BitMEX Is Gone. Forgotten Balances Now Cost US$50 a Month.

BitMEX closed at 2pm today, Sydney time. The exchange that invented the perpetual swap, ran for eleven years, and once traded a significant share of the world's crypto derivatives is now a login screen that only does one thing: let you withdraw what is left. After today, it will charge anyone who does not, the greater of US$50 a month, or 1 per cent per annum of the balance they leave behind.

That fee schedule matters far beyond BitMEX's remaining customers. There are people in Australia, thousands of them, statistically, who opened a BitMEX account years ago, logged out, and forgot it existed. Some of them have died. Their balances are now on a clock, being charged a monthly fee by a platform in wind-down, and the person most likely to fix that, the executor of their estate, almost certainly does not know the account exists.

What actually happened today

BitMEX's operator, HDR Global Trading Limited, announced in July that it would cease operations by 23 September. The wind-down ran on a schedule: no new registrations from the announcement date, reduce-only trading from 26 August, and today, 23 September at 04:00 UTC, open positions were force-closed and trading stopped for good. The exchange says customer funds remain fully backed and that nothing was lost to hacks during its lifetime.

The important part for estate purposes is what happens next. Accounts remain accessible for withdrawal-only, indefinitely for now. But the exchange's closure FAQ sets out a monthly charge on unclaimed balances, the greater of US$50 or 1 per cent per annum, and warns that charges may increase over time. BitMEX never registered with AUSTRAC, so an Australian executor has no local regulator to call about a stranded account. There is only the exchange's support queue, a death certificate, and whatever proof of authority the estate can assemble.

The dead can't click "withdraw"

The scenario is not exotic. Roughly 31 per cent of Australian adults, more than six million people, have owned cryptocurrency at some point, according to the Independent Reserve Cryptocurrency Index, and most of that exposure has always been held on exchanges rather than in self-custody wallets. Crypto ownership skews young-to-middle-aged, and most Australian holders have told nobody which platforms they used.

Australians die holding crypto every day. Their estates are administered under a legal system that is still catching up: the Crypto Custody Bill 2025 is moving digital asset platforms into the ASIC licensing perimeter, but it does not, today, give an executor any right of access that a bank account would give them, and it does nothing at all for accounts on platforms that simply no longer exist.

So the failure mode runs like this. A person dies. The will says "all my digital assets to my executor" or says nothing at all about crypto. Nobody in the family knows about a BitMEX account opened in 2019, seeded with a few thousand dollars and forgotten. Months pass while probate is granted. Meanwhile the platform that holds the money is not merely inactive, it is actively billing the account, month after month, until the balance either hits the fee floor or someone with authority notices.

This is a pattern, not a one-off

BitMEX is the loudest example this week, but it is not alone. CoinEx, a nine-year-old exchange, announced its own wind-down on 15 September. On-chain deposits stopped yesterday; spot trading stops on 29 September; and on 22 December the platform closes with any remaining balances converted to USDT and moved to a third-party custodian that will charge 5 per cent of the balance, every month, until someone claims it. That claim window runs until August 2028, after which unclaimed USDT is, for practical purposes, gone.

Australia has seen this movie before, and the ending was expensive. Blockchain Global, the company behind the ACX exchange, collapsed owing unsecured creditors about $58.6 million, with customer funds commingled with company money; ASIC was still litigating the fallout in 2025. The unclaimed-money regime that catches dormant Australian bank balances has no crypto equivalent. When an exchange closes, "dormant" does not mean "safe, waiting to be claimed". It means "being charged, while the claim window shrinks".

What to do this week

If you hold crypto on any exchange, today is a sensible day for ten minutes of administration. The BitMEX and CoinEx closures are reminder enough.

1. Withdraw what you control. BitMEX balances can still be pulled out today; CoinEx gives you until 22 December, and CoinEx non-USDT assets only until 29 September, when they will be converted automatically.
2. Write down the platforms, not just the passwords. The executor's real problem is usually not the private key, it is knowing the exchange existed. A plain list of which platforms you have ever held money on is worth more than a password manager entry nobody can find.
3. Put the account in your estate documents. Name it like any other asset. Your executor will need the death certificate and a Grant of Probate to approach the exchange, and each platform's process is ad hoc, but a named account shortens that process from months to weeks.
4. Check whether the estate you administer holds a forgotten account. The telltales are old 2FA apps and hardware wallets in the estate's papers, seeded phrases in a desk drawer, or a card statement showing a recurring deposit to a platform that no longer trades. Then move the money while withdrawal still works.

The deadline is the story

BitMEX's final chapter will be written quietly: balances that get smaller every month, in accounts whose owners either forgot them or died. Eleven years of trading history ends not with a crash, but with a fee schedule.

The lesson is the one this publication keeps returning to. Exchanges are not vaults; they are counterparties with a wind-down clause. The only crypto your family will definitely inherit is the crypto they can find, and the only crypto they can keep is what gets moved before the clock you cannot see starts running. For everything sitting on a closed platform today, that clock already has.