Ten Months Later: Chainalysis Removes BitMEX From The High Risk Exchange Category

Less than a year after Chainalysis placed BitMEX into its “high risk” cryptocurrency exchanges zone, the company has reversed its decision. The analytics company has conducted an internal review of the derivatives exchanges, which has strived to improve its AML compliance lately.

• BitMEX faced extreme scrutiny last year when most of its executives at the time, including Arthur Hayes, Benjamin Delo, and Samuel Reed, were indicted by the US government with accusations of operating a derivatives exchange without the proper licensing.
• While they left their positions at the trading platform and were arrested months later, the consequences on BitMEX were immediate.
• Chainalysis, a large analytics firm, outlined potential risks in regards to the trading venue and warned investors to be especially wary of operating on it.
• More precisely, Chainalysis placed BitMEX into its “High Risk Exchange” category. Now, though, the derivatives platform announced that the analytics firm had reversed its decision.
• The statement reads that this came after “an internal review of the criteria” and BitMEX’s “continuous work to deliver industry-leading compliance, AML, and user verification programmes.”
• In the past several months, the derivatives platform indeed took notable steps into enhancing user protection and its AML compliance. That included improving its trade surveillance, verifying 100% of the trading volume and user base, and multiple new additions to the team.
• Those included a former Bank of China CCO as non-executive board direction, a new Chief Compliance Officer, and a new CEO who came from Borse Stuttgart.

• Malcolm Wright, the aforementioned new CCO, said, “building a world-class compliance programme is essential to building trust as we honor our commitment to be responsible innovators, always.”

• Furthermore, the exchange promised that it has not “done making improvements to our compliance capabilities yet, but we are making progress.”