tl;dr
The closure of several crypto platforms might be a positive development.
Market Snap
Market Wrap
The boring sideways chop for BTC shows no enthusiasm for change.
Curious Cryptos’ Occasional Series - Does this help to put things in perspective?
I feared not.
Curious Cryptos’ Commentary – Shutdown!
There has been a recent spate of crypto platforms shutting down operations.
The high-profile one is BitMEX. Founded in 2014 by Arthur Hayes, Ben Delo and Samuel Reed in 2014 at a time when there were very few dedicated cryptocurrency derivates exchanges, it made billionaires of Arthur and his colleagues, though not without some regulatory problems. In 2020, BitMEX and its founders pleaded guilty to failing to implement adequate anti–money laundering controls and Bank Secrecy Act compliance, though they were all pardoned of those offences by serial pardoner Trump in March 2025.
I do enjoy Arthur’s insightful and amusing newsletters, but I find it difficult to forgive him for launching the first BTC perpetual futures contract on BitMEX. These contracts are used by hedgies and other players with access to non‑public information, which allows them to empty the wallets of retail investors. That cash would, in my view, be put to much better use by simply being invested in spot BTC. Perhaps the message is finally getting through as the amount of open interest in BTC perps has roughly halved over the course of 2026. Let’s hope that trend continues.
The current owner of BitMEX, HDR Global Trading has not given a detailed commercial reason, stating only that the decision followed a strategic review, though its ever decreasing market share is well-known. If you have crypto assets held at BitMEX be sure to withdraw them before 23 September 2026, when trading shuts down and positions are force‑closed; after that, unwithdrawn balances will incur maintenance fees.
But BitMEX is not the only one.
Odos Protocol, a DEX aggregator, is closing effective tomorrow. If you created a wallet on Odos and it contains any crypto assets you must either transfer them elsewhere or export the private key – the Odos wallet was non-custodial, so those assets remain on‑chain under your key, even though the front‑end disappears. If, however, by Saturday you have not exported your private key, those assets will remain forever locked and inaccessible on the blockchain. You have been warned.
Weirdly the Odos DAO is not being wound up, and the ODOS coin remains in circulation. With a near 99% drawdown, and daily volumes measured in the tens of thousands of dollars, this is a legacy coin that is going nowhere. If you own it, and you are hanging onto it in the hope of better days, well, that is a playbook that tends not to work very well.
BitMart – another centralised cryptocurrency exchange – is halting trading on 26 August 2026, with final closure scheduled for 31 January 2027. As discussed on 11 July here in the CCC, AscendEX has ceased operations, with some users reporting difficulties retrieving their assets. EXMO.com (me, neither) has also announced closure, citing a mix of regulatory and strategic pressures, though details remain thin.
If any of these closures affect you, act quickly. If you have any problems retrieving assets you want to be early in the queue whilst there is still some measure of customer support. Do it now, not tomorrow.
…
In the past, the depth of crypto winters has always been marked with failures – sometimes of very high profile such as scammer Sam Bankman-Fried’s vehicle FTX which was used to personally enrich himself and his cohort of other feral scumbags – of crypto platforms.
These recent examples are not of that nature – they have not blown up because of fraud or excessive leverage. But perhaps that is irrelevant. Perhaps this is another sign that the darkest depths of this crypto winter is behind us.