Sudden ‘Major’ Outage Sparks Serious Bitcoin Exchange Warning

Bitcoin and cryptocurrency exchange BitMEX, once branded a "bitcoin casino," has lurched from crisis to crisis over recent years.

The Seychelles-based bitcoin and crypto exchange, specialising in bitcoin derivatives, was last week hit with a lawsuit accusing it of market manipulation, among other illegal activities.

Now, as the bitcoin price makes another assault on $10,000 per bitcoin, a "major" BitMEX outage has prompted warnings the exchange is becoming increasingly unreliable.

BitMEX's trading engine went offline on Tuesday for over an hour due an incident it described as a "major outage," leaving users unable to access their funds.

"I’ve been warning people [about BitMEX] for almost three years now," 

said closely-watched bitcoin and crypto analyst Scott Melker, adding BitMEX is a "horrid" exchange.

"I just do not understand why people still trade there," 

said another bitcoin trader.

After coming back online, BitMEX said a "full post-mortem" of the outage will be made public "within the next few days."

BitMEX, once the largest bitcoin derivatives exchange measured by open interest, has been losing market share to rival bitcoin and crypto exchanges over recent months—though still supported around $2 billion worth of bitcoin futures trading volume over the last 24 hours, according to crypto data analysts at Skew.

BitMEX market share has been eroded by other exchanges ramping up their bitcoin and crypto derivatives offerings. However, problems for BitMEX have also caused users to seek alternatives.

In March, a sudden fall in the bitcoin price to under $4,000 per bitcoin was led by BitMEX before the exchange was closed for "maintenance."

Bitcoin and crypto market analysts have warned so-called leveraged trades, where investors can open positions much larger than their own capital and are popular on BitMEX, can lead to "extreme corrections."

Last year, BitMEX sparked panic among bitcoin traders and investors after accidentally exposing thousands of its users' emails–with the exchange's Twitter account then compromised shortly after.