The BitMEX platform performed exceptionally well with zero overloads during the surge in trading throughout yesterday as XBTUSD hit an all time high (ATH) of US$40,567. This is a result of the extensive work our dedicated engineering team has completed over the past year to significantly scale the platform through zero-downtime releases and other behind-the-scenes enhancements to the overall platform architecture.
No Overloads
We’ve long recognised that innovation is necessary to address capacity constraints associated with significant price moves, and we’ve made a lot of progress to that goal. The US$40,567 ATH was reached at 18:16 UTC on 7 January 2021, with elevated trading activity for an extended period pre and post, including a 9.6 percent drop in the traded price in the 32 minutes following the ATH.
The graph below shows overloads as a percentage of all write requests (order placement, amend, cancel) over the past 48 hours – as you can see there were no overloads during this extremely busy period (no red on the charts = no overloads). This contrasts sharply with the same graphs shared in a previous post on platform scaling.
Prioritising Platform Performance
Providing exceptional platform performance, particularly during high volatility periods, is exactly what our users expect of BitMEX, and remains an enduring priority for us. Our engineering teams continue to deliver enhancements to our trading engine, platform rules, and overall infrastructure, with further significant increases in platform capacity and improvements to trading experience due later in Q1. We’ll be sharing more on this soon, but until then, happy trading from the BitMEX team.