BitMEX Closes Its Exchange and Starts a 1% Fee

BitMEX ceased all exchange trading at 04:00 UTC on 23 September 2026. Remaining positions were force-closed at that minute, and new deposits are no longer credited.

Login still works. So do withdrawals, if a user can clear a fresh identity check. KYC’d balances left on the books now face the greater of a 1% annual fee or $50, billed monthly.

04:00 UTC Ended the Order Book

HDR Global Trading Limited, the Seychelles company that owns BitMEX, set that closure time on 23 July 2026 when it posted the closure of the BitMEX Exchange. New account sign-ups stopped the same day. The board said it had finished a review of the business and of the wider crypto industry, and it chose to wind the venue down rather than keep running it.

On 23 September 2026 the firm’s own account confirmed the cut. Trading, deposits, and new positions were gone. Funds, it said, remain safe, and customers should pull what is left through the web platform. Do not send coins to old BitMEX addresses. Anything that arrives after the closure time will not show in the account and, the company’s dates page says, will not be recoverable.

BitMEX’s exchange operations have officially ended as of 04:00 UTC today, 23 September 2026.

Your funds remain completely safe. Login and withdrawal capabilities remain available, and we strongly encourage all users to withdraw their remaining withdrawable balances as soon as… https://t.co/Pah1NpTJ6I

— BitMEX (@BitMEX) September 23, 2026

The two-month run-in was built to empty the book in public, not in a rush. From 26 August 2026 at 04:00 UTC, accounts could only reduce positions. BitMEX said it would force-close leftover trades along the way, at its sole discretion, and would not cover losses if a trader could not get out. Anything still open at closure was closed against the relevant settlement price or index.

THE WIND-DOWN CLOCK

1. 23 July 2026: HDR Global announces the 23 September close and stops new registrations.
2. 26 August 2026, 04:00 UTC: Risk limits block new positions; reduce-only trading begins.
3. 16 September 2026: BitMEX closes the book on XBTUSD, the perpetual it launched in 2016.
4. 22 September 2026: Remaining spot pairs are delisted and Convert support is stripped out.
5. 23 September 2026, 04:00 UTC: Trading ends; leftover positions are force-closed; deposits stop crediting.

The shop that spent more than 11 years calling itself the home of the perpetual swap is now a withdrawal desk with a blog for wind-down notes.

Leftover Balances Now Carry a Monthly Fee

The July notice told KYC’d users that money still sitting after closure would be charged. The live rule, restated as trading stopped, is sharper. For those users the fee is 1% a year or $50 equivalent, whichever is greater, charged monthly. The charge can rise later if balances stay put, with notice in advance. Failure to withdraw, the July post said, means the user has agreed to that fee and to later increases.

A small leftover is hit hardest under the greater-of rule. Fifty dollars on a thin balance is not a rounding error. A larger stack pays the 1% annual rate, billed across the year, until the coins leave. BitMEX said it will keep emailing people who have not moved their funds.

WHAT STOPPED AND WHAT REMAINS

That fee is the last product BitMEX is still selling. The insurance fund that once sat behind the old perpetual book is not accounted for in the closure post, and that silence is already the argument in trader threads. A solvent wind-down still leaves a pool of other people’s coins, a named fund with no public destination, and a monthly invoice for anyone who is slow.

The Contract That Never Expired

On 13 May 2016 BitMEX put up a short blog post and switched on the world’s first perpetual XBTUSD leveraged swap. It had no expiry. Longs made money when bitcoin rose, shorts when it fell, and a funding rate kept the contract near the cash market. Leverage went to 100x. The firm later said the idea began as scribbles on a napkin in a Hong Kong bar, with co-founders Arthur Hayes, Ben Delo, and Samuel Reed asking why a 24-hour market had to live on futures that die.

By May 2021, in its own fifth-year note on that contract, BitMEX wrote that XBTUSD had already cleared more than $3 trillion on its books. The same design, copied and dollar-margined, is now the default leveraged product across large centralised venues and on-chain books. BitMEX spent the last stretch of its life still proud of a bitcoin-collateral inverse swap the rest of the market had already left behind.

Hayes, who now runs the family office Maelstrom as chief investment officer, posted on 23 July 2026 after the closure notice.

Thank you to my partners, my BitMEX employees, and most importantly our clients. It was an amazing ride. We did something special together. And I’m so proud of what we created and that we will shutdown responsibly on our own terms.

Arthur Hayes, co-founder, on X, 23 July 2026

The contract outlasted the shop. XBTUSD’s last session was 16 September 2026, a week before the rest of the exchange went dark. Coinbase lists equity perps. Other books run the same funding mechanic on indexes BitMEX never touched. The inventor’s last public act is a fee on coins that have not yet walked out the door.

What Did the 2021 CFTC Order Require?

