An executive at crypto exchange MEXC has apologised for a spat with a trader who said the company had improperly frozen $3 million in crypto.

The pseudonymous trader, who goes by White Whale on social media, confirmed on Friday they had received the $3 million and committed to distributing that among supporters and nonprofit organisations.

The executive, meanwhile, was in damage control on Friday, responding to a flood of user inquiries about frozen crypto assets.

“We fucked up,” MEXC Chief Strategy Officer Cecilia Hsueh said on X.

Her outreach could become a case study in handling public outcry in the hyper-online, low-trust world of crypto, where allegations of wrongdoing can quickly go viral.

“Since I joined MEXC 2 months ago I’ve been fighting behind the scenes to get MEXC to change. We grew really fast—a few years ago, we were a very small exchange, but given our current scale, our risk, operations, and PR teams have not kept up,” Hsueh wrote.

“I’ve been driving the leadership team to recognize the issues, identify changes we need to make and improve on our transparency. After this, they’re now listening and they all acknowledge that MEXC has to change.”

The executive added that MEXC would revise its risk and customer service policies and create a “fast-track channel” on Saturday for other traders with unresolved issues accessing their funds.

MEXC did not immediately respond to DL News’ request for comment.

The MEXC controversy began earlier this year, when White Whale — a trader with more than 56,000 followers on X — alleged MEXC had blocked their access to crypto they held on the exchange.

But they took on a new life on Wednesday, after the trader shared their MEXC transaction history in an attempt to debunk the exchange’s claim they had automated their trades, violating the terms of service.

The trader also detailed an October 20 call with Hsueh in which she allegedly pressured them into admitting they violated the exchange’s rules.

In a since-deleted statement on the company’s website, MEXC offered to settle the dispute via arbitration — a deal the trader promptly rejected.

Other traders, many of them pseudonymous as well, jumped into thefray with their own allegations that MEXC had frozen their accounts improperly. Additionally, pseudonymous crypto investigator ZachXBT began questioning the company’s seemingly opaque ownership structure.

In a flurry of posts on Friday, Hsueh acknowledged White Whale’s pressure had spurred the company to action.

“He makes MEXC wake up, we are opening direct communication channels to all users who have account issues,” she wrote.

In another post, she said the outcry had led the company’s board to take action.

“Members of the board stepped in given the backlash to support what I was trying to resolve,” Hsueh wrote.

The controversy has led to a wave of withdrawals from MEXC. On Friday, the company saw $39 million in outflows, according to DefiLlama data.

Aleks Gilbert is DL News’ New York-based DeFi correspondent. You can reach him at aleks@dlnews.com.