BitMEX is one of the veteran exchanges in the industry and a pioneer in the field of cryptocurrency derivatives.
The exchange had been focused on derivatives for the majority of its existence. However, in May 2022, they also launched a spot trading platform. It allows users to transact between fiat currencies and cryptocurrencies while also trading crypto-to-crypto trading pairs.
The following is a comprehensive BitMEX review and its derivatives and spot platforms.
Key Takeaways:
BitMEX is a derivatives-focused exchange best known for pioneering perpetual swaps and high-leverage crypto trading. However, it also offers spot.
The exchange faced serious legal action in 2020 for regulatory violations, resulting in a $100 million fine, leadership changes, and more.
BitMEX is known for strong platform security and has never been hacked.
It is best suited for traders outside of the US who are comfortable and familiar with the basics of margin and leverage and not ideal for beginners or users who seek a full-service crypto platform.
Overview of BitMEX
BitMEX is a veteran cryptocurrency exchange that is known by absolutely anyone who has been part of the industry for more than a few years. It was founded in 2014 by former Citibank trader Arthur Hayes, along with Samuel Reed and Ben Delo.
In 2016, it revolutionized crypto trading by integrating perpetual futures into its core product, the XBTUSD perpetual swap—a type of cryptocurrency derivatives contract that allowed users to long and short Bitcoin using extremely high leverage of up to 100x. While this may not seem like a big deal to you right now, given that many exchanges offer this product, back then, it truly was a game changer.
BitMEX had been focused on derivatives for the majority of its existence. However, in May 2022, they also launched a spot trading platform. It enables users to transact between fiat currencies and cryptocurrencies, as well as trade crypto-to-crypto pairs.
Today, BitMEX is no longer the leader in the derivatives market. Still, it continues to attract hundreds of millions in daily trading volumes. It is home to thousands of traders, with considerable open interest, making it a liquid choice for many users.
Company Background, Past Issues, Current Standing
BitMEX was founded in 2014 and has been operating ever since, making it one of the old-school cryptocurrency exchanges. This isn’t to say that it was all smooth sailing. The company faced significant regulatory issues a few years ago.
On October 1, 2020, the U.S. Commodity and Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) charged the owners of BitMEX with operating an unlicensed cryptocurrency derivatives trading platform and violating anti-money laundering regulations. Some of the charges included:
Operating an unregistered trading platform.
Offering illegal leveraged retail commodity transactions.
Failing to implement required anti-money laundering procedures.
Facilitating billions in suspect transactions.
No know-your-customer (KYC) checks for years, etc.
At the time, Arthur Hayes was CEO. He stepped down almost immediately after the charges were filed.
The exchange committed to taking all the necessary precautions to comply with the letter of the law. In 2021, it reported 100% verified trading volume and user base under its new leadership. In 2025, the case was resolved. The exchange was fined $100 million for violating the Bank Secrecy Act, while all three founders pleaded guilty to specific counts of the charges.
In any case, this hasn’t deterred BitMEX from operating; no user funds have ever been lost, but it has caused a dent in its trading volumes that it has yet to recover from. Nonetheless, this hasn’t impacted the trading experience, and the exchange continues to work on improving its product offering by expanding its suite of services.
Supported Products and Markets
As I mentioned above, futures trading has been the bread and butter of BitMEX from the get-go. Today, it still is.
BitMEX Core Products
Despite the addition of spot trading, derivatives account for more than 99% of the total trading volume on the exchange. That said, the main product offerings of the exchange include:
Perpetual futures
Traditional futures
Spot
Converter
The difference between perpetual futures and traditional futures is considerable. Perps (as they are commonly referred to) are a derivative of futures that have no expiration date and can be opened and closed at will. Just like traditional futures, users can leverage up, and the level varies depending on the chosen cryptocurrency.
Some of the supported cryptocurrencies include, but are not limited to:
Bitcoin (BTC)
Ethereum (ETH)
Solana (SOL)
Ripple (XRP)
SUI (SUI)
Dogecoin (DOGE)
Litecoin (LTC)
Binance Coin (BNB), and countless more.
BitMEX Markets: Which Countries Are Allowed?
When choosing an exchange, the first thing you should do is ensure that it is supported in your country. That said, it would be easier to simply list the individuals who are not permitted to use BitMEX. These include:
People from the United States
People from Cuba, Iran, Syria, North Korea, Crimea and Sevastopol, Donetsk People’s Republic, Luhansk People’s Republic of Ukraine, Kherson Oblast, and Zaporozhzhia Oblast.
People from the Seychelles, Bermuda, Hong Kong SAR, Canada, and Myanmar.
