BitMEX shutdown: what to check now for residual balances and your 2026 tax return

As of 04:00 UTC this morning, BitMEX no longer accepts trading orders. The exchange, which launched in 2014 and brought the perpetual swap with hundredfold leverage to the market, has ceased operations for good after eleven years. Anyone still holding an open position at that moment did not have to close it themselves: the exchange force-closed it. And anyone still holding a balance on the account now pays for the privilege.

The decisive question today is therefore no longer whether you withdraw in time. That deadline has passed. The question is what applies now: which amounts end up in your 2026 tax return, which documents you need to secure while the account is still reachable, and what the account fee on a residual balance actually costs.

What actually happened on BitMEX at 04:00 UTC on September 23

BitMEX announced the closure on July 23, 2026. The operator is HDR Global Trading Limited, based in the Seychelles; it cites a strategic review of the business as the reason for the step. New account openings were stopped when the announcement was made.

The process ran in two stages. From August 26, 2026, also at 04:00 UTC, tightened risk limits applied: new positions could no longer be opened, and existing ones could only be reduced. In the period up to the cut-off date, BitMEX says it force-closed open positions on a rolling basis in order to wind the market down in an orderly fashion. For contracts with thin liquidity, early settlement was used.

Trading ended with the closure itself. What remains after it is explicitly no longer exchange operation, but custody alone: you can still log in, see your wallet holdings and your transaction history, and initiate withdrawals. The exchange has unstaked all staked BMEX tokens across the board, and they have been sitting free in the respective accounts ever since.

Force-closure: why open positions were closed without any action from you

A force-closure is the closing of a derivatives position by the exchange rather than by its holder. At BitMEX, in this case, it was not a liquidation for lack of collateral but a wind-down measure: every position still open at the moment of closure was closed immediately, regardless of whether it stood at a profit or a loss.

That has a consequence many underestimate. The timing of the closure was not freely chosen but dictated. Anyone who was waiting for a better price did not get that price. The bitcoin price moved sharply over the course of today: our own call to the CoinGecko interface at 18:48 UTC showed $84,210, down 2.63 percent within 24 hours. How the bitcoin price develops from here changes nothing about your settlement: the profit or loss was realised at the moment of force-closure.

In its notice, BitMEX states explicitly that the exchange accepts no responsibility for trading losses arising from users being unable to close their positions themselves by the cut-off date. Anyone who held a position that was settled late and at an unfavourable price therefore has no claim.

Account fee on residual balances: 1 percent per year or $50, charged monthly

For verified accounts that still carried a balance at the moment of closure, an account fee applies with immediate effect. BitMEX puts it at one percent per year, charged monthly, or at the equivalent of $50 for accounts whose holdings do not exceed that amount. It runs until the balance has been withdrawn in full, and the exchange reserves the right to raise it later; it says it will announce any increase in advance.

The tiering is the point at which this becomes unpleasant for small holdings. One percent per year on a large balance is bearable. On a residual holding of $200, by contrast, the minimum fee applies, and $50 a month eats through such a holding entirely within a few months. Our own analysis of withdrawal routes from September 11 already laid the groundwork for exactly this calculation: at the time, 14 of 62 open withdrawal routes carried a network fee at or above the minimum withdrawal amount. Anyone stuck on one of those routes now faces a choice between a fee that eats the holding and a withdrawal that eats it too.

Withdrawals after the closure: what still works and what is delayed

Withdrawals remain possible, but they run more slowly than in normal operation. BitMEX has announced additional checks for all withdrawal requests and does not rule out that individual networks may be restricted if demand spikes. For bitcoin, the exchange points to blockchain confirmation times and to a fixed pool of withdrawal addresses: as long as a withdrawal carries the status Processing, it is in the queue and will be sent as soon as the next address frees up.

In practice that means an order that does not appear on-chain within a few hours is no cause for concern yet, provided the status is right. An order without a status, by contrast, deserves another look. For queries, BitMEX points to its own support and to its page on reserves and liabilities, where it states that it holds a surplus of assets over liabilities.

