BitMEX And Co-Founder Arthur Hayes Hit With New Class-Action Lawsuit Over Alleged Secret Trading Desk
BitMEX and its co-founders are once again facing legal challenges in the United States, this time through a newly filed class-action lawsuit that accuses the crypto derivatives platform of operating a secret internal trading operation against its own customers.
The complaint was submitted on July 23, 2026, in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York by BKX Services Inc. and individual trader David Namdar, who seek to represent a broader group of affected users.
Named as defendants are HDR Global Trading Limited, the company behind BitMEX, along with co-founders Arthur Hayes, Ben Delo, and Samuel Reed, plus former executive Gregory Dwyer.
At the heart of the allegations is the claim that BitMEX maintained a concealed “Insider Trading Desk.”
Plaintiffs assert that this desk allowed the exchange to take the opposite side of customer trades while publicly portraying itself as an impartial marketplace.
They further contend that BitMEX enjoyed exclusive visibility into user orders—including so-called hidden orders—that ordinary participants could not access, creating a structural advantage for the platform itself.
The two lead plaintiffs report combined losses of roughly 622.66 bitcoin, valued at approximately $40.7 million at the time of filing.
BKX Services claims losses of about 305.81 BTC, while Namdar alleges losses of roughly 316.86 BTC, largely stemming from a series of liquidations.
The complaint argues that many other users suffered similar Bitcoin losses and that customers would never have used the platform had they known about the alleged internal desk.
According to the filing, BitMEX collected more than $1 billion in trading fees between November 2014 and October 2024.
During the same period, its flagship XBTUSD perpetual contract generated over $2 trillion in notional volume.
One of the more pointed accusations is that the internal desk systematically profited from customer liquidations while simultaneously boosting fee revenue.
The lawsuit also revisits the dramatic market crash of March 13, 2020, when approximately $800 million in leveraged positions were liquidated.
Plaintiffs claim that many traders could not reach the platform because of outages, yet the alleged insider operation continued uninterrupted, allowing the exchange to accumulate additional gains through fees, liquidations, and growth in its insurance fund.
The plaintiffs are asking the court to certify the matter as a class action and to order the return of customers’ bitcoin.
They are also seeking compensatory damages, punitive damages, legal costs, interest, and other relief.
The timing of the lawsuit is notable: it arrived just one day after BitMEX announced the closure of its exchange operations.
The new case follows earlier regulatory actions against the platform in 2020, when US authorities pursued the company over alleged failures to comply with anti-money-laundering and Bank Secrecy Act requirements.
This latest action, however, centers specifically on how the exchange is said to have managed customer order flow behind the scenes.
As the case proceeds, it will test longstanding questions about transparency and fairness on centralized crypto derivatives platforms.
For former BitMEX users who experienced significant liquidations, the lawsuit offers a potential path to recover assets they believe were lost under unfair conditions. The defendants have yet to file formal responses, and the allegations remain unproven in court.
