Odaily Planet Daily reports: Hasu, Strategic Lead at Flashbots, posted on X that structural issues with BitMEX’s insurance fund may have been a key reason the company ultimately chose to shut down rather than sell. Hasu noted that as early as 2018, he highlighted that BitMEX’s insurance fund did not use segregated accounts, lacked a defined upper limit on fund size, and had no clear protocol for handling excess assets—creating incentives for more aggressive user liquidations, expanding the insurance fund through liquidations, and eventually cashing out those assets. According to Hasu’s estimate, the current size of the insurance fund may be approximately $270 million.
Hasu said that BitMEX has been seeking potential buyers since at least February 2025 but has failed to reach a deal it was willing to accept. He speculated that the asset ownership and legal issues arising from the insurance fund have made it more difficult for potential acquirers to take over BitMEX, and he believes this mechanism may ultimately be one of the reasons BitMEX has been hard to sell.