100x Leverage, One Final Close: BitMEX Logs Off After Inventing the Perpetual Swap 🪦

BitMEX, the Seychelles-incorporated derivatives venue co-founded by Arthur Hayes, Benjamin Delo and Samuel Reed in 2014, will cease operations on Sept. 23, 2026 at 04:00:00 UTC, parent company HDR Global Trading Limited said Thursday following a strategic review of its business and the broader digital asset industry. The exchange that introduced the 100x leverage perpetual swap told users it shared the news "with a very heavy heart," and immediately halted all new account registrations.

The wind-down runs on a fixed schedule. Standard trading continues until Aug. 26, when the platform will block new positions and permit only reductions of existing exposure. From that date, operators will systematically force-close remaining contracts to ensure an orderly market closure, with any positions still open at the deadline terminated automatically. The exchange said illiquid contracts may be settled early under existing procedures.

BitMEX said users "remain fully safe and under your control during this transition period" and urged clients to close positions and withdraw funds ahead of the cutoff. BitMEX has also unstaked all BMEX tokens held in staking, making them immediately available to holders. Customers who fail to withdraw after the closure and have completed KYC verification will be charged a monthly maintenance fee of at least $50, or an annualized 1% levy on their assets, with the possibility of higher fees in the future following prior notice. The company warned of phishing attacks exploiting the shutdown announcement and said enhanced withdrawal reviews and blockchain confirmation delays could temporarily slow processing.

The closure ends an 11-year run during which BitMEX said it never lost customer funds to a hack. The platform helped popularize the no-expiry perpetual swap, a derivatives product that has since become the most traded instrument in crypto. Crypto perpetual volumes reached $61.7 trillion in 2025, up $13.8 trillion year-on-year, according to CryptoQuant, while centralized exchange perps volume fell 10% to $12.7 trillion in the second quarter of 2026, per CoinGecko's latest Crypto Industry Report. Decentralized venues such as Hyperliquid have risen to become the second-largest perpetuals exchange by open interest, behind only Binance, as liquidity, market makers and whales migrated to platforms with deeper books and more listings.

BitMEX's later years were marked by regulatory trouble. The exchange pleaded guilty in 2024 to violating the Bank Secrecy Act over lax anti-money-laundering controls and paid $100 million in penalties. In March 2025, U.S. President Donald Trump pardoned Hayes, Delo and Reed, each of whom had pleaded guilty in 2022 to Bank Secrecy Act violations and agreed to pay a $10 million fine. In its announcement, BitMEX urged users to continue trading on "the many excellent platforms that have followed in our footsteps."