Tag: Bitmex

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Crypto Videos

BitMEX Lost Over 45k Bitcoin – Is BitMEX Going Down?

https://youtu.be/L0QuYTGMJIg

https://youtu.be/L0QuYTGMJIg

 

BitMEX Lost Over 45k Bitcoin Since US Government Charges; Other Exchanges Are Taking Over

More than 45,000 Bitcoin has been withdrawn so far from the crypto trading platform BitMEX since the US government levied charges against the exchange as well as its leadership. October 1 brought two crushing blows to BitMEX. First, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the Department of Justice brought charges against the exchange and its practices. Shortly thereafter, its founders (including the CEO Arthur Hayes) were indicted by the US government. As expected, the market reacted to the breaking news with a sharp decline across many cryptocurrencies in the sector.

This isn’t even the first time in recent months that the trading platform giant has contributed to a downward turn in crypto sector prices. The exchange first began losing its users’ trust following a blackout on Black Thursday, which, for a short period, prevented users from trading or retrieving their own assets. While users slowly moved away from the platform and withdrew over 100,000 Bitcoin in the six months between that event and these most recent charges, the exodus that happened after October 1 appears to be unprecedented in scale.

The data coming from Crystal Blockchain shows that, in less than 48 hours, the net outflows from the BitMEX platform have exceeded 45,000 Bitcoin, by no means a small amount. However, traders are traders, and the Bitcoin withdrawn from BitMEX didn’t just vanish, but simply moved platforms. Gemini and Binance appear to be the most prominent beneficiaries of these outflows, closely trailed by OKEx and Huobi. More than 20,000 BTC has been transferred out of the BitMEX platform and into the latter four exchanges.

It is yet unclear whether BitMEX will just disappear into the abyss of time like many failed crypto exchanges before it, or if the company will manage to find a way to comply with the government body and survive to trade another day and. Lance Morginn, CEO of Blockchain Intelligence Group and an ex-supervisory special agent at the Department of Homeland Security, said that the most likely outcome would be that BitMEX will receive monetary penalties. On top of that, BitMEX will most likely have to make a promise on the part of its executives that it will not engage in unlawful activities in the future. However, he thinks that BitMEX is too big to fall at the moment and that it is less likely that the company will just vanish.

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Crypto Videos

BitMEX Are Now Mandating Users to Perform ID Check!

https://youtu.be/GhdWHl12MGk

https://youtu.be/GhdWHl12MGk

 

BitMEX Mandating Users to Perform ID Check

Cryptocurrency derivatives exchange giant BitMEX will be launching a user verification program starting Aug 28, requiring all its customers to complete an ID verification within the next six months.
In order to sweeten the pot and make this verification worthwhile for its customers, BitMEX is offering a trading competition that would be available to verified customers only.
BitMEX was founded in 2014 and has become one of the largest derivatives exchanges in the whole world, with one of its main features being that the platform doesn’t require user verification.

Ben Radclyffe, the Commercial Director of BitMEX, announced that all of BitMEX’s customers have to complete the new verification process by Feb 12, 2021:
“User verification has been on our checklist of things to do. We’ve been getting ready for this, as ID verification was becoming necessary in order to run a scalable, responsible, as well as a compliant platform moving forward. This is a building blockchain for BitMEX to grow and do business in the future.”
With numerous jurisdictions across the globe coming out with explicit regulations for the cryptocurrency industry, Radclyffe noted that having a user verification process will help exchanges meet new operating requirements. User verification will, as he said, allow BitMEX to better understand its diverse user base, allowing the platform to develop tailor-made products for customers.
Details regarding the large-scale trading tournament that would be available only to verified customers will be announced in the coming weeks.

It won’t take more than 5 minutes

Young woman putting off a mask of herself

According to Radclyffe, BitMEX’s verification program should take customers no longer than five minutes to complete.
Users will go through a four-step process similar to ID checks that many other crypto exchanges conduct. Customers will be required to provide a photo of an ID and a proof of address. In addition to that, a number of multiple-choice questions relating to their funds and trading experience will be asked.

