Blockchain Recovery Investment Consortium filed in the Southern District of New York on September 12, eleven days before BitMEX stops trading, over positions liquidated on March 12 and 13, 2020. The complaint alleges the exchange controlled both the liquidation engine and the insurance fund that took the positions over.
Blockchain Recovery Investment Consortium, the litigation administrator for Celsius Network's bankruptcy estate, sued five BitMEX entities on September 12 in the US Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York, asking for the return of 6,360.17 bitcoin or its current value. At the valuation the complaint uses, roughly $77,800 a coin, that comes to about $495 million. CoinDesk, crypto.news and Bermuda's Royal Gazette each reported the filing on Wednesday.
The coins were liquidated over two days during the market collapse of March 2020. Celsius lost 1,325.84 bitcoin on March 12. An investment fund identified in the filing as JST lost 5,034.33 the following day and later assigned its claims to the Celsius estate, which is how a single complaint covers both. The Royal Gazette gives the figures to four decimal places and the combined total as 6,360.1666 bitcoin. Both positions were leveraged longs, structured to pay off if bitcoin held its level or rose.
The complaint alleges fraud, breach of contract, unjust enrichment, fraudulent transfer and conversion, and frames the liquidations themselves as market manipulation. CoinDesk and crypto.news render the central allegation identically: BitMEX "intentionally designed its platform and liquidation procedures to cause liquidations of collateral and defraud its own customers."
The mechanism the estate describes is a conflict of interest inside the exchange. BitMEX controlled the liquidation engine that forced customer positions closed, and it controlled the insurance fund that took those positions over and stood to gain from them. The Royal Gazette quotes the complaint's description of a self-reinforcing liquidation cascade, in which falling prices trigger forced sales, the forced sales push prices lower, and the lower prices trigger the next round. That is an allegation about design and intent rather than an established finding. No court has ruled on it, and none of the three reports records a response from BitMEX.
The defendants are HDR Global Trading, ABS Global Trading, Shine Effort, 100x Holdings and HDR Global Services, incorporated across Bermuda, the Cayman Islands, England, Hong Kong, the Seychelles and the United States. Reporting from Bermuda, the Royal Gazette identifies 100x Holdings Ltd and HDR Global Services (Bermuda) Ltd as the two entities registered there.
September 12 is eleven days before BitMEX stops trading. MiningPool reported in July that HDR Global Trading had told users the exchange would sunset on September 23, closing an eleven-year run and charging holders who leave balances behind. The company's own announcements since then have delisted futures contracts, removed its Convert function and restricted what remains to closing trades. Suing an exchange in its final week is not the same as suing a going concern. The trading business stops on the 23rd; the five corporate defendants and whatever they hold do not, and the estate's claims run against those entities across six jurisdictions.
This is a creditor's civil claim, not an enforcement action, and it is separate from the criminal case BitMEX has already settled. Crypto.news notes that HDR Global Trading was ordered in January 2025 to pay a $100 million criminal fine over Bank Secrecy Act violations covering 2015 to 2020, and that the exchange's co-founders were pardoned later that year.
On the other side, the estate exists because Celsius failed. Its founder, Alex Mashinsky, was convicted of commodities and wire fraud in the same federal district in January 2025, and anything the administrator recovers goes to the lender's creditors rather than to a trading business. An estate winding up one failed crypto company is chasing money through another that is closing on schedule.
According to the Royal Gazette's account of the filing, the estate asks for the bitcoin itself or its current value, damages, repayment of BitMEX's profits and its legal costs, with punitive or trebled damages if a court allows them, and has requested a jury trial. Asking for the coins, or their value now rather than in March 2020, is what makes a 2020 liquidation a nine-figure claim.
