The Bitmex trading engine went offline for the better part of an hour before an update announced the exchange was back online and that user funds were safe.
BitMEX, one of the leading Bitcoin derivatives exchange platforms, went offline for about 45 minutes on May 19th.
Bitmex announced via its official Twitter page that its trading engine was down, adding that its team was working hard “to bring it back online as soon as possible.”
The platform is currently operational, but the brief outage saw it become inaccessible to users, with the platform’s team announcing that a full post mortem will follow to unearth the main reason for the error.
The company followed up the initial announcement with an update to allay any fears regarding the safety of users’ funds. Apart from reassuring platform users that “all funds are safe,” Bitmex also noted that any “delayed orders will be rejected.”
The exchange added that it wasn’t allowing any liquidation on the platform “during downtime.”
After three-quarters of an hour had passed, the system was finally back online. The update noted that the trading engine was up, but in cancel only mode for about ten minutes until 13:40 UTC.
“UPDATE: We’re bringing the BitMEX platform back online, initially via cancel only mode until 13:40 UTC, where no new orders can be placed.”
The 10-minute timeline was used to ensure everything was back to normal, and users were not allowed to place any new orders.
In a status update, released after coming back online, Bitmex noted that the issue had been “resolved” and that its operations were back to full capacity.
“All secondary checks are complete and support agents are resolving tickets. Two withdrawal batches were done today, at 14:00 UTC and 15:00 UTC,” BitMEX posted on its status page.
The exchange has now stated that its teams were carrying out a full post-mortem on the matter and that it would share the findings “publicly within the next few days.”
Because of the brief outage, the trading period between 12:00-13:40 UTC would not feature in funding rate calculations.
Bitmex downtime comes just days after lawsuit
Bitmex’s alleged trading engine error happened just days after a lawsuit was filed in a US court against the company and its executive employees.
Filed by BMA, the lawsuit is against HDR Global Trading — the company that owns Bitmex — and co-founders Arthur Hayes, Ben Delo and Samuel Reed. The plaintiff alleges that Bitmex, registered in the Seychelles, offered its services in the US despite not having a money transmitting license.
The lawsuit also accuses the defendants of committing wire fraud, money laundering and market manipulation.