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Crypto Videos

BitMEXTutorial & In Depth Guide Part 5 – Can Beginners Trade?

https://youtu.be/2dL7d8-6NUQ

https://youtu.be/2dL7d8-6NUQ

BitMEX in-depth guide (part 5/5) – Platform safety and security

Our last part of the BitMEX in-depth guide will dive into the safety and security aspects of the platform.

Is BitMEX a safe and secure platform?

BitMEX is considered to have an extremely high level of security. The platform utilizes multi-signature deposits as well as withdrawal schemes, which are only usable by BitMEX partners. The company also utilizes Amazon Web Services to further protect their servers with text messages, two-factor authentication, and hardware tokens. BitMEX’s security protocols are quickly becoming the industry standard.


BitMEX has a risk-check system which requires the sum of all account holdings on the platform to be zero. If the sum of account holdings does not equal zero, all trading is immediately halted until the issue is fixed.
BitMEX utilizes the multi-signature deposit and withdrawal technology. All exchange addresses are, by default, multi-signature. All funds are kept offline. BitMEX users’ private keys are never stored on any cloud servers to avoid any misuse or theft. Deep cold storage is utilized for the majority of the users’ funds. As noted in previous parts of our review, BitMEX’s withdrawals are hand-checked by at least two of their employees before being sent out; all to increase the safety of its users. Deposit addresses are verified externally to ensure that they contain the keys that are supposed to be controlled by the founders. If they do not contain the matching keys, the system shuts down immediately, and all trading is halted.

The BitMEX trading platform is written in a kdb+ database. This database is popular amongst major banks, especially in high-frequency trading applications. BitMEX’s engine seems to be faster as well as more reliable than the engines of Poloniex and Bittrex, which are considered BitMEX’s competitors.
The platform uses email notifications as well as PGP encryption for all communication. BitMEX encrypts and signs all automated emails sent by or to its users’ accounts by the [email protected] email address.

The exchange did not suffer from any form of a security breach in the past. However, their Twitter handle did get hacked in November 2019, which caused mass panic and hysteria amongst its users.

However, no funds were stolen as their platform safety was not in danger, which they confirmed on the same day in one of their Tweets.
Summary
BitMEX is certainly not a perfect exchange. It has encountered a couple of complaints, mostly regarding technical issues or the complexity of using the platform in general. Older complaints can be seen online as well, and the majority of them regard issues of low liquidity. However, low liquidity is no longer a problem with BitMEX.
BitMEX is clearly not a trading platform aimed at the amateur investor with limited knowledge of trading as well as the crypto industry. Its interface is extremely complex, which can bring adjustment problems to its users. The platform is not extremely user-friendly, as navigating the platform is not quite as intuitive as it could be.
On the other hand, the BitMEX platform provides a wide range of tools that experienced users can utilize and appreciate. By utilizing these tools, users can obtain all the information they need to maximize their trading potential.

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Crypto Videos

BitMEXTutorial & In Depth Guide Part 3 – Can Beginners Trade?

https://youtu.be/R95lcaUoTEc

https://youtu.be/R95lcaUoTEc

BitMEX in-depth guide (part 4/5) – BitMEX’s beginner-friendliness and customer support

 

This part of our guide will dig deeper into what BitMEX has to offer in terms of customer support and if it is generally a beginner-friendly platform.

Is BitMEX beginner-friendly?

BitMEX attracts a great deal of volume across crypto-to-crypto transfers. This helps maintain BitMEX as a hot topic. On top of that, BitMEX has relatively low trading fees and can be used around the world (except in the US).

All this helps attract the attention of beginners that want to trade on leverage. When starting, the platform offers 5 to navigate:

Trade tab: This is the trading part of BitMEX. This tab allows traders to select their preferred trading instrument as well as to choose leverage. They can place and cancel orders in this tab. This tab shows the taken position information as well as other key information in the contract details.

Account tab: This tab shows all the account information. This includes the available Bitcoin margin balances, deposits, withdrawals as well as trade history.

