About BitMEX

What is BitMEX?

Founded in 2014 by Arthur Hayes, Ben Delo, and Samuel Reed, BitMEX is a cryptocurrency derivatives exchange credited with inventing the perpetual swap contract, offering traders up to 100x leverage without expiration. The exchange provides advanced trading products, including futures, options, and prediction markets, primarily margined in Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Tether.

Designed for professional traders, BitMEX delivers institutional-grade liquidity, sophisticated risk management, and an advanced order suite featuring bespoke settings like BBO orders, Take Profit/Stop Loss (TP/SL), trading bots, multicharting, sub-accounts, customizable hotkeys, and integrated news feeds.

BitMEX Futures Fee Schedule

BitMEX employs a tiered fee structure for derivatives trading, determined by your 30-day trading volume or amount of BMEX tokens staked. Regular users with trading volumes below $1 million or minimal BMEX holdings incur a flat maker and taker fee of 0.0500%.

As traders climb BitMEX’s VIP tiers by increasing their 30-day volumes or staking BMEX, fees significantly reduce. At VIP 1, makers pay only 0.0250%, while takers remain at 0.0500%. The lowest fees are available at VIP 5, where traders staking at least 2,000,000 BMEX or achieving $250 million in monthly volume enjoy 0.0150% maker and 0.0320% taker fees.

Additionally, staking BMEX tokens unlocks progressive fee discounts, increasing savings for active traders.

BitMEX Regulation & Licensing Explained

BitMEX holds regulatory licenses or approvals from OAM (Italy) and FINMA (Switzerland).

Where is BitMEX Available?

BitMEX serves traders in over 150 countries, offering multilingual support in English, Russian, Mandarin, Turkish, Spanish, and Hindi.

The platform excludes sanctioned regions like North Korea, Iran, Syria, Cuba, Crimea and Sevastopol, and parts of Ukraine (Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, Zaporizhzhia), alongside restricted areas including the US, Canada, Seychelles, Bermuda, Hong Kong SAR, Myanmar, and certain restrictions for Russian users accessing from the EU.

Is BitMEX Safe and Legit?

BitMEX secures customer assets using Multi-Party Computation (MPC), a cryptographic custody method ensuring private keys are distributed among multiple, distinct components to prevent any single point of compromise. Client funds remain segregated at the account level, ring-fenced from company assets, and are neither lent, staked, nor traded.

Since its establishment in 2014, BitMEX has maintained a record of zero lost customer funds, backed by verifiable Proof of Reserves and Liabilities. The exchange further enhances security through a transparent bug bounty program, operational since 2018, offering rewards of up to $30,000 for responsibly disclosed vulnerabilities.