On 10 August 2021 the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York entered a consent order against five BitMEX companies, including HDR Global Trading Limited, and imposed a $100 million civil monetary penalty. Up to $50 million of that sum could be offset by a parallel FinCEN penalty. The order found that from at least November 2014 through 1 October 2020 the group offered leveraged crypto derivatives to U.S. customers without the right registrations and without a working know-your-customer and anti-money-laundering program.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission had sued on 1 October 2020. The same day, prosecutors in the Southern District indicted Hayes, Delo, Reed, and a fourth man. On 24 February 2022 Hayes and Delo pled guilty to violating the Bank Secrecy Act by willfully failing to build an AML program. Each agreed to a $10 million criminal fine. U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said they had built a company designed to flout those duties and had let BitMEX operate “as a platform in the shadows of the financial markets.”

THE U.S. TALLY

• Civil order: $100 million against the BitMEX entities on 10 August 2021, with up to $50 million offset by FinCEN.
• Founder fines: Hayes and Delo, $10 million each, after guilty pleas on 24 February 2022.
• Hayes sentence: six months of home detention and two years of probation, imposed on 20 May 2022.
• Treasury settlement: the company neither admitted nor denied more than $200 million in suspicious transactions and nearly 600 missing suspicious activity reports.

The sentencing papers said BitMEX filed no suspicious activity reports at all between 2014 and September 2020. Through at least August 2017, the registration page told users that first and last name were “not required.” Williams’s office said the 2015 claim that BitMEX had left the U.S. market was a sham, and that U.S. customers kept trading. Hayes advertised the lack of checks. After the civil order, the companies certified that U.S. persons were blocked and that U.S. operations had been wound down except for limited tech staff.

The closure post in July 2026 did not mention that file. It mentioned pride, security, and a strategic review. The file is still the reason a U.S. buyer was always a hard sell, and it is why leftover users now face a second KYC pass on the way out.

Two Years of Talks Produced No Buyer

By early 2025 BitMEX had hired Broadhaven Capital Partners, a boutique bank, to run a sale. People close to those talks later said discussions ran about two years and included other exchanges and the payments firm Exodus, and that they ended without a deal before HDR’s board chose a wind-down. Founder control was one sticking point. Hayes, Delo, and Reed had left management after the 2020 charges, yet they still held most of the equity, which made an earn-out for sitting executives harder to write.

HDR never published a sale memo, a bid log, or a valuation. The July notice did not say the review had been a failed auction. It did not need to. A venue that invented the product everyone else now clears, then watched that product move to dollar-margined books with deeper liquidity, was always going to look like a brand with a legal scar and a shrinking order book. Closing on a published timetable, with proof-of-reserves language still on the site, is the clean exit that a sale never delivered.

Staff had already been leaving. The remaining job, as of 23 September 2026, is to pay people out without feeding the inboxes of copycat “accelerated withdrawal” desks.

How Do Users Pull Remaining Funds Out?

Users can still log in, read balances and history, and request a withdrawal on the web site. API withdrawals are off. USDT, USDC, and ETH can leave only on Ethereum. Each asset has a minimum that the form shows at address entry. BitMEX may ask for a KYC refresh even for people who passed checks years ago, and cooldown periods are coming in stages with a stripped-down site. The company’s important dates and FAQ is the page that still carries the timetable in one place.

THE EXIT LIST

• Official paths only: BitMEX said it will never ask for private keys, seed phrases, or payment to release funds.
• No fast lane: Anyone offering priority or accelerated withdrawals is a phish. No such service exists.
• Processing is not a stall: A request marked processing stays in queue until a free address can post it, and Bitcoin confirmations can run toward an hour.
• Support: The help desk remains on a 24/7 ticket queue, and the published report address for scams is support@bitmex.com.

The same July letter that set the fee also pointed to a Proof of Reserves and Liabilities page and said assets exceed liabilities. That is the company’s figure, not an outside audit quoted here. Extra review on withdrawals is already in force because a wind-down is catnip for fake recovery agents. The practical risk for a user still on the platform is less a missing cold wallet than a spoofed email, a locked account waiting on documents, and a monthly charge that starts the clock while those documents sit in a queue.

BitMEX spent more than 11 years telling customers it had lost zero funds to hacks. On 23 September 2026 it closed the market that made its name, left the login box on, and began billing the coins that did not leave.

Disclaimer: This article is news reporting and analysis for information only. It is not investment, trading, tax, or legal advice, and it is not a recommendation to withdraw, hold, or move any digital asset. Readers with balances on BitMEX, or with tax or estate questions about those balances, should speak to a qualified financial adviser and, where needed, a lawyer who handles crypto-asset custody before they act. Figures, fees, and account rules reflect BitMEX notices and U.S. agency papers as published and may change as the wind-down continues.