BitMEX, one of the earliest and most influential cryptocurrency derivatives exchanges, permanently shut down its trading operations today at 4 a.m. UTC, ending an 11-year run that reshaped how the entire crypto industry trades.
Founded in 2014 by Arthur Hayes, Ben Delo and Samuel Reed, BitMEX is widely credited with inventing the perpetual swap: a futures-style contract with no expiry date that let traders bet on bitcoin's price with up to 100x leverage. According to the company's closure announcement, the board of operator HDR Global Trading Limited decided to close after "a strategic review of the business and the broader crypto industry." All open positions were force-closed at the shutdown deadline, and the exchange stopped accepting new account registrations immediately.
"This comes with a heavy heart for all of us at the company and has not been taken lightly."
— BitMEX closure announcement
The company said it had never lost customer funds to a hack in its history, and that remaining balances stay accessible for withdrawal, though unclaimed funds will begin accruing a 1% annual fee after a grace period. BitMEX warned users to watch for phishing scams exploiting the closure news.
The shutdown caps a long decline. BitMEX once commanded roughly half of the global bitcoin futures market at its 2018 peak; more recently, The Block reported that trackers put its share below a tenth of one percent, squeezed out by Binance, OKX and a wave of newer on-chain platforms. Hayes and Reed had already stepped back from leadership roles years earlier amid a 2020 U.S. regulatory settlement over anti-money-laundering violations.
Ironically, the closure comes as BitMEX's signature invention is more dominant than ever. Perpetual swaps are now the single most-traded product type in crypto, offered on thousands of venues, and regulators have begun embracing the format: the CFTC recently approved Kalshi's BTCPERP as the first federally regulated U.S. bitcoin perpetual contract. The exchange that built the category, competitors say, simply couldn't keep up with the market it created.