What Does the Halving Mean For BitMEX Users?

The world seems like a very different place since the eve of the last Bitcoin halving in June 2016 – not least as the price of a coin was around $650 back then. And despite Bitcoin's relative infancy, as in life, so much has changed yet so much remains the same. Just like ahead of the halvings in 2012 and 2016, we're seeing the same questions. Will miners exit? Will the hashrate drop? Will confidence decline? Will there be a price correction? And today, all are with the added and swirling complexity of COVID-19.

Continue to read on our blog here: https://blog.bitmex.com/what-does-the-halving-mean-for-bitmex-users/

Scheduled for 14 May 2020, 2100 UTC - 14 May 2020, 2300 UTC

As part of a series of ongoing changes designed to improve our quality of service and scalability, please be advised that we will be performing a system update to our database service in production starting Thursday 14 May 2020, at 2100 UTC. The system update is expected to last approximately two hours.

Trading, logins, and other key API features will remain operational, however, please note that the following features will be disabled during this scheduled maintenance period:

- Withdrawal requests
- Trollbox muting
- New account signup & email verification
- Password resets
- Preferences updates
- API Key creation/deletion/enabling/disabling
- Address creation/amendment/deletion
- 2FA enabling/disabling
- Address Skip Confirm Email enabling

We will make a further announcement here to confirm completion of the system update.

Please feel free to contact Support with any concerns you may have about the scheduled update via our contact form: https://www.bitmex.com/app/support/contact.

[Production] Database system update - COMPLETED

The scheduled system update has successfully concluded. The BitMEX platform is now back to full functionality, and no trading activity was affected during this period. We thank you for your patience.

Ben Radclyffe appeared virtually at Chain Talk's #CASummit yesterday discussing the evolution of markets and the importance of healthy and liquid crypto-currency exchanges.

Watch the full presentation back here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_jyba5ngg-0

For further info on Chain Talk's Crypto Asia Summit follow their channel here: https://t.me/chaintalktv

Incident title: Trading engine downtime
Incident time: May 19, 2020 - 12:13 UTC
Incident status: Investigating
Details: The Trading Engine is currently down. We're working to bring it back online as soon as possible. Further updates to follow shortly.

BitMEX.com - Trading Engine - Operational

Incident title: Trading engine downtime
Incident time: May 19, 2020 - 12:28 UTC
Incident status: Investigating
Details: We are continuing to investigate this issue.

BitMEX.com - Trading Engine - Major outage

UPDATE: The BitMEX Trading Engine is currently down.
We're working to bring it back online as soon as possible.

We can confirm all funds are safe, delayed orders will be rejected, and no liquidations will occur during the downtime.

On coming back online, there will be a cancel only period initially.

For official updates please follow https://status.bitmex.com and continue to monitor this channel

Incident title: Trading engine downtime
Incident time: May 19, 2020 - 13:29 UTC
Incident status: Monitoring
Details: We’re bringing the BitMEX platform back online, initially via cancel only mode until 13:40 UTC, where no new orders can be placed. All funds are safe, withdrawals will be delayed until after the outage has been resolved, likely 15:00 UTC. No liquidations have occurred during the downtime.

We apologise for any inconvenience this may be causing. We are looking into the cause of this issue, and will be sharing an update as soon as possible. If you have any further questions, please contact us via https://www.bitmex.com/app/support/contact.

BitMEX.com - Trading Engine - Degraded performance

Incident title: Trading engine downtime
Incident time: May 19, 2020 - 14:00 UTC
Incident status: Monitoring
Details: We can confirm trading resumed at 13:40 UTC. Withdrawals will be processed at 14:00 and 15:00 UTC. A full review of the incident will be posted in due course. We know how much this impacts our customers, and we'd like to apologise to all those affected. If you have any further questions, please contact us via https://www.bitmex.com/app/support/contact.

BitMEX.com - Trading Engine - Operational

Incident title: Trading engine downtime
Incident time: May 19, 2020 - 17:22 UTC
Incident status: Resolved
Details: The platform is up to full capacity as of 13:40 UTC. 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.

Teams are assembling a full post-mortem which will be shared publicly within the next few days.

Due to the downtime, the period between 12:00 and 13:40 UTC is being excluded for funding rate calculations on perpetual swaps.

BitMEX.com - Trading Engine - Operational

On 19 May, the BitMEX trading engine experienced unscheduled downtime between 12:00 UTC and 13:40 UTC as a result of an unexpected server restart. We want to reiterate our apologies to all those affected by this event, and we fully understand the significant impact such events have on our customers. We’ve published a full account and outlined how we are responding. See our blog for details: https://blog.bitmex.com/postmortem-downtime-19-may-2020/

Change in Spam Order Size Threshold

Starting 04:00 UTC on 05 June 2020, the threshold used to detect spam orders will be increased from 0.0025 XBT to 0.01 XBT. For more details on the spam mechanism please see our REST API docs on Minimum Order Size here: https://www.bitmex.com/app/restAPI#Order-Minimum-Size-Limits.

After this change accounts with too many open orders with a value less than 0.01 XBT each will be labeled as a Spam Account (prior to the change, the value is 0.0025 XBT).

This change is part of an ongoing effort to improve the quality of the tradable liquidity on the platform. If you have any further questions, please contact Support via our contact from: https://www.bitmex.com/app/support/contact.

Tell Us What You Think - We’re Listening

As you’ll have noticed, we’ve been rolling out a series of new products, features and functionality on the BitMEX platform as we continue to focus on providing the best-in-class trading experience and the most liquid platform for all our users.

We’re going to be running a series of polls to gauge opinion from you, our valued Telegram Channel subscribers, on what you’d most like to see us roll out next.

Client feedback has always been a critical part of building BitMEX and we actively encourage and welcome feedback.

Please participate in our polls and feel free to contact Support with any further feedback or ideas here: https://www.bitmex.com/app/support/contact

A big thank you from the BitMEX Team.

Announcing The BCHUSD Quanto Perpetual Swap

We are launching a BCHUSD quanto perpetual swap contract with up to 25x leverage on 16 June 2020 at 04:00 UTC.

This is the fourth quanto contract to be launched by us and follows the successful introduction of the ETHUSD quanto futures contract on 05 May 2020 and the XRPUSD swap contract on 05 February 2020. Together, these three new quanto contracts represent further diversification of trading opportunities for users as we continue to expand our innovative product range.

BCHUSD quanto swaps have a fixed Bitcoin multiplier regardless of the USD Bitcoin Cash price. This allows traders to long or short the BCH/USD exchange rate without ever touching either BCH or USD. Traders post margin in XBT, and earn or lose Bitcoin as the BCH/USD rate changes.

The contract will be visible on the platform from 15 June 2020 at 04:00 UTC as Unlisted, 24 hours before the start of trading.

Please see our blog for more information: https://blog.bitmex.com/announcing-the-bchusd-quanto-perpetual-contract/

What products would you like us to launch next? We’re running a series of polls to encourage user feedback. Cast your vote in our first Telegram poll in the post above in this channel.