The recent volatility in the Bitcoin (BTC) markets has left both bulls and bears facing significant liquidations, with almost $223 million in 24-hour margin calls on leading derivatives exchange BitMEX being evenly spread between BTC shorts and longs. As of when this story was published, a little over $111.5 million, or 50.04% of the total was liquidated in the form of Bitcoin longs, while shorts represented $111.3 million, or 49.96% of liquidated positions, according to Cryptometer. Altcoin liquidations brought the total to $230 million. Both shorts and longs hit on BitMEX Shorts were initially hit heavily as BTC gained over …

BitMEX, one of the most popular derivatives exchanges in the cryptocurrency market, has come under fire with accusations of being purposefully designed to facilitate “a myriad of illegal activities." The accusations were made in a lawsuit filed by BMA LLC in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California on May 16. In the lawsuit, both HDR Global Trading — BitMEX’s parent company — and Arthur Hayes, Ben Delo and Samuel Reed — the exchange’s top executives —— stand accused of either engaging in or facilitating multiple criminal activities including racketeering, money laundering, wire fraud and operating …

Major Bitcoin (BTC) derivatives exchange BitMEX went offline earlier on May 19, citing trading engine failure. The platform was inaccessible for a brief time, and is currently back online as of press time. “The BitMEX Trading Engine is currently down,” the company tweeted around 12:45 UTC time. Around 25 minutes after the initial announcement, Bitmex released an update, claiming that “all funds are safe, delayed orders will be rejected, and no liquidations will occur during downtime.” BitMEX went back online around 13:30 UTC time, initially in cancel only mode, meaning that no new orders could be placed at the time. …

Derivatives giant BitMEX and cryptocurrency exchange Binance are the Bitcoin (BTC) industry’s biggest — when ranked by open interest (OI). According to updated rankings from exchange Bybit, as of May 19, the two household names now top the list when it comes to the total OI on their derivatives contracts. BitMEX open interest almost double Binance Third place is Bybit itself, followed by Huobi and FTX. OI for BitMEX was in excess of $587 million at press time, with Binance somewhat lower at $314 million. The OI took a significant hit on BitMEX, in particular, in March — falling from …

Major Bitcoin (BTC) derivatives exchange BitMEX has started accepting grant applications from open source developers. The initiative follows $650,000 in developer grants that the exchange has issued to Bitcoin Core contributor Michael Ford and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. BitMEX expands open-source development funding BitMEX’s parent company, HDR Global Trading Limited, has opened its open-source development grants to applications from developers contributing to Bitcoin, Java, NodeJS, and Kubernetes. The application form also indicates that HDR is open to considering supporting open source development not relating to the four stated technologies, in addition to “smaller non-developer” grants for specific contributions such …

BitMEX, one of the world’s largest crypto derivatives exchanges, has been accused in court of being “deliberately designed, from the ground up” to facilitate “a myriad of illegal activities.” The allegations were made in a major new lawsuit filed by BMA LLC in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California on May 16. The plaintiff accuses BitMEX’s parent company — HDR Global Trading — and the exchange’s top executives — Arthur Hayes, Ben Delo and Samuel Reed — of engaging in or abetting multiple crimes that include racketeering, money laundering, wire fraud and operating an unlicensed …

Data compiled by Glassnode is showing that the number of Bitcoin (BTC) held on top crypto exchanges has steadily fallen since the violent mid-March crash that saw crypto prices tumble by 50% in a single day. The sum of BTC held on exchanges currently sits at a little over 2.3 million — the lowest it has been since May 22, 2019. As such, the percentage of BTC stored on centralized exchanges has dropped from 14.1% to 12.5%. $3B in BTC removed from exchanges since March The number of BTC stored on top crypto exchanges has fallen by approximately 300,000 since …

After a sharp drop in Bitcoin (BTC)’s value on May 10 — just ahead of today’s halving of block rewards for miners on the network — several exchanges scrambled to inject liquidity into their BTC insurance funds. Earlier today, Binance revealed it had used “over 13,000,000” Tether (USDT) yesterday to protect traders from the risk of auto-deleveraging (ADLs) on its platform. “We will inject an additional 30,000,000 $USDT into the insurance fund, on top of the 7,500,000 USDT from April 30th,” the exchange pledged. The exchange’s insurance fund balance for BTC/USDT contracts plummeted overnight from 21,005,925 USDT on May 10 …

Yesterday’s sudden crash saw the price of Bitcoin (BTC) fall 14% from roughly $9,450 to $8,101 in less than 15 minutes. This appears to have shaken out over-exuberant margin traders who longed near $10,000 on heavy margin. According to market data aggregator, Cryptometer, over $295 million worth liquidations occurred on BitMEX alone — 98% of which were long positions. By contrast, liquidated shorts totaled $5.7 million. $290M liquidated on BitMEX in 24 hours Roughly 93% of yesterday’s liquidations took place in BitMEX’s XBT/USD markets, with Ripple (XRP) liquidations representing 4.1% with $12.3 million, and Ethereum (ETH) margin calls comprising 2.2% …

This week’s headlines from Japan included Taotao exchange revealing positive first year numbers, the Japan Crypto Trading Association unveiling crypto asset market rates, Coincheck announcing recent positive fiscal year totals, and Cointelegraph diving into the scene around several exchanges in Japan. Check out some of this week’s crypto and blockchain headlines, originally reported by Cointelegraph Japan. Taotao exchange sees soaring volume Taotao, a crypto exchanged backed by Yahoo Japan, saw rising customer figures during Q1 2020, seeing over 7,000 total users by the end of March 2020. Glossing performance from a fiscal year that ended on March 31, data shows …

Paul Tudor Jones, a legendary hedge fund investor, triggered massive excitement in crypto markets yesterday by revealing that Bitcoin (BTC) is part of his portfolio. Traders and industry players like BitMEX’s CEO expect that the move will bring more big investors to the market. Arthur Hayes, CEO of the world’s second largest crypto exchange, BitMEX, says that Jones has just removed career risk from investing in cryptos like Bitcoin. “Expect a lot of beta fund managers to begin cooking some copypasta,” Hayes tweeted May 7. Jones paves the way for other hedge fund managers to get into Bitcoin Hayes is …

A former Department of Justice, or DOJ, special counsel explains why his firm has brought twelve class action lawsuits against some of the biggest firms in crypto, and how it will benefit the industry in the long run. Jordan Goldstein is a partner at Selendy & Gay, a firm that joined forces with Roche Cyrulnik Freedman in bringing 12 class actions cases against crypto heavyweights. These include Binance (BNB), BitMex, and Block.one. In the past, Goldstein has helped his clients recover over $25 billion. Investors should not be scared Goldstein told Cointelegraph that his primary goal is to help the …