Contracts tab: This tab shows additional instrument information. This includes funding history, contract sizes, leverage, offered expiry, underlying reference Price Index data, and other key features.

References tab: This tab allows users to learn about futures, perpetual contracts, position marking, as well as and liquidation.

API tab: This tab offers the option to set up an API connection with the BitMEX platform.
BitMEX employs customer support that is available 24/7. The BitMEX team can also be contacted via Twitter or Reddit.

In addition to this, BitMEX offers a variety of educational resources. This includes their FAQ section as well as guides on futures and perpetual contracts.

BitMEX also has a blog that produces high-level descriptions of numerous subjects.
BitMEX offers quite a lot of features, but the truth is that the platform is not exactly suitable for beginners. Margin trading, futures contracts, and swaps are not easily understandable concepts that push beginners away from the platform.

BitMEX Customer Support

As previously mentioned, BitMEX has 24/7 customer support on multiple channels. This includes email support, ticket systems, as well as social media support. The typical response time of their customer support is approximately one hour. Most BitMEX users noted that the customer support service responses are generally helpful and that they are not automatized.


The BitMEX platform also offers a knowledge-base as well as the ‘frequently asked question’ section. These may not always be helpful, but they may offer some assistance when it comes to directing users towards the channels, which will provide further assistance.
Make sure to check out the fifth part of our BitMEX in-depth guide, where we will look into the BitMEX platform’s safety and security.

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Crypto Videos

BitMEX Tutorial & In Depth Guide Part 3 – Is Your Money Safe? Is It Insured?

https://youtu.be/ISAurVVeduQ

https://youtu.be/ISAurVVeduQ

 

BitMEX in-depth guide (part 3/5) – TT International partnership and insurance fund

This part of the BitMEX guide will show its partnership with Trading Technologies International and how it affects the users, as well as the insurance fund’s importance in ensuring that every trader gets their fair share of profits.

Trading Technologies International – BitMEX partnership

HDR Global Trading, the company behind BitMEX, has partnered with Trading Technologies International in 2019. Trading Technologies International is a leading high-performance trading software provider. The TT platform’s design is aimed specifically at professional traders, brokers, as well as market-access providers. It incorporates a wide variety of both trading tools as well as analytical indicators. This partnership is crucial because it provides BitMEX traders with global market access as well as trade execution through TT’s privately managed infrastructure.


The BitMEX insurance fund
One of the main selling features of most trading platforms is margin trading. However, as a result of how much leverage is involved on these platforms, it’s entirely possible that the losers could not be able to cover the margin in their positions in order to pay the winners.

Traditional exchanges such as the CME (Chicago Mercantile Exchange) try to offset this problem by using multiple layers of protection. Cryptocurrency trading platforms are currently unable to match these levels of protection provided to winning traders.

To solve this issue, BitMEX created an insurance fund system. When a trader opens a leveraged position, the position is unwilling and forcefully liquidated as soon as their maintenance margin drops too much.
A trader’s profits and losses do not reflect the actual position price. When a trader is liquidated on BitMEX, their equity previously associated with the open position goes down to zero.
To better explain it, we will present you with an example. The trader has taken a long position with leverage of 100x. If the price of Bitcoin drops 0.5%, their position will get liquidated.
It doesn’t matter what the exact price of this trade is when it is executed. From the view of the trader, whatever their liquidation price is, they lose all the funds they had previously put into this position.

Assuming that the market is fully liquid, the bid/ask spread will be tighter than the maintenance margin. In this case, liquidations will manifest as contributions to the insurance fund, as the maintenance margin is 50bps while the market is 1bp wide. The insurance fund should, in this case, rise by around the same amount as the maintenance margin as soon as the position is liquidated. The insurance fund will continue its steady growth as long as the market is fully liquid.

The first chart shows healthy market conditions with a narrow bid/ask spread of just $2 at the liquidation time. The closing trade, in this case, occurs at a higher price than what the bankruptcy price is. Therefore, the insurance fund will benefit from the liquidation.

