The exchange faces a new penalty after years of legal battles with US authorities.
On January 15, Manhattan federal judge John G. Koeltl imposed a $100 million fine on BitMEX for violations of anti-money laundering regulations.
The decision comes despite arguments from BitMEX’s legal team, which claimed that previous penalties—including a $110 million fine and guilty pleas from the founders—were already sufficient punishment for violations committed between 2015 and 2020.
In a statement released after the verdict, BitMEX emphasized that the fine is lower than the $200 million initially sought by the Department of Justice and significantly less than the $420 million proposed during proceedings. However, the exchange contested the necessity of a new penalty altogether.
The case originated in 2020 when the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) accused BitMEX of operating illegally in the United States, while the New York prosecutor’s office filed criminal charges against founders Arthur Hayes, Ben Delo, and Samuel Reed for conspiracy to violate the Bank Secrecy Act.
According to the authorities, the exchange did not adequately verify the identity of users on its platform, accepting millions of dollars from US clients. In 2021, BitMEX had already paid a $100 million civil penalty after the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) determined that the company’s executives had deliberately altered American customer data to conceal its origin. At the time, US clients allegedly accounted for roughly 11.5% of BitMEX’s user base.
Founders Hayes and Delo pled guilty in 2022, each agreeing to a $10 million criminal fine. BitMEX now claims to have implemented significant improvements to its user verification systems and its Know Your Customer (KYC) and anti-money laundering procedures, even before the initial charges were filed in 2020.
