, plus MiFID licence 342/17 at CySEC in Cyprus. |
| 3Tether (USDT) cannot be traded on Kraken by residents of the EEA, so balances held in USDT on MEXC are worth converting before anything is withdrawn. |
| 4Kraken's migration page sets no deadline of its own, which leaves the notices MEXC sends directly to account holders as the timeline that counts. |
What the agreement actually covers
The two companies describe a commercial partnership with two moving parts. MEXC refers its users in the Netherlands to Kraken, and it provides transition-related support to those referred clients while it winds down its Dutch offering as part of what it calls a broader realignment of its regional strategy. Spot and derivatives clients are both in scope, which matters because leveraged positions need closing or porting rather than a simple wallet sweep.
“Our priority throughout this transition is to ensure that affected users are supported through a clear and orderly process,” said Robert MacDonald, Chief Compliance Officer of MEXC, in the joint announcement. MEXC appointed him on 22 July 2026, three weeks before this agreement was announced.
Why the MEXC Netherlands exit was coming
The European rulebook decided the shape of this. The Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation has applied to service providers since 30 December 2024, and in the Netherlands the licensing authority is the AFM. A platform serving Dutch residents needs either a Dutch licence or one passported from another European supervisor.
The AFM published a consumer warning about MEXC on 24 September 2025, stating that the platform was offering crypto services to Dutch consumers without the required licence, and noting that MEXC was no longer listed in a trade register, so its location could not be established. MEXC then suspended fiat services for Netherlands users on 20 March 2026, closing bank transfers, third-party payments and peer-to-peer trading in one step and delisting every active P2P advertisement posted from the country.
That pattern is playing out across the bloc. As we reported this week, more than a thousand European crypto firms are still operating without a MiCA licence, and the ones that cannot close the gap end up choosing between a licence application and an orderly departure. A referral agreement is the tidiest form of departure, because it hands leaving clients a supervised destination instead of a support ticket.
Kraken’s permissions, checked on the registers
The claim worth verifying in any migration offer is the licence, and this one checks out in public records rather than in marketing copy. Kraken’s own register of European authorisations lists Payward Europe Solutions Limited as a crypto-asset service provider under number C468360 at the Central Bank of Ireland, covering all seven MiCA services, alongside Payward Ireland Limited as an electronic money institution under C453020 and Payward Global Solutions Limited as a trading platform operator under C559106. The investment side runs through Payward Europe Digital Solutions (CY) Limited, formerly I.F. Greenfields Wealth Ltd, which appears on the CySEC register of Cypriot investment firms under MiFID licence 342/17.
Those two frameworks together are the reason a single account can hold spot crypto next to derivatives and tokenised equities. The MiCA authorisation arrived from the Central Bank of Ireland on 25 June 2025, and Kraken switched it on across all 30 countries of the European Economic Area on 12 August 2025. This agreement lands exactly one year after that date, which is a neat measure of how quickly a licence turns into a landing zone for someone else’s clients.
Markets consolidate toward fewer venues that do more. A significant share of platforms are expected to exit the EU or restrict services, and liquidity concentrates on the venues that remain.
Arjun Sethi, Co-CEO of Kraken and Payward
Sethi speaks for the receiving side of the trade, so read the quote as strategy rather than as neutral forecasting. The Dutch part of that strategy is not new either: Kraken agreed to buy the Dutch broker Coin Meester B.V. in October 2023, well before the licence deadlines began forcing the issue.
The USDT question to settle before you move anything
Here is the detail that will cost people money if they skip it. Kraken removed nine stablecoins from trading for clients in the EEA, including Tether (USDT), USDS, DAI, PayPal USD, Ripple USD, TrueUSD, USDD, TerraUSD Classic and Tether EURt, in a notice last updated on 13 April 2026. Those assets can still be deposited and withdrawn, and Kraken says plainly that depositing them is not recommended, because an EEA resident can no longer trade, buy or sell them there.
Anyone sitting in USDT on MEXC is therefore holding the one asset that arrives at Kraken frozen in place. The clean sequence is to convert on MEXC first, into bitcoin, ether or USDC, and to withdraw after that. Kraken’s own migration page gives the same instruction. The euro route is already shut on the MEXC side, which is why the conversion has to happen in crypto rather than through a bank transfer.
What happens next
The timeline is the one piece the announcement leaves open. Kraken states that it sets no deadline for opening an account or moving assets. On the MEXC side there is no public wind-down notice for the Netherlands at all: its announcement feed carried nothing on the subject when we read it on 12 August, and its restricted-countries page, last updated on 17 April 2026, still does not list the Netherlands. Dates circulating elsewhere for account closure could not be traced to either company, so the notice that arrives in your own inbox is the schedule to work from, and the safe assumption is that it is shorter than you would like.
For the Dutch market the second-order effect is concentration. Every venue that leaves hands its order flow to a licensed competitor, which deepens the books at the survivors and thins the choice for traders who liked a long tail of listings. That is already visible in the wave of takeovers reshaping Dutch crypto companies, and a referral deal is the same consolidation without the balance sheet. Expect more of them while the licensing backlog clears.
The useful habit for anyone reading a migration offer over the next year is to look up the counterparty before clicking through. Every authorisation named here has a number attached to it, the European registers are open to the public, and a five-minute check is the cheapest due diligence in this market.
This article is based on the joint Kraken and MEXC press release of 12 August 2026 provided to Cryptofocus, verified against public registers and both companies’ own published notices. It is information, not investment advice; trading crypto and derivatives carries the risk of loss.
