BitMEX suffered a breakdown on its trading engine that lasted for about 75 minutes, but the premier cryptocurrency exchange finally managed to restore their normal operations at around 13:29 UTC.
Earlier today at 12:13 UTC, the Seychelles-based exchange reported on its website that it was suffering from a partial system outage as clients reported difficulty connecting to the site and API.
To help allay some of the suspicions that arose due to the outage, BitMEX issued an update at this time saying it became aware of the issue. It further reads: “The Trading Engine is currently offline. We're working to bring it back online as soon as possible. Further updates to follow shortly. We apologise for any inconvenience this may be causing. We are looking into the cause of this issue, and will be sharing an update as soon as possible.”
According to its most recent update, BitMEX reinstated deposits and withdrawals after shutting them down for nearly one hour. It initially restored operations back online via cancel only mode until 13:40 UTC, where no new orders were placed. The exchange confirmed that no liquidations occurred during the downtime, but didn’t provide any details about the incident as its staff still investigating the matter.
“We can confirm trading resumed at 13:40 UTC. Withdrawals will be processed at 14:00 and 15:00 UTC. A full review of the incident will be posted in due course. We know how much this impacts our customers, and we'd like to apologise to all those affected,” the exchange writes in a notice.
BitMex had been at the center of similar attention earlier in March, when the Bitcoin price crashed from $7,900 to as low as $3,600, recording its worst single-day drop in seven years.
Data from crypto data outfits showed that during Bitcoin’s sell-off, BitMEX liquidated $1.2 billion worth of long contracts on its platform alone, causing one of the most intense long squeezes in the crypto history.
And while reports of whales dumping on BitMEX explained the downward spiral of the Bitcoin market, crypto investors weren’t convinced that figures do not say anything about deliberate manipulation. A few hours later, BitMEX confirmed it had come under an aggressive DDoS Attack when it went offline for around 25 minutes, during which the Bitcoin price started to recover across other exchanges.
BitMEX’s CTO explained that hackers have been probing the system for some time and were also responsible for an attack that took place last month. February’s attack, however, was absorbed by BitMEX’s normal DDoS mitigation strategies.
