Trading was suspended and the platform was put into maintenance mode between 00:24 UTC and 00:55 UTC on 13 May 2021 as a result of an isolated position audit failure in the trading engine. Trading resumed at 01:00 UTC once all audits had been passed, and after 5 minutes of cancel-only mode. Funds were entirely safe at all times.

BitMEX has an automated audit process which checks, among many other things, that the value of all positions on the platform sum to zero. This feature is one of many we have in place to ensure the integrity of the platform and safeguard user funds. For this check to be valid, the same mark price must be used to value every position.

With a recent change to our system architecture, positions are calculated in a distributed fashion. If the audit detects a discrepancy, it automatically halts trading to safeguard user funds and maintain the security and integrity of the platform. Much care has been taken to ensure correct synchronisation between processes, however a synchronisation bug occured. We have now implemented a change to address this, while upholding the continued safety and security of funds on the platform.

The exchange unsuspended at 00:44 UTC upon passing a stage of our audit, and stops and liquidations were processed whilst the platform was still in maintenance mode.

At 05:01:29 UTC we updated the funding rates for all Perpetual Swaps to exclude the affected time period.

We are compensating all users who were liquidated during the downtime, and expect to have completed this within the next 2 hours.

We apologise for the inconvenience this has caused. Please contact Support should you have any further queries.