What Sets BitMEX Apart in the Digital Asset Race

by
Victoria d’Este

Revealed: July 16, 2025 at 11:24 am Up to date: July 16, 2025 at 11:25 am

by Ana

Edited and fact-checked:
July 16, 2025 at 11:24 am

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Sam Sandiford, Head of Product and Institutional Enterprise Improvement at BitMEX, brings over 17 years of expertise in conventional finance to crypto derivatives. On this interview, Sam discusses his journey to BitMEX, the platform’s dedication to safety, and what units it aside for skilled merchants. He additionally shares his ideas on BitMEX’s evolving product lineup, the significance of transparency, and the traits shaping the way forward for digital asset buying and selling.

Are you able to please share your journey to Web3?

I joined BitMEX six and a half years in the past after 17 years in conventional finance. I’d labored in derivatives for a very long time, and BitMEX reached out to me to assist work with their monetary engineering designs, significantly round margining and perpetual swaps. 

It was a leap of religion on the time, and BitMEX has been a really fascinating place to be during the last six and a half years, as I’m certain these studying this submit will know. We’ve progressively elevated the product vary and are nonetheless a pressure to be reckoned with within the crypto markets.

BitMEX describes itself as a house for actual merchants. How does this manifest in your shopper expertise and community-building efforts?

Once we discuss actual merchants, we’re what I wish to name semi-professional merchants and above. We’re probably not a spot for brand-new merchants who haven’t traded earlier than or who’re new to crypto. We’re a market specializing in derivatives. How does that present itself in what we do with purchasers and the neighborhood? 

We’ve an institutional crew that covers our establishments instantly with full white-glove service, and we have now VIP protection for our key retail merchants. That may be performed one-on-one with the retail gross sales crew, in addition to with teams and communities in our focus language areas. We significantly concentrate on Russian, Chinese language, and English, and we have now leads for every. In a few of these, we even have separate advertising and marketing or copywriting groups that deal with and attain out to these person teams.

What particular UI customizations and superior order varieties do your most lively derivatives merchants depend on?

If we’re being clear, our most lively merchants will commerce by way of our API. What API merchants actually need is pace and low latency, which we have now – constant latency, reliability, and the preliminary ease of organising. The BitMEX API was one of many first strong APIs in crypto buying and selling, so a whole lot of what we have now is similar to different venues already. It’s very straightforward for our customers to connect with. 

Some elements should not excellent, which we’ve been addressing as priorities. For instance, we labored on updating the readability and usefulness of our API documentation. We are able to now translate it – so from being a pure English-language API documentation, we may have Chinese language and Russian very shortly, the place we discover nearly all of our API merchants.

The following set of shoppers are the whale merchants, buying and selling massive sizes – not on a high-frequency algo stage, however on a click on buying and selling foundation. They worth safety and pace of execution, so they need liquidity, which we’re engaged on enhancing to draw much more of these customers. Additionally they search for safety – BitMEX has by no means misplaced a single satoshi of buyer funds. 

Whale merchants need standardized market orders and have a tendency to make use of common restrict and market orders. They don’t want that complexity and infrequently do a whole lot of their executions by way of cell gadgets slightly than sitting at a display screen.

The third set is the extra OG merchants. They’ve been buying and selling for 5, six years or extra on venues like BitMEX and search for customization. They will add totally different elements to their buying and selling web page, determine which set off to make use of for take earnings and cease loss, index, final value, or mark value. They will select between a restrict cease or a market cease. We’ve all this performance within the background. 

We’re making an attempt to make the bottom interface simpler for brand spanking new customers by stripping that away in order that once you land on BitMEX, it’s not complicated and you can begin buying and selling immediately. Then, by our retail gross sales crew, KOLs, and neighborhood leaders, we make these different options discoverable to customers after they’ve are available, to allow them to advance their buying and selling expertise in the event that they need to.

The BMEX token affords buying and selling price reductions and VIP perks. What position does the token play in person engagement and loyalty?

We launched the BMEX token as a pure utility token round three or 4 years in the past. It has principally served for price reductions and withdrawal reductions. So, it had some utility however not huge traction. Proper now, the BMEX token doesn’t play an infinite position in the neighborhood or our engagement, however that’s one thing we’re engaged on. 

Our subsequent step is to increase the scope of our VIP program. You’ll be able to already use BMEX to realize entry to our VIP program, however in the mean time, it’s PTS and withdrawal price waivers or reductions. There shall be an elevated suite of VIP merchandise within the pipeline, together with white-glove service and invites to particular occasions, doubtless coming in Q3 this 12 months.

You combine buying and selling bots natively. What safeguards and monitoring instruments guarantee person funds stay safe?

