Bitcoin: BitMEX sued in UK, $27 million claimed

Late addition for an already buried exchange. At the end of September, the BitMEX exchange platform announced its closure. British software engineer Lewis Barber is now demanding the restitution of 324.8 bitcoins from HDR Global Trading, the operator of BitMEX, before the English courts. The sum was worth 20.4 million pounds as of October 1 (about $27.2 million).

His argument rests on a single point. BitMEX has never obtained approval from the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) to offer derivatives products to British residents, and English law provides a very concrete civil penalty for this failure.

Key Points

Lewis Barber demands repayment of 324.8 BTC, valued at £20.4 million, from HDR Global Trading

The appeal is based on the lack of authorization of the exchange with the British regulator between 2018 and 2022

Only loss-making operations are attacked, i.e. 1,053 contracts out of nearly 2,300

Other former British clients are invited to come forward, for exposure estimated in the hundreds of millions

BitMEX, perpetual swaps and a British law from 2000

This supposed lack of approval relates to four years of trading. Lewis Barber placed approximately 2,294 orders on BitMEX between 2018 and 2022 from five separate accounts. Only the 1,053 losing positions are contested.

All of these operations involved perpetual swaps, these futures contracts without an expiry date that BitMEX launched in 2016 and which have since dominated crypto derivatives trading. A financing rate paid periodically between buyers and sellers keeps the price of the contract pegged to that of the underlying. The leverage could go up to 100 times the stake.

The plaintiff's central argument is based on the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000, the framework law for British financial regulation. Its articles 26 and 27 (which it will be recalled that they apply to any regulated financial activity, crypto or not) make any contract concluded by an entity without authorization unenforceable against the customer and give this customer a right to restitution of sums paid, accompanied by compensation.

Concretely, Lewis Barber can retroactively cancel his loss-making positions, recover his stake and keep the winnings from the 1,241 other operations. The mechanism protects any British customer who has dealt with an unauthorized service provider, regardless of the nature of the product sold.

The appeal also includes a component for deceit, the English equivalent of fraud. The complaint claims that BitMEX knew it did not have British authorization while implying that it could legally deal with a resident of the country. The plaintiff's lawyers notified the termination of all contracts in December 2025.

The framework has hardened further along the way. Since January 6, 2021, the FCA has banned the sale of crypto derivatives and ETNs backed by cryptoassets to UK individuals. Some of the orders covered by the complaint came after this ban.

Crypto: BitMEX has closed shop, procedures are piling up

For now, the complaint has been filed but not yet served on the exchange. A BitMEX spokesperson responded to the Guardian with a minimal defensive line.

“No such complaints have been served on HDR Global Trading Limited. »

A BitMEX spokesperson, quoted by The Guardian

The platform ceased all activity on September 23, two months after announcing its closure. We will have fun (so to speak) at the timetable chosen by the plaintiff, who filed his appeal just a few weeks after the servers were shut down.

BitMEX's legal troubles are not new. Ben Delo, Arthur Hayes and Samuel Reed pleaded guilty in 2022 to violating the Bank Secrecy Act, the American anti-money laundering law. The platform's identity checks were then non-existent. Donald Trump pardoned them in March 2025. The company itself pleaded guilty in 2024 and was fined $100 million in January 2025.

In New York, a class action under review targets HDR Global Trading for bitcoin theft and insider trading. It specifically implicates the three co-founders.

Ben Delo has since reinvested elsewhere. The co-founder donated £36 million to Reform UK in September, the largest individual donation in British political history.

The British case is unlikely to remain isolated. Seladore Legal estimates that many other investors are in a similar situation to that of Lewis Barber, with a cumulative total of several hundred million pounds.

“Other UK-based individuals may have entered into similar contracts with BitMEX, although whether there is any action for each will depend on the particular facts and trading history. »

Gareth Keillor, partner at Seladore Legal

The total mentioned by the London firm would represent several times the $100 million fine that BitMEX paid to the American authorities in January 2025. Seladore Legal is now inviting the platform's former British clients to come forward.