BitMEX, one of the leading cryptocurrency derivatives exchanges, has announced that it will permanently shut down operations on September 23, 2026.

 

While the company did not provide an explicit reason for the decision, it said in a blog post that the move followed a strategic review of the business and the broader cryptocurrency industry conducted by the board of HDR Global Trading Limited, BitMEX's parent company.

 

Image credit: x.com

 

Following the announcement, BitMEX urged users to close all open positions and withdraw their funds from the platform as soon as possible.

 

To ensure an orderly wind-down, the exchange said it will begin applying risk limits, including allowing users only to reduce existing positions and preventing them from opening new ones. Any positions that remain open after the closure date will be forcibly closed, and the company added that it will not be responsible for any losses incurred during the process.

 

For users who have completed Know Your Customer verification but fail to withdraw their funds, BitMEX said it will charge an annual account maintenance fee equal to the greater of $50 or 1% of the account balance. Although all trading positions will be closed by the September 23 deadline, users will still be able to log in to their accounts and view their wallet balances.

About BitMEX

 

BitMEX, or Bitcoin Mercantile Exchange, is a cryptocurrency derivatives trading platform co-founded in 2014 by Arthur Hayes, a former derivatives trader at Deutsche Bank, Ben Delo, and Samuel Reed, who are both software engineers.

 

Following the collapse of the then-largest cryptocurrency exchange, Mt. Gox, Hayes and his team co-founded BitMEX to provide professional-grade derivatives tools that were seriously lacking in the crypto industry at the time.

 

Despite offering various crypto derivatives, including pioneering perpetual swaps with up to 100x leverage, and becoming one of the most notable derivatives exchanges with no recorded security breaches, BitMEX faced severe regulatory scrutiny from U.S. authorities over alleged anti-money laundering and know-your-customer violations.

 

Due to these regulatory challenges, its founders were charged, and the company was fined more than $100 million. These challenges eventually led BitMEX to lose its market dominance and liquidity, and to several unsuccessful attempts to sell the company.

 

 

Zodia Custody, a company that provides institutional custody for cryptocurrencies and digital assets, has secured a payment license from Luxembourg’s Commission de Surveillance du Secteur Financier (CSSF), the country’s primary financial regulator.

 

 

With this payment license secured, Zodia Custody is set to expand beyond crypto custody, its main offering, and is now moving into both the custody and seamless transfer of electronic money tokens and stablecoins within the European Union.

 

“Institutional adoption of crypto assets demands infrastructure that meets the highest standards of regulatory adherence and operational efficiency,” said Ami Nagata, Managing Director, Luxembourg at Zodia Custody Europe.

 

“Securing a Payment Institution license alongside our MiCA CASP authorization is a critical step in bridging our capabilities across crypto asset safekeeping. With both licenses in place, our clients have the certainty they need to manage their electronic money token and crypto asset strategies across Europe, with full confidence that their assets are safeguarded within a bank-grade environment.”

 

Alongside the payment license and the MiCA license it secured in December last year, Zodia Custody is now well-positioned to serve as a core infrastructure provider for institutional digital finance. Securing these licenses removes structural barriers and counterparty risks commonly associated with crypto asset service providers.

 

The securing of the Luxembourg payment license comes shortly after Standard Chartered made a non-binding offer to acquire Zodia Custody. Although the acquisition cost was not publicly disclosed, the offer has already been accepted by Zodia Custody shareholders.

 

Zodia Custody currently serves a number of institutional clients, including 21Shares, Re7 Capital, Bitwise, and BitMEX. In April of this year, Zodia Custody partnered with BitMEX to integrate the Interchange platform into BitMEX's infrastructure to enable off-exchange trading, a move that enhances the safety of clients' assets on the BitMEX platform, especially in the event of a security breach.

 

 

BitMEX, a derivatives-focused cryptocurrency exchange, has partnered with Zodia Custody, an institutional-first digital assets custody firm, to enable off-exchange trading and secure asset custody for BitMEX’s clients.

 

The partnership, announced this week, will see the integration of Zodia Custody’s Interchange platform into BitMEX. Interchange is an off-venue settlement solution that allows institutional and professional clients to trade directly on BitMEX while keeping their digital assets securely held off-exchange with Zodia Custody.

 

 

This partnership, according to Stephan Lutz, BitMEX CEO, draws on lessons learned from past market failures, especially the collapse of the FTX cryptocurrency exchange and the 1.4 billion dollar Bybit hack. These events, Lutz said, exposed the risks associated with unsegregated or compromised exchange-held funds and are key examples of how custody failures or security threats can put client funds at risk.

 

Through this partnership and the integration of the Interchange platform, BitMEX clients, especially institutional clients that often trade with large amounts of money, do not have to worry about the safety of their funds on the exchange in the event of a hack, as their digital assets are secured in Zodia Custody’s cold, segregated storage wallets.

 

The partnership also serves to bridge the gap between institutional-grade security and crypto-native liquidity, allowing BitMEX’s professional and institutional clients to access BitMEX’s deep crypto derivatives liquidity while eliminating the need to pre-fund the exchange before trading.

 

The Growing Need for Security on Crypto Exchanges

Security has been one of the major challenges faced by cryptocurrency platforms over the years. In 2025, over $4 billion was stolen from crypto platforms. This represents a 34 percent increase compared with 2024, when losses stood at $2.2 billion. Unfortunately, the recovery rate of stolen crypto funds remains very low, at less than 8 percent. This is even worse for centralized exchanges, which are often high value targets.

 

By integrating Zodia Custody’s interchange platform into its crypto infrastructure and allowing clients’ digital assets to be stored in Zodia Custody’s segregated vaults, BitMEX eliminates the trade offs institutional clients face when choosing between derivatives trading access and the safety of their assets. Since Zodia handles the custody of clients’ assets, BitMEX faces minimal damage in the event of a security breach or hack.