BitMEX Confirms Full Shutdown by September 23, Says Closure Isn’t About Money Slug: bitmex-shutdown-september-2026

The exchange that invented the leveraged perpetual swap is shutting down — and its own operator says money had nothing to do with it.

HDR Global Trading Limited, the company behind BitMEX, confirmed the exchange will close entirely, with operations ending September 23, 2026 at 04:00 UTC. New account registrations stopped the same day the announcement went out.

A second cutoff matters just as much: starting August 26, 2026, BitMEX will block new positions outright — accounts can only be reduced or closed after that point.

HDR Global says this isn’t about running out of money. The company reports assets exceeding liabilities, and in eleven years it has never lost customer funds to a hack. The stated reason is a strategic review, with no specific operational failure cited.

What makes this closure different is what BitMEX built: the 100x-leverage perpetual swap, a derivative with no expiration date that became the template nearly every crypto derivatives exchange still runs today — including the platforms that have since grown far larger than BitMEX itself.

New to leveraged crypto trading? Explore the Bitcoin Academy to learn how perpetual swaps actually work.

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