People from Russia.
Trading Interface and User Experience
Trading on BitMEX is relatively straightforward. If you’ve used any other cryptocurrency exchange, you will find the interface very familiar. I think that there’s a golden standard when it comes to centralized exchanges, and it appears that BitMEX is more or less following it. This is what it looks like when you open the perps exchange:
I personally think that the exchange boasts a very simple and streamlined user interface without a lot of unnecessary and confusing features. As you can see, the centerpiece is the trading chart and right besides it, there is the order book and the orders themselves. BitMEX supports:
Limit orders
Market orders
Stop limit/market orders
Casers
Trailing stop orders
I would argue that this is more than enough for the majority of retail traders, although, if you are an advanced or professional power user, you might find the lack of TWAP options a little limiting. That said, it’s not a feature that 99% of the users would need.
Other than that, the exchange has both isolated and cross-margin modes as well as the ability to use multiple assets as margin for your positions, which I believe is a nice perk if you don’t necessarily want exposure to stablecoins.
Leverage and Margin Trading Explained
While we’re on the topic of trading, let me walk you through the difference between using margin and using leverage (in the sense of perp trading). In essence, both are tools allowing you to lever up your exposure, but there are some fundamental differences.
When using margin, you are posting collateral in exchange for debt that you can then use to do whatever you want – most commonly to scale up your trades. The important thing to understand here is that there is a loan-to-value ratio (LTV), which is different depending on the platform. This is the ratio between your debt and your collateral. A simple example can do wonders. Assume an LTV of 50% – this means that you can only borrow 50% of the value of your assets. If you have $100K, you can’t borrow more than $50K and this ratio needs to be maintained throughout the entire period. If your collateral’s value drops below $100K, you will receive a margin call – this is simply a push to add more margin (collateral) – otherwise, you risk your position to be liquidated (forfeited in favor of the creditor).
With leverage, you don’t get a loan in the traditional sense of the word. Think of it as a synthetic – the exchange allows you to open a position worth more than the money that you currently have, but it also institutes a liquidation point – a price, where, if reached, your position will be force-closed and your margin will be forfeited in favor of the exchange. Again, let me give you an example. Assume you have 1,000 USDT, but BitMEX allows you to open a 10x long on BTC/USDT. If you do so, you will effectively long BTC with 10,000 USDT (10 x 1,000 USDT). Now, this is great if the trade goes your way because you will earn greater profits, But if the trade doesn’t go your way, your losses are also amplified by a factor of 10x. Not only this, but if the price drops by 10%, you will be liquidated (unless you add more margin) and you will lose your initial 1,000 USDT.
In general, using leverage is very risky, and anything above 2-3x could easily result in liquidations, especially in a tremendously volatile market such as crypto.
Account Registration and Verification Process
Account registration is as straightforward as it gets. You do have to go through a regular identity verification, as in know-your-customer (KYC).
I found the process to be quick and easy. I had to provide the regular documentation to prove my identity and address, and didn’t find anything challenging or time-consuming.
Once you are done with the verification, all previous limits on your account will be lifted and you will get the “approved” status in the respective tab in your profile settings.
BitMEX Fees: Maker, Taker, and Hidden Costs
Given that 99% of the volume on the exchange is on its derivatives products, we will be focusing on that when it comes to trading fees.
There are eight total tiers that traders can fit in, and this will determine the fees that they will be paying for trading on the platform.
The criteria that determine your tier are two-fold:
Do you hold BitMEX tokens (BMEX)?
What is your 30-day trading volume?
Naturally, the more BMEX you hold and the more you trade, the lower fees you will be paying. But in essence, the taker fees start from 0.05% and can drop to as low as 0.032%, while the maker fees start from 0.05% and and drop to 0.015% for futures trading.
The following chart presents a more concise breakdown:
Is BitMEX Safe in 2025? Security Measures
Yes, BitMEX is a safe cryptocurrency exchange to use and it has never been hacked.
First things first, you can verify the exchange’s reserve ratio on its Proof of Reserves page.
In terms of security, the exchange must obviously be doing something right in light of the above. For traders, the positions are checked multiple times a minute with balances cross-checked against on-chain records constantly.
All assets are secured via secure multi-party computation (MPC) and a combination of both hot and cold wallets. Moreover, transfers are protected by transaction rules enforced to ensure that any attack is blocked at a policy level.
Users’ funds are also segregated at the account level and ring-fenced from company assets. In other words, you are deploying your funds and not the exchange.
BitMEX also has one of the highest insurance funds in the industry, which ensures that all traders are protected from deleveraging events.