Example of insurance contribution – 100x long with 1 BTC collateral

The second chart, on the other hand, shows a wide bid/ask spread at the liquidation time. In this case, the closing trade will take place at a lower price than what the bankruptcy price is. Therefore, the insurance fund will have to make sure that the winning traders receive a fair share of profit.

Example of insurance depletion – 100x long with 1 BTC collateral


The bid and offer prices show the state of the order book when the liquidation occurs. The closing price is $3,800, which represents $20 of slippage when compared to the $3,820 bid price.
Note that the illustrations are just oversimplified examples that do not take into consideration fees or other adjustments.
Make sure to check out the fourth part of our BitMEX in-depth guide, where we will look into BitMEX’s beginner-friendliness and customer support.

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Forex Videos

BitMEX Tutorial & In Depth Guide Part 2 – Borrowing Money To Trade Through Leverage

https://youtu.be/6pq8m3fIXrE

https://youtu.be/6pq8m3fIXrE

BitMEX in-depth guide (part 2/5) – contracts and fees

Part 2 of our in-depth guide will focus on explaining what BitMEX offers in terms of contracts, leverage, and how they structure their fees.

Futures and Swaps
A futures contract is, in a nutshell, an agreement to buy or sell an asset in the future. The price of this contract is predetermined. BitMEX allows users to leverage their funds up to 100x on certain futures contracts.
Perpetual swaps are very similar to futures contracts. The difference is that there is no expiry date, and therefore no settlement.
BitMEX also offers Binary series contracts. They are prediction-based contracts that can settle at either 0 or 100. These contracts are a much more complicated way of betting on a given event.

Bitmex Leverage


BitMEX allows its traders to use leverage in their positions. Leverage is the ability to virtually borrow money from the platform to place orders that exceed the users’ existing balance. This gives users bigger profits in comparison to placing an order that uses only their wallet balance. Trading, while using leverage, is called “Margin Trading.”

There are two types of Margin Trading:
Isolated – allows the user to select how much of their wallet balance should be used to hold their position when they place an order.
Cross-Margin – all of the users’ wallet balance can be used to hold their position. This type of margin trading should be treated with extreme caution.

The BitMEX platform allows its users to set their leverage by using a simple leverage slider. The platform offers maximum leverage of 1:100 on some assets, while others have lower maximum leverage.

BitMEX Fees


Traditional futures trading has a straightforward fee schedule on BitMEX. As previously noted, BitMEX offers up to 100x leverage, with the amount of leverage that varies from asset to asset.

There are, however, additional fees for hidden orders. A hidden order has to pay the taker fee up until the entire hidden quantity is fully executed. Only after that, the order will become regular, and the user will receive the rebate for the amount.

Deposits and Withdrawals
BitMEX deposits or withdrawals are free. However, the withdrawal fee is based on blockchain load, and the user has to pay only the network fee. The only costs of withdrawal are those of the banks and the cryptocurrency networks.


BitMEX accepts deposits only in Bitcoin. Bitcoin, therefore, serves as collateral on all trading contracts, regardless of whether the trade involves Bitcoin or not.
The minimum deposit on BitMEX is 0.001 BTC. There are no limits to the withdrawal size.

Deposits can be made at any time of the day and will be processed as fast as the network processes the payment. On the other hand, the withdrawals are processed manually once per day. The hand processed withdrawals are there to increase the security level of its users’ funds.
Supported Currencies
BitMEX can be defined as a crypto-to-crypto exchange that makes use of a Bitcoin-in and Bitcoin-out structure. The platform users are currently not able to use fiat currencies as any form of payment.
BitMEX currently supports the following cryptocurrencies:
Bitcoin;
Bitcoin Cash;
Cardano;
Ethereum;
EOS;
Litecoin;
Tron;
Ripple.
Make sure to watch the third part of our BitMEX in-depth guide, where we will look into BitMEX’s TT international partnership as well as its insurance fund.

