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The Seychelles-incorporated derivatives exchange that invented the perpetual swap in May 2016, pleaded guilty to a Bank Secrecy Act offence in 2024, and will shut its markets at 04:00 UTC on 23 September 2026 after 11 years.
Crypto derivatives exchange launched in 2014 by Arthur Hayes, Benjamin Delo and Samuel Reed, wholly owned and operated by HDR Global Trading Limited, a company incorporated in the Republic of Seychelles. On 13 May 2016 it announced the XBTUSD perpetual swap, a leveraged contract with no expiry held near spot by a funding payment; BitMEX puts its lifetime volume above $3tn and calls it the most traded product in crypto. The CFTC sued the BitMEX entities and their three founders on 1 October 2020, and on 10 August 2021 a federal court ordered a $100m civil penalty, up to $50m of which could be offset against a concurrent FinCEN assessment, for running an unregistered derivatives platform without know-your-customer and anti-money laundering programmes. The founders pleaded guilty to Bank Secrecy Act offences and were sentenced in 2022; HDR itself pleaded guilty on 10 July 2024 to wilfully failing to maintain an AML programme, and was fined $100m and placed on two years' probation on 15 January 2025. On 23 July 2026, after a strategic review, it said the exchange would close at 04:00 UTC on 23 September 2026, halting registrations at once and barring new positions from 26 August.
Developments in which BitMEX is a named party, newest first.
Trading, deposits and new positions ended at 04:00 UTC on 23 September, on the schedule HDR Global Trading set in July, and www.bitmex.com now serves a closure notice in place of the platform.
Trading, deposits and new positions ended at 04:00 UTC, on the schedule HDR Global Trading published on 23 July, and www.bitmex.com now serves a closure notice in place of the platform. Withdrawals stay open; verified accounts with balances left behind are charged 1 per cent a year, billed monthly, or USD 50 equivalent for accounts holding no more than that.
HDR Global Trading said on 23 July 2026 that BitMEX would close at 04:00 UTC on 23 September, following a strategic review, and told users to withdraw funds before the deadline. The venue introduced the perpetual swap in May 2016, the contract design that went on to dominate crypto derivatives trading on centralised and onchain venues alike.
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