BitMEX Hastens User Verification After Securing 50+% of Their Trading Volume

The troubled crypto exchange BitMEX has accelerated its user verification program after securing over 50% of their trading volume in almost two months since the program begun.

“A significant amount of our users representing over 50% of our volume have successfully completed the onboarding process,” BitMEX said today, adding that this number gave them “the confidence to bring forward our cut-off date.”

Total trading volume on the platform surpassed USD 2bn in the past 24 hours, according to Coinpaprika.com data.

Trading volume on BitMEX:

On Wednesday, the exchange has announced certain changes meant to accelerate the rollout of their User Verification Programme for individual customers, as well as BitMEX Corporate customers.

This program was launched at the very end of August this year. Users are asked to complete a four-step process, which includes uploading a photo ID, a proof of address, and a selfie, as well as answering multiple choice questions about source of funds and trading experience, said the exchange. The post described this process as “similar to ID checks on many other cryptocurrency exchanges,” taking some five minutes to complete.

Per the accelerated timeline, in order to continue trading on the platform, users are now required to be fully verified by November 5 in order to open a new position or to increase an existing position. Otherwise, they will not be able to open new positions, while affiliate payouts for unverified accounts will be set to zero.

Starting with December 4, these users will not be able to withdraw funds from their BitMEX account anymore without completing verification. “If there are remaining open positions on unverified accounts, we will review these on 4 December 2020 and communicate directly to users holding these to facilitate an orderly closing of these positions,” said the exchange.

Though the launch of a trading tournament for users who have completed verification was mentioned when the program was announced, BitMEX decided to delay it due to the accelerated timeline.

Lastly, the exchange noted that “[r]ecent events have underscored the requirement for market operators to implement robust and compliant KYC [know your customer] programmes,” though not specifying which events they were referring to exactly. They did also describe the recent period as one of “accelerated change for 100x Group and the BitMEX platform.”

As reported in early October, three owners of BitMEX and five related companies have been charged with operating an unregistered trading platform and violating multiple regulations.

Following the recent charges, however, founders Arthur Hayes and Samuel Reed (both among the defendants in the case) stepped back from their respective CEO and CTO roles in the 100x Group which they founded, and which is the holding group for HDR Global Trading Limited, owner and operator of BitMEX.

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