As of 12:15 PM UTC, May 19, popular cryptocurrency investment BitMEX’s website platform appears to be down. Twitter users are reporting that BitMEX is not accessible, though the status page of BitMEX states that the site is operational.
Users are receiving a notification that an investigation is underway.
In general, BitMEX has had a rough year, falling behind Huobi DM and OKEx in terms of derivatives volume and having to close its operations in Japan. It is also facing a lawsuit for money laundering and other charges.
BitMEX has not made an official statement yet.
Not the First Time This Year
BitMEX has experienced downtime before in 2020. BitMEX crashed for just under half an hour on March 13, which had to do with a hardware issue with a cloud service provider.
The exchange has received criticism for its platform, primarily for the liquidations that occur on it. BitMEX has responded by saying that it holds an insurance fund that protects against liquidation events, and “which is the largest in the industry by an order of magnitude and remains healthy.”
Other major exchanges have gone down on different occasions this year. Coinbase went down on May 9 and around the time of Black Thursday.