At 02:22 UTC on April 15, 2018, the ETHBTC on Poloniex crashed approximately 18% from 0.063 to 0.052. The Poloniex price is used as 100% of the index price (.ETHXBT30M) for the ETHM18 contract.

Crypto trading is very risky and underlying prices are highly volatile. While this type of movement is unexpected and undesirable, the price on BitMEX accurately reflected the price on the underlying spot market throughout this crash and recovery. Due to BitMEX systems functioning as expected and according to specification, there will be no refunds of losses sustained due to liquidations.

Index stability is important to us. BitMEX will continue to evaluate if adjustments are needed to existing index compositions. The liquidity of crypto spot markets is constantly in flux and can change significantly over the lifetime of a quarterly contract. Poloniex hosts one of the most liquid ETHBTC markets (note, not ETHUSD) in the world, but this unexpected action has triggered an internal re-review.

The Index Price is used as the central calculation for marking BitMEX futures. This Mark Price is used for margin calculations, which trigger liquidations. More information is available here.

On 30 March 2018, we are making the following changes to altcoin products:

• The 0.25% settlement fee will be removed on futures products. We hope that will encourage greater liquidity by removing barriers to entry and exit.
• We will be removing the DASH, ETC, NEO, XMR, XLM, and ZEC pairs after they expire, for the time being. This is to free up trading-engine capacity on our more popular contracts. After we make certain optimisations, we may re-list these.
• The ADA, BCH, ETH, LTC, and XRP contracts will be re-listed for another quarterly today:
  • BitMEX Cardano / Bitcoin 29 June 2018 futures contract (ADAM18)
  • BitMEX Bitcoin Cash / Bitcoin 29 June 2018 futures contract (BCHM18)
  • BitMEX Ether / Bitcoin 29 June 2018 futures contract (ETHM18)
  • BitMEX Litecoin / Bitcoin 29 June 2018 futures contract (LTCM18)
  • BitMEX Ripple / Bitcoin 29 June 2018 futures contract (XRPM18)

Thanks to all of the participants for helping to make another BitMEX giveaway a success, and would like to congratulate all of the winners! We were very impressed with the performance of the top two traders, and as a result decided to name them both grand-prize winners. Special congratulations to both of you.

Winners, please see the email you received for prize details.

To see the giveaway details, click here.

BitMEX is happy to announce a new $100,000 giveaway for NEO (NEOG18) contracts!  

Start: Wednesday, 7 February 2018 at 00:00 UTC
End: Saturday, 17 February 2018 at 00:00 UTC

Prizes:

1 Grand Prize of 50,000 USD: The trader who continuously quotes the largest two-sided volume within a 0.5% spread gets the grand prize.*

1 Second Prize of 25,000 USD: The trader who continuously quotes the second largest two-sided volume within a 0.5% spread gets the second prize.*

1 Third Prize of 20,000 USD: The trader who has the largest profit (in XBT) from trading the NEO (NEOG18) contract gets the third prize.

1 Lucky Prize of 5,000 USD: Any trader who trades at least one NEO (NEOG18) contract automatically enters a random draw to win this prize.

*BitMEX will take snapshots of the orderbook at frequent intervals throughout the competition. A trader will add to their quoted volume in each snapshot by taking the minimum of their quoted bids and quoted asks within 0.25% either side of the midpoint. BitMEX will then sum that volume in each snapshot, and the trader with the largest cumulative volume at the end of the competition will win.

It’s simple to participate:

• First, sign up for a BitMEX account.
• 
• Next, trade the NEO (NEOG18) contract during the contest period.

Cheers,
The BitMEX Team

Terms & Conditions:

1. BitMEX reserves the right to cancel or amend the giveaway or giveaway rules at our sole discretion.
2. Users who engage in market manipulation will be excluded from the contest. This determination will be made at the sole discretion of BitMEX.
3. Profit is defined as realized profit (in XBT terms) of all trades where the trade was opened and closed during the contest period window.
4. No user can win more than one prize.
5. Winners will be notified via email on 22 February 2018.
6. All awards are paid out in Bitcoin at the prevailing price of the .BXBT index at 17 February 2018 at 00:00 UTC.

