BitMEX Improves Bitcoin Integration

We have delivered a major refresh of the BitMEX custody system that tracks users’ Bitcoin deposits and withdrawals. This update delivers a few key advantages:

  • We use public releases of Bitcoin Core, eliminating an in-house fork with custom RPC calls and address-based indexes. This simplifies our software stack and removes barriers to adopt new Bitcoin features.
  • Our new event driven architecture is triggered by Bitcoin Core ZeroMQ notifications to deliver updates to our systems. Deposits will generally be credited more quickly (often within a minute of the block confirmation).  
  • This update allows us to track native SegWit deposit addresses, which we hope to bring to users in the coming months. SegWit should result in considerable block weight savings (potentially up to 65%).

As a commercial user of Bitcoin we appreciate the test facilities built into Bitcoin Core, particularly private regtest networks, which allow us to run our entire deposit and withdrawal stack under automated end-to-end unit and acceptance tests. 

We continue to support independent Bitcoin developers through our Open Source Developer Grant Program. In addition, our team contributed an improved interface for external systems to track the mempool to Bitcoin Core which is scheduled for version 0.21.

Should you have any questions, please contact Support.