Hong Kong-based cryptocurrency exchange BITMEX has revealed that two distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks had caused the platform’s service disruption last week.
Bitcoin (BTC) recently experienced a historic slump from $7,500 to $3,700 in less than 48 hours. On March 13, one of the worst days in the cryptocurrency markets, BitMEX suffered a 25-minute outage which, coupled with the coronavirus-driven global sell-off, wiped out $1,800 from BTC price. According to data from Datamish.com, almost $1.2 billion in Bitcoin long contracts have been liquidated on the day. As a result, many users claimed lost funds due to the forced liquidations.
Immediately after the incident, reports speculated that a whale movement stood behind the Bitcoin sell-off. Rumors of a deliberate manipulation from BitMEX itself also started circulating in the crypto community. The platform, however, was quick to respond to the service disruption and reveal that hardware issues cased it.
In a blog post released on Tuesday, BitMEX co-founder and CEO Arthur Hayes elaborated that two distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks delayed or prevented requests going to and from the platform, causing direct disruption to its users. He provided a brief summary of the event and further details regarding the attacks.
Addressing users’ claims of losses caused by the BitMEX outage, Hayes admitted that 156 accounts had been affected by the Last-Price triggered stops set on the ETH/USD trading pair. The company will pay those users compensation worth a total of 40.297 XBT, or around $217,800.
Hayes further took the opportunity to deny accusations that BitMEX had deliberately crashed its own systems.
“We operate a fair and efficient platform. Trading downtime degrades the experience for all customers and reduces our stature in the market. It would be against our own interests to fabricate downtime,” the CEO said.
The crypto market remains subdued despite a modest recovery in the price of Bitcoin in the past 24 hours. At the time of writing, the flagship cryptocurrency is trading almost 18% up at $5,314.