What you should secure while the account is still reachable

The login remains in place, but nobody has promised for how long. Download your complete transaction history while it is still retrievable, and in the broadest possible form: all deposits and withdrawals, all contract settlements, all funding payments and the fee charges. This data is the basis for everything that follows in the next section, and it cannot be reconstructed later once the interface is eventually switched off.

Futures transaction or crypto asset: how the tax office classifies your BitMEX gains

For German taxation, a BitMEX account falls into two entirely different parts, and anyone who mixes them up will get the sums wrong.

The first part is the contracts. A perpetual swap is a futures transaction: a transaction in which you do not receive an underlying asset but a cash settlement of the difference, or one settled in bitcoin. The wording of the law is unambiguous here. Section 20 paragraph 2 sentence 1 number 3 letter a of the German Income Tax Act covers the gain from futures transactions through which the taxpayer obtains a settlement of differences or a monetary amount or advantage determined by the value of a variable reference figure. These are investment income, and they are subject to the 25 percent flat-rate withholding tax plus the solidarity surcharge and, where applicable, church tax. There is no one-year holding period here.

The second part is the bitcoin holding itself, in which BitMEX settles. It is not a futures transaction but an economic asset, and it falls under private disposal transactions under Section 23 of the German Income Tax Act. There, the one-year period applies, and there an exemption threshold applies: under Section 23 paragraph 3 sentence 5, gains remain tax-free if the total gain from private disposal transactions in the calendar year came to less than 1,000 euros. The important thing about an exemption threshold is that it is not an allowance: anyone who exceeds it by one euro pays tax on the full amount.

Withdrawing your balance to your own wallet is not in itself a taxable event. You are not selling anything, you are only moving where it is kept. The acquisition dates keep running, and that is precisely why the history is so valuable: without it, you cannot later prove when the individual holdings were acquired.

Offsetting losses on futures transactions: what today's wording of the law says

Many accounts are likely to end the closure in the red, and here the situation has changed in investors' favour compared with previous years. For years, losses from futures transactions were subject to their own offsetting pot with a cap in monetary terms; that restriction sat in Section 20 paragraph 6 of the German Income Tax Act.

This editorial team pulled up the applicable text of the law itself on September 23, 2026. Paragraph 6 today carries five sentences. Sentences 1 and 2 provide that losses from investment income may not be offset against other categories of income, only against future investment income. Sentence 4 contains the familiar special rule for share losses, which remain offsettable only against gains on shares. Sentence 5 requires, for losses subject to withholding tax on investment income, a certificate under Section 43a paragraph 3 sentence 4. A separate cap in monetary terms for futures transactions no longer appears in this wording.

For you, the substance of this is: a loss from the force-closed contracts is, under today's wording, offsettable against other investment income and is not confined to a capped special pot. What it cannot do is reduce your income from employment or from letting; the separation of income categories in sentence 1 remains in place. This analysis was carried out by cryptoticker.io itself on September 23, 2026, and exclusively on the text of the law. Whether your specific case is classified this way is for your tax office to decide, and the classification of an individual contract may differ.

Anlage KAP without a tax certificate: why a foreign exchange puts the duty on you

A German bank withholds the flat-rate tax automatically and issues a tax certificate. BitMEX does neither. HDR Global Trading Limited is based in the Seychelles, is not a domestic paying agent and does not withhold tax on investment income. The consequence is that the income does not show up in your tax assessment by itself: you have to declare it yourself, in the Anlage KAP of your income tax return, on the line for foreign investment income without tax deducted at source.

The point about the certificate in sentence 5 tends to relieve you rather than burden you: it concerns losses subject to withholding tax on investment income, meaning those arising at a domestic paying agent. At a foreign exchange with no tax deducted at source there is no certificate you could produce, and the losses are declared as part of the assessment. What you need instead is documentation that stands up to scrutiny. That is exactly what portfolio and tax tools are built for, reading in trading data and producing an auditable statement from it; which of them are any good is set out in our comparison of crypto tax software and portfolio trackers.

You will need a currency conversion as well. BitMEX settles in bitcoin, the tax office calculates in euros. Every single settlement event therefore has to be converted at the rate applicable at the relevant moment, and the conversion rate belongs in your documentation. A blanket conversion of the closing balance at the year-end rate is not a sound basis.