The very first thing to say about having buying and selling bots in-house is that it brings all of the native safety of BitMEX. We’ve by no means misplaced a single Satoshi. We test our system each 5 seconds to ensure no funds have gone lacking. The bottom stage—”Are my funds nonetheless in BitMEX?”—is taken care of simply as for those who’re an everyday dealer. The following bit is transparency. If I begin a buying and selling bot, can I see what trades are happening as quickly as I flip it on?

The way in which our buying and selling bots work is that you’ve got a separate account or run the bots on a delegated account, and you may see these positions in actual time. You’ll be able to take over at any time, cease the bot, and shut out the positions your self if you wish to. So, there’s full transparency.

On the identical time, ought to we ever have any operational points, our buyer funds are backed by a 37,000 Bitcoin insurance coverage fund. We don’t anticipate that, however we monitor our buying and selling bots for any unhealthy conduct and take a look at them earlier than they exit. 

Ought to there ever be any challenge with the bots, BitMEX can cowl the losses that could be incurred. We’re at all times monitoring the product suite, and we have now a crew that vets all buying and selling bots earlier than they go reside, so we all know what they’re speculated to do.

To your most frequent derivatives customers, what aggressive edge do you supply versus different platforms?

Security and safety are paramount to BitMEX. We’ve by no means misplaced any buyer funds. It has slowed us down at instances, nevertheless it’s a non-negotiable for us, not solely when it comes to custody, but in addition ensuring the system itself doesn’t lose funds on one facet of the commerce. Leverage has been a key a part of BitMEX’s development. We provide as much as 250x leverage. Different platforms supply related leverage, however not in an atmosphere as safe, one the place we are able to assure earnings for customers on the opposite facet.

We’ve acquired a backstop of a big insurance coverage fund that’s been constructed up and managed over time. We set the leverage on particular contracts (not all of them at 250x or 100x), so we might be snug getting out of these positions ought to liquidations happen. Whenever you use excessive leverage, liquidations positively happen; it’s a part of the method. We encourage customers to make use of the leverage they’re snug with. Some merchants will commerce huge quantities with excessive leverage and are proud of the features and losses, whereas newer merchants, we advise, ought to average their leverage.

Transparency can be essential. You’ll be able to see every little thing that’s happening in BitMEX. We’ve proof of reserves and liabilities to indicate our insurance coverage fund and the way we’ve acquired all our clients’ deposits beneath custody. Most significantly, we don’t commerce in opposition to our clients. Different exchanges run in-house market makers or facilitate market makers buying and selling in opposition to clients. We don’t do this. We’re actually a peer-to-peer change. That’s tremendous essential for our transparency and buying and selling expertise. We’ve been round for 10 years, so we’re battle-tested. 

We’ve had just a few bumps alongside the best way, however that simply means we all know the way to cope with the obstacles once we’re confronted with them. Our tech is sturdy and strong, making us some of the dependable venues on the road.

Moreover Russia and China, what new areas or markets are you concentrating on for growth, given the worldwide demand for derivatives?

We commerce virtually globally already and serve international markets, excluding the US and a handful of others. We need to develop traction in sure focus areas, and we consider focus areas extra round language than particular geographies. Once we take into consideration licensing, geographies come into play as effectively. We’re engaged on our licensing posture, and we have now a few jurisdictions the place there could be fascinating alternatives for us to get regulated successfully. 

We’re already extra lively in Asian geographies than Western ones. As licensing progresses, we see ourselves with growing buyer numbers, in all probability throughout the Center East and West into Europe over the subsequent 6 to 12 months. We’ve additionally grown our CIS crew considerably within the final 3 months, so we anticipate extra traction there as effectively. We’re open to enterprise from CIS and Russian audio system.

As tokenization expands into real-world belongings, how is BitMEX making ready to help or commerce these new asset lessons?

For us, RWAs in all probability begin with stablecoins. We provide a small collection of stablecoins as margin foreign money in the mean time and are regularly trying to increase that. We added Ripple USD as a margin foreign money lately and are different stablecoins –  probably yielding stablecoins and cash market-based funds as future collateral. We’re probably not a spot change; we’re a derivatives change, so our concentrate on RWAs is generally round utilizing them as collateral.

We’ve teams of purchasers incomes 50% plus yearly on buying and selling who should not so frightened concerning the yield from their collateral as a result of they’re collateral environment friendly and commerce very steadily with small buying and selling sizes. For them, this doesn’t matter. There’s a group of shoppers we need to carry on who maintain positions for longer and bigger sizes – for them, margin effectivity is essential. So, we’ll search for probably the most dependable collateral that may be transformed into our currencies simply. 

