Stefan Lutz took over at the end of 2022. Prior to that, BitMEX had many staff reshuffles due to the litigation surrounding co-founder and former exchange CEO Arthur Hayes and several of his colleagues. Recall that in February 2022, Hayes pleaded guilty to violating the US Bank Secrecy Act.

During the trial, the prosecution sought harsher measures against the defendant, i.e. imprisonment. However, Hayes' legal team was able to reach a more favourable settlement - Hayes avoided jail time.

What will happen to cryptocurrencies?

It’s been a tough year for the entire industry, but it has also helped it grow, according to Lutz. Here’s a quote from his interview with Cointelegraph, in which the expert shared his own view of what’s happening.

Last year we saw a big change in the industry. More attention has been paid to the need to validate the reserves of crypto platforms, clear asset custody and security.


The FTX collapse happened primarily because the platform's management was using its own users' funds without their knowledge. The money was used, among other things, to secure trading positions of a related company, Alameda Research, purchase real estate, finance politicians and other dubious activities.

With this in mind, after the collapse of the Sam Bankman-Fried crypto empire, many niche participants launched their own platforms with asset reporting at their disposal. With the latter, users can examine an exchange's asset situation and draw appropriate conclusions. And some platforms, like WOO X, update information on their own liabilities, reserves and other important indicators every 15 minutes. An example of such a page can be found here.


BitMEX also pays a lot of attention to the transparency of its business. According to Lutz, since August 2021, the exchange has started publishing proof of its own reserves and commitment information twice a week. At the same time, the concept of proving reserves itself received a lot of criticism from various experts late last year.

It can also be noted here that updating such important data just twice a week is not the best solution. This information becomes irrelevant within an hour, because certain transactions with reserves can be carried out within minutes. Hopefully, in time, the largest exchanges will share data automatically and much more frequently.

The second important topic of Lutz’s interview was exchange tokens. Last year, the reputation of this area of the crypto market took a serious blow after the collapse of the FTX exchange. The platform’s native token under the ticker symbol FTT has fallen more than 99 per cent since reaching its all-time high. Nevertheless, exchange tokens have been and will continue to be an important part of the digital asset ecosystem, according to Lutz. On top of that, BitMEX has also launched its own exchange token.

It continues to trade steadily and gives our traders a range of benefits on the exchange, from commission discounts to various rewards.

A BitMEX executive assured reporters of the exchange’s profitability and increased user activity, as the increase in Bitcoin’s popularity this year has paid dividends to the trading platform. BitMEX has also recorded clear signs of new trends, namely the popularity of meme tokens like Pepe and AIDOGE.

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Note that trading volumes on centralised cryptocurrency exchanges are currently at their lowest for the past year. Yesterday’s figure was the equivalent of $10.87 billion.

Most notably, decentralized exchanges like Uniswap currently account for 22 percent of all trading volume on centralized crypto platforms. This is a record figure, which indicates a significant increase in the popularity of so-called DEX platforms.

Another factor indicating that the global bullrun of crypto is imminent was published the day before by Binance CEO Changpen Zhao. On his Twitter account, he said that cryptocurrencies were the focus of a fresh story on China Central Television (CCTV), the country’s main broadcaster.

According to Zhao, amid the local government’s tough attitude towards cryptocurrencies, such narratives from state-run media could well be seen as a sign of the coming bullrun. As a reminder, back in 2021, the Chinese government officially banned Bitcoin mining and most digital asset transactions. That said, the country still has a huge community of cryptocurrency fans, and China has a significant influence on the industry.

It is important to note that the video was eventually removed. It can be viewed on Twitter if you wish.


In retrospect, we think the events of the past year have indeed been beneficial for the cryptocurrency industry. Its key players have become much more transparent, making the niche as a whole more credible to new entrants. So here we can assume that the collapse of FTX and other companies with questionable activity will have a positive impact on the coin industry in the future.


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