BitMex Review 2020

BitMex was started by Ben Delo, Arthur Hayes and Samuel Reed in 2014, and only four years later Ben Delo became the first billionaire in the UK in 2018, making his fortune from Bitcoin, he is also listed as the self-made billionaire that is the youngest. Arthur Hayes started his finance career at the Deutsche Citybank and started arbitrage trading before he launched BitMex. Hayes first started by purchasing Bitcoin from Bitfinex when it was trading for around $100, and he sold it to Chinese exchanges offering the cryptocurrency at a 40% premium.

BitMex initially battled due to both growth and low transaction volumes, this continued for almost a year during its 2015 trading period. Although, a turning point took place near the end and in October 2015, the company increased its leverage limit to 100x from 3x, which enabled users to bet on heavily leveraged cryptocurrency positions. This action provided the company with what it needed to gain market share as well as the much-needed liquidity. BitMex continued growing and registered trades worth $800 billion last year, and trading of up to $8 billion takes place on a daily basis.

The cryptocurrency exchange company focusses on Bitcoin trading and is a peer-to-peer trading platform offering leveraged contracts. In 2018, the company moved its headquarters from warehouse district in Hong Kong and is now based in one of the world’s most expensive buildings, where the entire 45th floor belongs to BitMex, of the Cheung Kong Centre.

The BitMex title stands for Bitcoin Mercantile Exchange the company offers traders access to Bitcoin derivatives based on futures, perpetual swaps, downside/upside contacts as well as leverage. The company is the largest site, globally in Bitcoin trading and surpassed trading volumes of 1 million Bitcoin per day in 2018.

BitMex is owned by HDR Global Trading Limited authorised by the Republic of Seychelles, and once Madison partnered with the company, it became the largest licensed trading company worldwide. HDR Cadenza Management Limited acquired 51% stake on the 11th of December 2018 in Madison Lab Limited, also including a 67.2% stake in Bitocean. BitMex uses several security measures including PGP for email encryption, while its high-speed trading engine performs a security audit with each order or transaction made.

The BitMex website does not offer a mobile app, although mobile users can access trading directly from mobile browsers.

The BitMex website features five main tabs to ensure new and experienced traders get to easily navigate. The tabs include trade, accounts, contracts, references and API. The trade tab offers access to the trading BitMex dashboard, where traders can place orders, cancel orders, view all the information and select leverage.

As a Bitcoin focussed trader, BitMex continues to grow, and its open changelog and API reveal regular improvements and updates, while future planning includes the addition of automated trading tools supported via BotVS and BitMex Market Maker as well as futures contracts for initial coin offerings.

Registering with BitMex takes approximately 30 seconds and does not require personal information inititally. By selecting the registration option, the registration form requires a valid email address, password, country of residence, your name and surname and once you have read the terms of service, registration takes place. A verification registration email is sent to the email address provided, containing a link needed to verify your email address. The account section offers a list of information including the user’s wallet balance, margin balance and available balance on the left. On the right side of the page, the list of information includes wallet balance, unrealised PNLs, margin balance, position margin, order margin and available balance displayed in XBT. The transaction history table contains the time, type, amount, fee and status of all previous trading.

By selecting the deposits option, a list of important notes is displayed, and traders are informed not to send Bitcoin Cash, Thether or Litecoin to the address, since it only accepts Bitcoin as valid, while deposits via unsupported coins will be lost.

The minimum deposit accepted by BitMex is 0.0001 XBT equal to 10000 Satoshi and deposits are credited once confirmation is available on the Bitcoin network. A personal multi-signature QR code is displayed as the deposit address, needed to complete the transaction.

BitMex accepts Bitcoin deposits exclusively t and for traders to get Bitcoin, they could exchange their local currency at major Bitcoin exchanges, including Coinbase, OKCoin or Bitstamp.

BitMex deposits addresses are multi-signature cold wallet addressed and none of the wallets is read via a machine connected to the internet. Your deposits at BitMex are credited via a single confirmation however two-factor authentication is strongly suggested.

BitMex remains the first to offer perpetual contracts, meaning traders are free of the concern regarding rolling their position as there is no expiry. The trader’s margin calculation is based on the underlying index prices and not the last traded, unlike most of its competitors. A wide selection of methods is utilised to prevent loss on the system. These include the Risk Limit System that ensures that the larger positions would require and maintain a larger initiative.

Every currency pair traded on BitMex offers a chart section ensuring traders has a graphical analysis. Placing orders once the deposit is confirmed offers a variety of options, including limit, market, trailing stop, take profit limit, stop limit, and take profit market. Orders can be viewed via the trading platform interface.

BitMex features leverage up to 100x on some of its products, enabling traders to purchase up to 100 Bitcoin of contracts via one Bitcoin to back it. The high leverage does come with accelerated profits that also could have the potential of accelerated loss. The auto deleveraging utilised by BitMex ensures that should leverage positions reduce in the duration of specific time periods, a liquidated order will not be executed in the market.

The trade section offers five different options selectable at the top of the page including Bitcoin – XBT, Cardano – ADA, Ripple XPR, Tron TRX, Litecoin LTC, Ethereum ETH, EOS Tken EOS and Bitcoin Cash BCH.

BitMex mainly focus on Bitcoin trading, while it also offers a limited selection of other exchanges including Bitcoin/Yen (XBJ) – Futures, Bitcoin (XBT/BTC) – Spot and Futures, Ethereum (ETC) – Classic Futures, Binary (B) – Futures, Litecoin (LTC) – Futures, Dash (DASH) – Futures, Ethereum (ETH) – Futures, Monero (XMR) – Futures, Ripple (XRP) – Futures, Tezos (XTZ) – Futures and Zcash (ZEC) – Future.

Deposits at BitMex is only accepted via Bitcoin and the withdrawal cut off time for Bitcoin withdrawals is 13:00 UTC, followed by sending the withdrawals to traders specified addresses. The cold multi-signature wallet used by BitMex is a Bitcoin wallet that is stored offline and requires signatures before any funds can be spent. It requires the signature of up to three partners in the case of BitMex before any funds can be spent and the main reason for use is to prevent theft and ensure all clients funds are kept secured at all times.

The withdrawal process requires the destination address, amount in XBT, confirmation of the destination, and for security reasons, all withdrawals are manually processed once a day, which means all withdrawal requests should be made before 13:00 UTC, should you wish for it to be processed on the same day. The withdrawal section also offers a withdrawal history that includes a list of the previous twenty withdrawals as well as the time these were made, the amount and transaction status.

The trollbox offers members of BetMix the option to start chatting via a selected public username, while the support page features a long list of answer to frequently asked questions. Apart from the FAQ and live channels including Telegram available in Russian, IRC, WeChat and Weibo, traders can also contact the dedicated BitMex team via other communication options including social media such as Reddit and Twitter. Available 24 hours a day the team can also be contacted by submitting a support request. The support section also offers an overview of all the basics new traders would need, which includes information on risk limits, cross and isolated margins, fees and the blog offers excellent trading articles.

The Cryptolume trading tool used by BitMex taps into the API and collects volume/price as well as information to offer faster analytics of cryptocurrency exchanges. With Crytolume chances can be seen in 5 up to 30 minutes and traders can view current volume, open interest and price on the graph as well as view active longs and shorts and their size fluidly and easily. The sandbox environment is perfect for anyone new to online trading, while the platform offers great charting tools and an extremely user-friendly interface.