In any other case, somebody on the change bears the slippage. If we need to get Bitcoin or Tether again from a cash market fund token, we have to know that we are able to do it reliably, in measurement, and with out an excessive amount of slippage. These are the avenues we’re exploring on RWAs. Outdoors of tokenization, we’re additionally exploring the usage of securities by a associate, significantly T-bills, for use as collateral, after which the associate will present buying and selling funds of Tether or different stablecoins on BitMEX. 

We’ll keep in contact with different RWA initiatives and contemplate itemizing these both as spot or as perps, the place they’re massive and open sufficient to the universe of BitMEX merchants. We in all probability received’t have a look at a token with very particular necessities, however we are going to have a look at a globally out there token.

What macroeconomic or geopolitical forces do you imagine will most importantly form the crypto derivatives market over the subsequent three to 5 years?

That is fascinating. As markets are transferring proper now, we’ve had a dominant place, significantly within the centralized change area. BitMEX is registered in Seychelles, however most of our workers are based mostly in Asia, and a whole lot of buying and selling has been from this area. Value discovery, retail merchants, institutional merchants, and even buying and selling information facilities are based mostly largely out of Asia, significantly Tokyo. A lot in order that we’re transferring our information heart to Tokyo from Dublin within the subsequent couple of months.

Within the final six months, the U.S. has come out of its shell and can spark development. The U.S. has three and a half years left of Trump’s presidency to actually make its mark on home and international  crypto markets. There’s a whole lot of stress in the course of the globe, nevertheless it’s actually an Asia versus U.S. steadiness. 

For exchanges which might be neither U.S.-centric nor Asia-centric, there’s a chance to intermediate that movement. I feel we’ll see consolidation within the U.S. to 2 or three venues, consolidation in Asia to 3 or 4 massive venues, after which localized onshore exchanges, as we see in locations like Korea with dominant exchanges like Upbit. Then a handful of gamers, and I see BitMEX on this area, will intermediate that movement. 

It’ll be very onerous for an onshore dealer within the U.S. to commerce in opposition to a retail dealer in China, for instance, except it’s within the centralized area. That movement will doubtless be intermediated by licensed venues outdoors of the U.S. and Asia. The geopolitical pressure driving that’s in all probability the U.S. in the mean time.

By 2030, what do you imagine would be the defining function of profitable crypto buying and selling platforms, and the way is BitMEX aligning with that imaginative and prescient?

I feel there are just a few profitable variations of a crypto buying and selling platform. We transfer extra in the direction of the retail facet, mass adoption, and buying and selling on private gadgets – buying and selling on cell slightly than on desktop. That’s partly a generational factor. Lots of our merchants beneath 30 are rather more mobile-focused, whereas these 35 and above are desktop merchants, probably former finance professionals. We see that shifting quite a bit. 

First, it’s quick access and ease, and with that in all probability comes passive buying and selling. We talked about buying and selling bots earlier, and replica buying and selling positively comes as a continuation to that. Possibly even entry to asset administration and personal merchandise would be the norm. 

The historic crypto merchants haven’t actually been as as a result of they’ve been 20%, 30%, 50% annualized yields slightly than 5, six, or seven. However with that comes a big danger urge for food, which the typical crypto adopter received’t have in three or 4 years’ time. They’ll have a decrease danger urge for food and be proud of decrease yields. So, for starters, having sturdy cell help could be a major defining function. 

Within the institutional area, we’ll in all probability begin to look somewhat bit like TradFi, at the least from a tech angle – co-location, regulation, stability, and presumably darkish swimming pools for individuals to commerce. There’s a slight problem with the best way the crypto derivatives market is correct now to make that work. For the time being, each contract on a unique change, even when its underlying may be very related, is definitely a separate instrument. There’s no direct fungibility throughout these devices. 

Individuals, together with ourselves and merchants, prefer it that method as a result of they perceive the variations, and that creates buying and selling alternatives. Standardization and central clearing, which could be an concept that comes up, should change a bit. We’d see extra standardized contracts, at the least on Bitcoin and ETH, so individuals can actually be fungible. 

There shall be resistance from plenty of gamers as a result of it mainly eats into their margins. There’s a chance that clearinghouses shall be in place. It was tried seven or eight years in the past and didn’t work, however perhaps the market will determine in three years’ time if that’s mandatory. That would definitely be simpler to know from a regulatory standpoint.

About The Creator

Victoria is a author on quite a lot of expertise subjects together with Web3.0, AI and cryptocurrencies. Her in depth expertise permits her to jot down insightful articles for the broader viewers.

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