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BitMEX will close entirely on September 23, 2026, at 04:00 UTC, the exchange announced Wednesday, ending an 11-year run as one of crypto's most influential derivatives platforms.
The company has already stopped accepting new account registrations. HDR Global Trading Limited, BitMEX's owner and operator, said its board made the decision “following a strategic review of the business and the broader crypto industry,” without citing financial distress or regulatory action as the cause.
BitMEX launched in 2014 and is widely credited with inventing the 100x-leverage perpetual swap, now the most-traded product type in crypto derivatives and a format copied by nearly every major exchange that followed it. In its announcement, the company said it has never lost user funds to a hack across its entire operating history, a claim it contrasted with the security records of many peers.
The exchange's history hasn't been free of trouble. Founders Arthur Hayes, Ben Delo and Samuel Reed pleaded guilty in 2022 to Bank Secrecy Act violations tied to BitMEX's anti-money-laundering program, and all three were later pardoned by President Trump. That history makes the framing of this closure notable: BitMEX is shutting down on its own terms after surviving the legal fallout that has ended other exchanges outright, rather than being forced to close by regulators or a collapse in liquidity.
The wind-down follows a set, dated sequence. The platform will operate normally until August 26, when BitMEX will begin applying risk limits that stop users from opening new positions, permitting only reductions. From that point until the September 23 closure time, BitMEX will progressively force-close remaining open positions to unwind the market in an orderly way, and any positions still open at closure time will be force-closed immediately. Contracts trading with limited liquidity will be settled early, with notice given under the exchange's usual procedures. All staked BMEX tokens have already been unstaked and returned to holder accounts.
Users will still be able to log in after the closure time to view balances and withdraw funds, but BitMEX said KYC'd users who haven't withdrawn their assets by then will be charged a monthly account fee of $50 or 1% annually, whichever is greater, a fee that can increase with advance notice if funds remain unclaimed. The company also warned users to watch for phishing attempts that exploit the closure news, saying no legitimate service offers expedited or priority withdrawals, and pointed to its proof-of-reserves page as evidence that assets currently exceed liabilities.