Customer Support and Service Quality
Customer support at BitMEX is pretty standard. There is a contact form where you state your problem and get feedback from an agent through email.
For more trivial questions, there’s also an automated chatbot.
Additionally, BitMEX has a considerable Knowledge Base section where users can find information on a wide variety of questions such as how to change email addresses, how to use different exchange products, to access different features, and whatnot.
User Feedback and Reputation Analysis
I haven’t had any issues using the exchange over a considerable period of time, but of course, this isn’t to say that people haven’t faced any problems.
To gauge overall user satisfaction, which is incredibly challenging in the crypto industry, we turn to the reviews left at TradingView, TrustPilot, and Reddit. Keep in mind that there is no way to determine which reviews are honest.
On TradingView, BitMEX has a high score of 42 based on 95 reviews, which signals that the majority of users are happy.
On the r/BitMEX subreddit, anyone can go and post their impressions and so far, we haven’t found any major red flags.
TrustPilot is a different story – the exchange has a score of 1.9 out of 71 reviews, meaning most of them were negative. However, some of the comments there are questionable, to say the least. Take a look at this example:
Just terrible and utterly pointless. The entire point of this “exchange” is to put people up against each other (zero-sum game) while extracting fees and liquidations from them over time.
As with every other exchange, people are rarely incentivized to leave a positive review, so this is something to keep in account.
BitMEX Compared to Other Derivatives Exchanges
Having been a user of the majority of leading cryptocurrency exchanges, I’ve found the following differences between BitMEX and Binance, Coinbase, and Bybit.
BitMEX vs. Binance
BitMEX and Binance both offer crypto derivatives but it’s clear that the target audience is quiet different. BitMEX is focused almost entirely on leveraged trading of perpetual and traditional futures contracts. It has been one of the first platforms to do so. Binance, on the other hand, offers incredibly liquid both spot and derivatives markets, with a much broader range of products such as lending, staking, an NFT marketplace, and so forth.
In terms of liquidity and volume, Binance surpasses BitMEX, and it’s not even close. In my personal opinion, Binance’s trading interface is currently more complicated than that of BitMEX, although the majority of users are probably used to it.
Compliance is also a key thing to look at. Both exchanges have had their fair share of hurdles against regulators. Binance faced global regulatory scrutiny but has since increased its KYC and AML enforcement. BitMEX, as you already know by know, also had a legal fight against the CFTC, which led to meaningful reforms in its structure and market approach. In terms of security, both platforms use multi-signature cold wallets, although BitMEX has a longer track record of not being hacked.
Overall, BitMEX seems a bit more specialized, while Binance offers a broader and arguably more user-friendly ecosystem.
BitMEX vs. Coinbase
These two exchanges couldn’t be further apart – they function on entirely different spectrums. BitMEX specializes in derivatives trading with high leverage. Coinbase, on the other hand, is a regulated platform that is primarily focused on spot trading and custodial services. It caters mostly to retail investors in the US.
In terms of compliance, Coinbase is registered in the US and is also a publicly-traded company on NASDAQ. It adheres to strict KYC and AML reporting protocols. BitMEX, on the other hand, even though it has upped its compliance considerably following the CFTC case, is not held to the same legal standards as Coinbase.
The biggest difference, of course, is the lack of perps on Coinbase and the market coverage – one exchange functions mostly in the US, while the other doesn’t service US citizens at all.
BitMEX vs. Bybit
Both Bybit and BitMEX are focused primarily on derivatives trading, but Bybit entered the market a lot later. As such, it aimed to improve on the weaknesses of existing solutions. Bybit offers perps and futures contracts similarly to BitMEX but it has wrapped them under a mode modern user interface, mobile app, and additional features such as robust and liquid spot trading markets.
BitMEX has a reputation for stability, particularly in its liquidation engine and order matching system. Bybit offers a smoother UI and generally lower latency, which is appealing to higher-frequency traders.
As with Binance, though, BitMEX boasts a better track record as Bybit recently suffered the largest crypto hack in the industry’s history.
Final Verdict: Who is BitMEX Best For?
BitMEX is a good exchange for different types of traders. It is designed for people who understand the risks of trading perpetual contracts, leverage, and are capable of managing them accordingly. Its interface and trading tools are designed to cater to those who are comfortable with volatility, although I think it leans on the more streamlined side.
Clearly, if you are in the US, you should look the other way and probably opt for a local exchange such as Coinbase.
When it comes to a clean track record, at least in terms of security breaches, BitMEX stands out. So if you’re looking for a secure exchange and are willing to forego the lack of general purpose features such as staking, lending, and others, this is a good option.
