BitMEX said it will shut its crypto exchange on Sept. 23, 2026 after parent HDR Global Trading Limited decided to wind down the business following a strategic review, broader market conditions and an unsuccessful sale process. New registrations have been suspended, users will be unable to open new positions after Aug. 26, and any contracts still open at closure will be liquidated if not closed earlier. The exchange said customer assets remain fully safe and under user control during the transition, and urged traders to close positions and withdraw funds as soon as convenient. At the time of writing, BitMEX held more than $739 million of customer assets and an insurance fund containing about $239 million in BTC and $31 million in USDT. Accounts with funds left after Sept. 23 will be charged monthly at $50 equivalent or 1% per annum, whichever is greater. BitMEX also warned users to watch for phishing attempts and said no priority or accelerated withdrawal service exists. The shutdown hit BMEX, BitMEX's exchange token launched in 2022. Earlier reporting said the token fell nearly 90% in one day after the closure announcement; new reporting said BMEX dropped 92.3%, while separate reporting in the latest account said it fell 97% over four hours and remained 99.87% below its 2022 all-time high. Market data in the newest update said BMEX fell 99.69% and briefly faced liquidity problems after BitMEX announced the closure and halted new user registrations. BitMEX said all staked BMEX had been unstaked and returned to users. The exchange ranked as the 35th most active crypto derivatives venue and the 65th largest crypto exchange overall, while its trading volume had deteriorated sharply, with reporting saying daily turnover fell to about $400,000 and that since January 2026 it had topped $1 million only 14 times. BitMEX was one of crypto's most influential derivatives venues, credited with popularizing the 100x leverage perpetual swap that later became standard across major exchanges including Binance, Bybit, OKX and Deribit. Founded in 2014 by Arthur Hayes, Ben Delo and Samuel Reed, the exchange later became a target of U.S. regulators over anti-money-laundering controls. Hayes and Delo pleaded guilty in February 2022 to breaking the Bank Secrecy Act and violating anti-money-laundering laws, Reed pleaded guilty a month later to similar charges, and all three were fined $10 million each. The exchange was later fined $100 million, and the founders were later pardoned by President Donald Trump. Fresh reporting frames the closure as part of broader consolidation in crypto trading. Restructuring adviser Roshan Dharia said the top five platforms now control an estimated 80% of global spot volume, leaving mid-tier and regional exchanges with shrinking margins and limited room to scale, while compliance costs continue to rise. BitMEX's daily Bitcoin futures volume began declining around May 2021 and never recovered to its 2020 peak of between $1 billion and $5 billion, according to CryptoQuant. CoinGecko ranked BitMEX ninth among derivatives exchanges in August 2023 with a 0.9% share of trading volume, and by 2025 it was no longer in the firm's top 10 perpetual exchanges even as annual perpetual trading volume across those venues rose 47.4% to a record $86.2 trillion. Separately, Vanar said it will migrate to Base and reposition from being solely a Layer 1 blockchain toward what it described as an AI Organizations economy. The project said VANRY holders will migrate at a 1:1 ratio, while total token supply will increase from 2.4 billion to 10 billion tokens.