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Forex Videos

BitMEX Tutorial & In Depth Guide Part 1

https://youtu.be/g3mTV27qV9M

https://youtu.be/g3mTV27qV9M

BitMEX in-depth guide (part 1/5) – BitMEX explained

Bitcoin Mercantile Exchange, better known as BitMEX, is one of the biggest Bitcoin trading platforms currently operating. Its daily trading volume is often over 35,000 BTC monthly. It can also pride itself with over 540,000 monthly accesses, as well as with a trading volume of over $34 billion in Bitcoin since it started operating.

Unlike many other crypto trading platforms, BitMEX only accepts Bitcoin deposits. They can then be used to purchase a variety of cryptocurrencies. BitMEX specializes in advanced financial operations, such as margin trading. BitMEX is currently working without any regulation, much like many other exchanges.
It was founded by HDR Global Trading Limited in 2014 and registered in Seychelles. Its owners and creators are former bankers Arthur Hayes, Samuel Reed, and Ben Delo.

BitMEX’s team comprises of many people, including experienced developers, economists as well as high-frequency algorithm traders.

Signing up to BitMEX

To create an account on BitMEX, users have to register with the website. Registration is extremely quick, as it only requires an email address. The email address, however, must be a genuine address because users will receive a registration confirmation email in order to verify the account. Once registered, users have absolutely no trading limits. Traders must be at least 18 years old to sign up.

BitMEX, however, does not accept any US-based traders. The company will use IP checks to verify that their users are not in the US. While some US users manage to bypass this restriction with the use of a VPN, it is not exactly recommended for US individuals to sign up for the BitMEX platform.

How to Use BitMEX

BitMEX allows its users to trade various cryptocurrencies against various fiat currencies. Users can trade their cryptocurrency against the USD, the Japanese Yen as well as the Chinese Yuan. BitMEX allows its users to trade quite a bit of different cryptocurrencies:

Bitcoin
Bitcoin Cash
Cardano
Ethereum
EOS
Litecoin
Tron
Ripple

BitMEX trading platform is considered very intuitive and easy to use for users that are familiar with advanced trading platforms. However, a beginner may have a hard time following everything on the screen. The interface looks a little dated when compared to some of the newer exchanges such as Binance and Kucoin. Signed up and logged in, traders can click on Trade, where they will find all the trading instruments available.

Clicking on any of the instruments opens the order book, recent trades, as well as the order slip on the left. The order book will show three columns:

Bid value for the underlying asset!
Quantity of the order!
Total USD value of all orders. This includes both shorts and longs!

Trading widgets can be changed and customized according to the user’s viewing preferences. This allows users to have full and absolute control over what is displayed and how. On top of that, BitMEX provides its users with TradingView charting. This feature offers a wide range of charting tools provided by the TradingView platform.

Once a user enters a trade, they can see all orders in the trading platform interface. Tabs showing users their Active Orders, Stops that are in place, Orders Filled (in total or partially) as well as the trade history can be easily found on the main screen.

Even though BitMEX is optimized for mobile use, it only has an unofficial Android app. There are no iOS apps available at the moment. However, trading by using so many advanced features might require using a desktop or a laptop in order to comprehend everything happening on the screen.

Types of orders at BitMEX

Traders are not limited to only simple buying and selling on BitMEX. BitMEX offers various order types for users:

Limit Order (the order will be fulfilled only if the given price is achieved);

Market order (the order is executed instantly and at current market price);

Stop Limit Order (a form of a Stop Order; allows users to set the order price once the Stop Price triggers)

Stop Market Order (a Stop Order that that remains unseen from the order books until the market reaches the trigger price)

Trailing Stop Order (very similar to a Stop Market Order; users set a trailing value that is then used to place the Market Order)

Take Profit Limit Order (the opposite of a Stop Order, used to set a profit target)

Take Profit Market Order (almost the same as the previous type. However, this order will set the order triggered as a Market Order, not as a Limit Order).

Make sure to watch the second part of our BitMEX in-depth guide, where we will look into BitMEX’s futures and swaps, leveraged trades as well as fees!