Thanks to all of the participants for helping to make the giveaway a success, and congratulations to all the winners! Please see the email you received for prize details.

A total of 1,993 participants entered the giveaway with a total of 4,403 tickets earned.

All 15 lucky winners were selected randomly from the 4,403 tickets. Any trader, big or small, can win a lucky draw, so make sure your name is in the hat for our upcoming giveaways.

To see the giveaway details, click here.

*Trader has agreed to show his/her real username in the winner announcement.

Wishing you a prosperous 2018!

Cheers!
The BitMEX Team

 

 

 

Thanks to all of the participants for helping to make the Stellar Giveaway a success!

All participants will receive an e-mail that tells them the number of tickets they’ve earned.

A random drawing will determine the 15 winners on 31 January 2018.

We will notify the winners via email and announce them here in a blog post.

Cheers,
The BitMEX Team

Check your user name here:
https://www.bitmex.com/app/leaderboard

Or follow these steps:

1. Go to the BitMEX platform.
2. Click on Contracts from top menu bar.
3. Click on Leaderboard from left navigation bar.

As a reminder, 15 randomly selected Stellar contract traders will be rewarded one of the 15 prizes:

1 Grand Prize of 25,000 USD
1 Second Prize of 10,000 USD
13 Third Prizes of 5,000 USD

Good luck to all participants!

Cheers,
The BitMEX Team

Check your user name here:
https://www.bitmex.com/app/leaderboard

Or follow these steps:

1. Go to the BitMEX platform.
2. Click on Contracts from top menu bar.
3. Click on Leaderboard from left navigation bar.

As a reminder, 15 randomly selected Stellar contract traders will be rewarded one of the 15 prizes:

1 Grand Prize of 25,000 USD
1 Second Prize of 10,000 USD
13 Third Prizes of 5,000 USD

Good luck to all participants!

Cheers,
The BitMEX Team

Check your user name here:
https://www.bitmex.com/app/leaderboard

Or follow these steps:

1. Go to the BitMEX platform.
2. Click on Contracts from top menu bar.
3. Click on Leaderboard from left navigation bar.

As a reminder, 15 randomly selected Stellar contract traders will be rewarded one of the 15 prizes:

1 Grand Prize of 25,000 USD
1 Second Prize of 10,000 USD
13 Third Prizes of 5,000 USD

Good luck to all participants!

Cheers,
The BitMEX Team

The most common criticism of Bitcoin is that it has no intrinsic value. That is entirely true, but neither does the US dollar or a bar of gold. These same critics then begin to buttress their argument by comparing Bitcoin’s market cap against the equity value of some large blue-chip companies. Surely Bitcoin is in a bubble if it is worth $250 billion and company X is worth slightly less.

A share of stock in a company is the net present value of all future dividends, which implies that stocks have intrinsic value. It is intellectually lazy to compare Bitcoin, which possesses no income stream, against a stock that does.

This leads me to believe that most financial journalists do not fundamentally understand any of the financial assets they write about daily. The mischaracterisation of Bitcoin and its value proposition further illustrates their ignorance.

The second facet of Bitcoin in the market that pains me is that many people don’t understand exchange rates. If Bitcoin has no intrinsic value, its value comes from the market’s perception of its moneyness — which means that Bitcoin has a price only versus another asset, crypto coin, or fiat currency. Therefore, either Bitcoin can be in a bubble now or the asset it is valued against was previously.

Take the above weekly log graph of the Bitstamp USD/Bitcoin price since 2012. Viewing this chart would lead you to believe that the dollar was in a bubble, which then burst. Hard-money folks have been labelled modern-day Cassandras because the hyperinflationary fiat doomsday collapse has yet to manifest itself. The inflation, which government statistics expertly conceal, rears its ugly head through crypto-coin pumps and Hong Kong cage homes worth millions of USD.

My pet peeves do not prove that Bitcoin deserves its current market-clearing price against fiat currencies. Rather, if one wants to dismiss Bitcoin as a fad for the young’uns and financially stupid, the arguments used must make financial sense.