Bitmex Outflows Hit Record in July Exceeding $500M Amid CFTC Probe

BitMEX, the second top crypto exchange by reported trading volume to date, experienced record outflows during the month of July.

BitMEX's monthly outflow never exceeded $100M before.

Fellow industry analytics firm Ceteris Paribus commented on the news on Aug. 4, noting that BitMEX had never experienced outflow of more than $100 million in a single month.

During the whole 2018, the total outflows accounted for $1.3 billion, the firm stated, adding that there was not a single month when outflows were greater than inflows.

On July 20, TokenAnalyst reported a record outflow on BitMEX. During the course of a single day, the exchange saw an outflow of $83 million worth of bitcoins while only $12 million came in.

While the news apparently drew the attention of crypto community, some commentators suggested that such a big discrepancy was a normal reaction, particularly taking into account the amount of BTC held on BitMEX.CFTC probe spooks BitMEX traders.

At the same time, the $73 million outflow-over-inflow discrepancy took place subsequently after the United States Commodity Futures Trading Commission was reported on July 19 to suspect that BitMEX allowed U.S. residents to use its trading platform.

Notably, under the current law, the U.S. is one of several countries prohibited from using BitMEX and similar crypto-based financial services, but users may have sought to circumvent the geoblock using services such as VPNs. In turn, the probe followed a debate between BitMEX CEO and co-founder Arthur Hayes and well-known crypto antagonist Nouriel Roubini in early July.

BitMEX's website traffic notably dropped since mid-July, which coincides with significant amount of outflows from the exchange.

According to the Alexa data, BitMEX's rank dropped from #11,851 on July 19 to #12,644 at the press time, which could suggest that users, particularly Americans using VPN, are actively taking their funds off the exchange.