Svmuu News: Crypto derivatives exchange BitMEX has announced it will shut down, with trading set to end on September 23. BitMEX was founded in 2014 by Arthur Hayes, Ben Delo, and Samuel Reed; the decision was made after its parent company, HDR Global Trading, completed a strategic review.
BitMEX played a pivotal role in establishing perpetual contracts as a key product in digital asset derivatives trading. Data from CryptoQuant shows that its Bitcoin futures daily trading volume began to decline around May 2021 and has not recovered to the daily peak range of $1 billion to $5 billion seen in 2020.
Restructuring advisor Roshan Dharia noted that mid-sized centralized exchanges face structural pressures, with liquidity continuing to concentrate on large platforms and compliance costs rising. He stated that the top five platforms currently account for an estimated 80% of global spot trading volume, while mid-sized and regional exchanges are seeing shrinking profit margins and lack a path to scale.
According to CoinGecko data, BitMEX ranked ninth among derivatives exchanges in August 2023, with a trading volume share of 0.9%.By 2025, it had dropped out of the top ten perpetual futures exchanges, while the annual perpetual futures trading volume for these platforms grew by 47.4% during the same period, reaching 86.2 trillion U.S. dollars.