Celsius Estate Sues BitMEX for 6,360 Bitcoin Days Before It Closes

The administrator winding up Celsius Network's bankruptcy estate has sued five companies behind the BitMEX exchange over positions liquidated during the March 2020 crash. The complaint asks for 6,360.17 bitcoin, worth about $495 million at current prices, and was filed on 12 September in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York. CoinDesk and crypto.news both reported it on Wednesday. It lands eleven days before BitMEX stops matching orders for good. The estate's case is that those liquidations were engineered.

Two positions, two days in March 2020

The claim splits in two. Celsius's own leveraged long was liquidated on 12 March 2020 for 1,325.84 BTC. A second position of 5,034.33 BTC belonged to a fund identified in the filings as JST and went the following day, with its claims later assigned to the estate. CoinDesk and crypto.news give the same two figures and the same two dates, down to the hundredth of a coin. Bringing the case is the Blockchain Recovery Investment Consortium, which took over recovery work under the Celsius bankruptcy plan. Five defendants are named: HDR Global Trading, ABS Global Trading, Shine Effort, 100x Holdings and HDR Global Services. Three separate accounts list that same set.

"BitMEX intentionally designed its platform and liquidation procedures to cause liquidations of collateral and defraud its own customers," the complaint said, in wording CoinDesk and crypto.news carried identically.

The insurance fund sits at the centre of it

A liquidation on a derivatives venue force-closes a leveraged trade once its collateral runs thin, and whatever the position does not owe back flows into an insurance fund the exchange itself holds. The estate's theory is that BitMEX ran both ends. It controlled when liquidations fired, and it controlled the fund collecting from them, which the complaint says left it with a reason to keep excess collateral instead of returning it. What is actually pleaded depends on which account is read. CoinDesk lists fraud, market manipulation and wrongful liquidation. crypto.news lists fraud, breach of contract and unjust enrichment. Neither publishes the full count list, the two do not reconcile, and the complaint could not be retrieved for this article.

Filed against an exchange already closing

BitMEX's parent, HDR Global Trading, said on 23 July that the venue would wind down after eleven years and set 23 September at 04:00 UTC as the end of trading. That announcement, together with BitMart's three days later, took two established venues out of the middle of the exchange market. CoinDesk calls this the second suit brought against BitMEX since then. crypto.news alone describes the first, a July class action by BKX Services and a trader named David Namdar over 622.66 BTC said to have been held back from customer accounts. No second outlet carried those details on Wednesday. Coin Edition reports that Celsius had named BitMEX as a litigation target in 2023 filings, which is again one account standing on its own. Claims of this size travel in both directions now, and Binance spent this year pursuing $472.8 million from a payments firm's founders in Hong Kong.

Nothing yet from the defendants

None of the four accounts published a response from BitMEX, and none reports the exchange declining to comment either. The allegations are untested. Coin Edition states plainly that the filing establishes no liability, and the market underneath it was punishing for anyone holding leverage: bitcoin fell from roughly $7,200 to $5,678 on 12 March 2020, a figure only that outlet carries. Whether a court reads the liquidation engine as design or as a venue behaving like a venue is what the complaint puts in play. Six days are left on BitMEX's own clock. Coin Edition also reports the exchange maintaining that withdrawals stay open past the end of trading, which is not what its July notice said, and we could not establish which position is the current one.