AscendEX Halts Trading, Withdrawals Under Manual Review

AscendEX permanently stopped trading, deposits, staking, and swaps on July 1, 2026. All remaining withdrawals now require manual review, with no guaranteed timeline or final payout amount.

The exchange cited the full enforcement of the European Union's MiCA regulations and the failure of a strategic liquidity transaction as the reasons. On-chain analyst ZachXBT had flagged reduced balances in AscendEX's public hot wallets on Ethereum, Tron, and Solana weeks before the closure, including lower holdings of ETH, SOL, and USDT.

The exchange also suffered a $78 million hack in December 2021. Some users reported they could still deposit funds while withdrawals were delayed, adding to confusion about the platform's financial state.

AscendEX's own shutdown notice acknowledged it cannot guarantee either the timeline or the final amount users may receive through manual withdrawals. Some investors said they could not obtain transaction IDs for pending withdrawals, leaving them without a clear path to recovery.

For affected users, the immediate task is recovering funds through the manual process. The episode underscores a recurring risk in centralized crypto: exchange access and asset ownership are not the same.