--- title: "Market Pulse — July 23: The Venue That Invented the 100x Perpetual Is Closing. The Perpetual Never Left." published: 2026-07-24T21:20:20.719779+00:00 type: market_pulse scope: crypto_market canonical: https://moonwire.org/insights/market-pulse-2026-07-23.html tags: [market_pulse, derivatives, perpetuals, bitmex, security, exploits, etf-flows, daily] --- # Market Pulse — July 23: The Venue That Invented the 100x Perpetual Is Closing. The Perpetual Never Left. > BitMEX — which pioneered the 100x perpetual swap in 2014 — will shut down on September 23, and the coverage read like an obituary for the leverage era. The cross-source tell cuts the other way: on the same day the perpetual was standing infrastructure at a Bermuda-licensed Coinbase entity, an on-chain book that cleared $4B in two weeks, and the venue where the day's largest identifiable fund shorts sat. The day's bearish derivatives tone was about stretched positioning and one dying venue — not the instrument, which is migrating onto licensed and on-chain rails even as a record run of bridge exploits met a new institutional security push. ## Key takeaways - The tell: BitMEX, which introduced the 100x perpetual swap in 2014, will close September 23 [19666][19760] — but the instrument it invented had its most mainstream day yet, with Coinbase's licensed derivatives stack extending to metals futures [19780] and Ondo's on-chain perps clearing $4B in ~2 weeks [19781]. - The bearish derivatives tape was about venue and positioning, not the instrument: HYPE fell ~8% on ~$150M of queued unstaking [19744] and ~$108M of institutional ETH shorts sat underwater on Hyperliquid [19627]. - The spot bid diverged from the derivatives tone: spot BTC ETFs logged a 7th straight inflow day (~$69M) and ETH ETFs took $72.6M even as BTC dipped to $65,537 and ETH to $1,917 [19654]; BofA's Bull & Bear gauge hit 9.6, its highest since Dec 2020 [19698]. - The other side, attributed: Trader Mayne called the 24/7 migration 'the most bullish happening in crypto' [19766]; Ansem put the cycle lows 'already in' [19788]; BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes added ~3,270 ETH the same week his exchange wound down [19698]. - Security widened at both ends: ~$35.5M drained across three bridge exploits [19622][19631][19750], the Drift $285M party moved funds to Tornado Cash [19739] and wrench-attack losses hit $124.1M (+12x) [19644] — met the same day by Strategy's $15M Bitcoin Security Consortium with BlackRock and Coinbase [19648]. BitMEX — the venue that introduced the 100x leverage perpetual swap to crypto in 2014 — will permanently shut down on September 23, 2026, after a strategic review by operator HDR Global Trading; new registrations are already halted and any open positions will be force-closed at closure [19666][19760]. Its BMEX token fell roughly 98% on the news [19693]. The coverage was valedictory — obituaries for an 11-year legacy, and the question of whether yesterday's crypto giants survive today's market [19756]. The cross-source read cuts the other way: the perpetual BitMEX invented has never been more mainstream — it simply spent the same 24 hours surfacing everywhere BitMEX wasn't. ## Same instrument, new rails As BitMEX wound down, Coinbase pushed its regulated derivatives stack further: commodity futures — gold, copper, silver, platinum — went live on Coinbase Advanced, cleared in the U.S. through a CFTC-registered futures commission merchant, with the same platform's perpetuals offered outside the U.S. through a Bermuda-licensed entity [19780]. The contract wrapper BitMEX popularized is now standing infrastructure at a licensed venue — and being pointed at metals. Ondo's on-chain perpetuals crossed $4B in cumulative volume roughly two weeks after general availability [19781]. And the day's largest identifiable fund positions sat on Hyperliquid, where on-chain data identified about $108M of institutional ETH shorts — roughly $67M from one fund and $41M from another — all underwater with ETH near $1,920 [19627]. The offshore 100x archetype is closing; the instrument is being re-issued under Bermuda licenses and on public order books. ## The bearish tape was about venue and positioning, not the instrument Derivatives were the day's heaviest cautionary thread, and the pieces fit that frame: HYPE fell about 8% as three funds queued roughly $150M of tokens for unstaking [19744]; the identifiable ETH shorts stayed red into a market that would not break [19627]; and Glassnode's monthly fund read showed June turning risk-off, with directional funds down and net capital leaving every major asset [19765]. Yet the spot bid did not follow the derivatives tone down: spot bitcoin ETFs logged their seventh straight day of net inflows (~$69M) and spot ether ETFs took in $72.6M, even as BTC eased 1.1% to $65,537 and ETH slipped 0.8% to $1,917 [19654]. Bank of America's Bull & Bear indicator, meanwhile, hit 9.6 — its most optimistic reading since December 2020 [19698] — against an ECB that held its deposit rate at 2.25% [19698]. ## The other side The tape treated it as an ending. The attributed dissent came from Trader Mayne, who read the same migration as constructive: with traditional finance moving toward 24/7 trading, he argued the pressure now runs the other way — on-chain venues will have to build KYC rails to operate in the U.S., Canada and the U.K. — and called it "the most bullish happening in crypto" [19766]. Ansem, separately, put the cycle's lows "already in," with a 3-to-6-month runway before broad agreement [19788]. And in a footnote the market noticed, BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes spent the same eight-day stretch adding ether — roughly 3,270 ETH (~$6.27M) at an average near $1,917 — even as his exchange prepared to close [19698]. ## The day's other structural story: security It was a heavy day on-chain. Three exploits drained roughly $35.5M — about $24.15M from AFX Trade's USDC bridge on Arbitrum, $7.54M from the Verus–Ethereum bridge in a second incident reusing May's bug class, and $3.86M from B² Network [19622][19631][19750]. Separately, the party behind Drift Protocol's $285M hack began moving ETH to Tornado Cash in 100-ETH batches after three months of dormancy [19739], and CertiK put first-half physical "wrench attack" losses at $124.1M, up twelvefold year on year [19644]. The counterweight arrived the same day and from the opposite end of the market: Strategy launched a Bitcoin Security Consortium with BlackRock, Coinbase and others, pledging $15M over three years with an initial focus on post-quantum cryptography [19648][19698], while The Block published a proof-of-reserves primer on exchange trust [19649]. The losses printed as on-chain telemetry; the defense printed as institutional infrastructure — the two never met in the middle. ## Net A dip on the tape, a constructive structure underneath: the instrument that defined crypto's last leverage cycle is being institutionalized rather than retired, and the day's security ledger widened at both ends at once. --- *MoonWire surfaces and summarizes public crypto news.* **General information only — not financial advice.** MoonWire Ltd. is not licensed by ASIC and holds no AFSL. 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