I am glad that Bitmex coins had not been seized, and I am glad that mostly account holders are able to get their coins off the exchange, so far.
That is good news. Whereas I am more worried about such things as this—just for instance:
https://blog.bitmex.com/who-funds-bitcoin-development/https://blog.bitmex.com/hdr-global-trading-increases-bitcoin-developer-grant-to-us100000/BitMEX is far from the biggest funder of Bitcoin development; but their support of the effort that makes Bitcoin work on a technical level is nothing to sneeze at, either.
Most people do not even think about this. High-quality free and open-source
software engineering just appears spontaneously out of thin air, without funding and organization.
(Rather like revolutions, “amorphous movements”, mass-migrations, etc.; the world is such a random place, in which human events just happen without any organization, leadership, or money.)From what I have seen from the sidelines, BitMEX has also otherwise been on the good side of many Bitcoin issues.
E.g., “
Therefore BitMEX will not be able to support SegWit2x. [...] BitMEX considers any and all contentious hardfork tokens as altcoins.” It would be a shame if they were to diminish or disappear, leaving a void to be filled by some of the exchanges who are practically enemies of Bitcoin.
Note: I have no connection to BitMEX, and no financial interest in the foregoing statement. My experience with centralized exchanges is pretty much nil; and I don’t know anybody at BitMEX.
Thanks for highlighting that point as well, nullius.
There has been increasing kinds of funding in the bitcoin space towards developers, research and other matters, and of course, bitcoin will NOT be dead (and probably not even meaningfully disabled) if Bitmex funding towards bitcoin development and research ends up drying up.
I do agree that through the last several years, Bitmex seems to have served as a decent steward of the bitcoin space, and surely it remains a bit irritating that they are being attacked in such a seemingly strenuous way...., whether that is too much, or merely the US government employing seemingly overbearing tools in order to attempt to negotiate from a better seeming position of strength.
I surely do not claim to know many of the details of the purported egregiousness that the USA govt is proclaiming against bitmex and four of its officials to justify criminal rather than civil charges, and overall through the years, I have considered Bitmex to be greatly on the net positive side of Bitcoin's development.. even though surely some people (even pretty BIG ass players have gotten quite reckt) have been quite fucked in using their exchange when the market has moved against their bets.