BitMEX stopped trading at 04:00 UTC on Wednesday 23 September, ending an 11-year run for the exchange that popularised the perpetual swap, the futures contract with no expiry date that now dominates crypto derivatives. Deposits and new positions were switched off, and any positions still open were force-settled at the relevant contract or index price. Customers can still log in to withdraw, but verified accounts that leave balances behind will be charged monthly at an annualised 1 percent of assets or $50, whichever is greater.
The closure was flagged in July, when parent company HDR Global Trading said a strategic review of the business and the wider industry had led it to wind the exchange down. BitMEX was founded in 2014 by Arthur Hayes, Ben Delo and Samuel Reed, and for years was the default venue for leveraged bitcoin bets. It pleaded guilty in 2024 to violating the Bank Secrecy Act over weak anti-money laundering controls, and President Trump pardoned the company and its founders in March 2025, hours before a $100 million fine fell due.
The product has outlived the platform. Centralised exchanges handled about $3.4 trillion in crypto derivatives volume in August alone, according to CoinDesk, much of it in the perpetual format BitMEX pioneered. That volume went to larger rivals and, increasingly, to onchain venues, while BitMEX lost ground in the market it created.
What HDR has not published is how much customer money is still sitting on the platform, or how long the withdrawal-only site will stay up. A pardon removed the legal overhang, but it did nothing for market share. And a fee schedule aimed squarely at dormant balances is a reminder that an exchange closure rarely ends on the day trading does.