BMEX tokens and unstaked holdings: holding period and exemption threshold under Section 23

One detail of the wind-down is lost in the headlines: BitMEX has unstaked all staked BMEX tokens, and they have been sitting free in accounts since the moment of closure. That ends a staking arrangement many users had long forgotten about.

For tax purposes, the BMEX token is a crypto asset and falls under Section 23. Unstaking alone is not a sale and does not trigger tax in itself. If you do sell the tokens, though, what matters is the acquisition date and whether you are inside the one-year period. Together with all other private disposal transactions in the year, the 1,000-euro exemption threshold from Section 23 paragraph 3 sentence 5 applies.

In practice that means: check whether there are any BMEX holdings in your account at all. With small residual positions, the withdrawal route may cost more than the holding is worth, and the account fee keeps running alongside it. You should do this calculation explicitly once rather than ignore the position.

Phishing after the closure: how to spot fake withdrawal help

In its own notice, BitMEX warns unusually clearly about fraud attempts around the wind-down, and the warning is well founded: an exchange closure creates exactly the uncertainty in which such attacks work.

Two features are enough to tell them apart. First, the exchange says it never asks for private keys, seed phrases or any payment in connection with the withdrawal of balances. Anyone who does ask is not a member of staff. Second, there is no expedited or preferential withdrawal route. Any offer to move a withdrawal up the queue for a fee is therefore identifiable as a fake, however genuine the sender address may look.

Because your account remains reachable and carries a balance, it stays a worthwhile target. Active two-factor protection and a password you use nowhere else are not general advice here but aimed at the coming weeks.

Where to take your derivatives trading: perp DEXs, regulated brokers and the MiCA question

BitMEX takes with it one of the oldest addresses for leveraged crypto derivatives. Anyone who wants to continue that trading faces a decision that comes out differently than it used to under European regulation.

BitMEX was an offshore exchange without European authorisation. Since the MiCA regulation applies in full, crypto services in Germany may only be provided by authorised firms; the duties that follow from that are set out in our overview of MiCA licensing obligations for crypto companies. For you as an investor, that has two sides. An authorised provider brings supervision, segregated custody and a point of contact in the EU. It also brings leverage limits and product requirements that did not apply on an offshore platform.

If you want to stay with decentralised perpetual trading, you will find the differences in fees, liquidation mechanics and custody in our comparison of the best perp DEXs. If you want to go the other way and apply leverage at a supervised house instead, the regulated addresses are in our comparison of the best crypto brokers. Both routes share one tax feature worth taking with you: derivatives remain futures transactions under Section 20 regardless of the platform you trade them on, and they never become private disposal transactions with a one-year period.

Checking the BitMEX closure: what to take away

1. Secure the history before the interface disappears. Log in, download all settlements, funding payments and deposits and withdrawals, and file them somewhere you will still find them in two years. Without this data you can prove neither your acquisition dates nor your losses. You will find a tool that reads the data in and produces an auditable statement in our comparison of crypto tax software.
2. Weigh the account fee against the withdrawal route. One percent per year, or at least $50 a month, eats through small holdings quickly. Check for each holding individually whether the network fee of the withdrawal route sits below its value, and withdraw whatever can be withdrawn. If you are stuck on an expensive network, check whether the holding can be moved out via a different one; the fee models of the destination platforms are set out in our comparison of the best perp DEXs.
3. Separate contracts from holdings in your tax return. The force-closed positions are investment income under Section 20 and belong in the Anlage KAP with no tax deducted at source. The bitcoin holding itself follows Section 23 with its one-year period and the 1,000-euro exemption threshold. If you want to keep trading with leverage, choose the platform deliberately on supervision and custody, for instance from our comparison of the best crypto brokers.

The primary source on the wind-down is the exchange's own notice, which you can read in the BitMEX closure announcement. The wording of the law on offsetting losses is in Section 20 of the German Income Tax Act.

This article is no substitute for tax advice. For larger amounts or unclear contract types, a trip to a tax adviser is the cheaper route.

(As of September 23, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)