4 days ago
40
Celsius Network’s bankruptcy estate has filed a $495 million lawsuit against the operators of BitMEX, accusing the exchange of fraud and market manipulation that allegedly led to the wrongful liquidation of 6,360 Bitcoin during the infamous March 2020 crash. The timing is, to put it mildly, aggressive: BitMEX is scheduled to permanently shut down on September 23, 2026, giving the estate roughly 11 days to get its legal foot in the door before the defendant effectively ceases to exist.
The complaint was filed on September 12, 2026, in the US Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York. The Blockchain Recovery Investment Consortium, or BRIC, is representing the Celsius estate as its litigation administrator.
What Celsius is actually alleging
The lawsuit names five entities tied to BitMEX’s operations: HDR Global Trading Ltd., ABS Global Trading Ltd., Shine Effort Inc. Ltd., 100x Holdings Ltd., and HDR Global Services Ltd. Celsius claims these companies intentionally designed their liquidation procedures to improperly seize customer collateral during periods of extreme volatility.
The specific incident at the center of the suit is the March 12, 2020 crash, sometimes called “Black Thursday” in crypto circles. On that day, Bitcoin’s price plummeted from roughly $7,200 to $5,678 in about 15 minutes. Celsius alleges that BitMEX made false representations about maintaining orderly markets for derivatives, and that the exchange’s systems were designed to capture more collateral than necessary from users being liquidated. The 6,360 BTC that Celsius says it lost would be worth approximately $495 million at current prices.
A race against the clock
What makes this lawsuit particularly noteworthy is its timing relative to BitMEX’s planned shutdown. The exchange announced its permanent closure on July 23, 2026, following a strategic review, with the final day of operations set for September 23. Filing suit just 11 days before that deadline suggests the Celsius estate is acutely aware that recovering anything from a defunct exchange is significantly harder than recovering from a still-operational one.
BitMEX was effectively kneecapped by US authorities when the CFTC and DOJ brought charges against its founders in 2020. Co-founder Arthur Hayes pleaded guilty to Bank Secrecy Act violations and served probation.
The Celsius estate’s lawsuit arrives amid a broader wave of legal claims against BitMEX as the exchange prepares to close, reflecting growing willingness among creditors and former counterparties to pursue recovery before the window shuts entirely.
Celsius itself filed for Chapter 11 protection on July 13, 2022, during the broad market downturn that also claimed Voyager Digital and FTX. At the time of filing, Celsius reported liabilities exceeding $5 billion. The company’s bankruptcy plan was confirmed in late 2023, which authorized the estate to pursue recovery actions including litigation like this BitMEX suit.
What this means for creditors and the broader market
For Celsius creditors who have been waiting since mid-2022 for some form of restitution, the lawsuit represents a potentially significant recovery avenue. Nearly $500 million would make a meaningful dent in the estate’s obligations, though actually collecting on any judgment is another matter entirely, especially from a company that’s about to cease operations.
The legal theory at the heart of the case could also have broader implications. If Celsius successfully argues that BitMEX’s liquidation engine was designed to extract excess collateral from users, it could establish a framework for how courts evaluate exchange liquidation practices going forward.
The legal entities named as defendants will likely survive BitMEX’s operational shutdown in some form, given that corporate shells don’t simply vanish when an exchange goes offline. But extracting nearly half a billion dollars from entities that are actively winding down their business is a very different challenge than suing a going concern.
The case is being closely watched by other bankruptcy estates and litigation administrators who may be considering similar actions against exchanges with aggressive liquidation practices. If BRIC’s approach proves viable, it could open the floodgates for comparable suits targeting exchanges that profited from the chaos of 2020 and 2022’s most volatile trading days.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
English (US) ·