How did the Goldman Sachs of Bitcoin come to be?

     For someone who wants to work in the financial industry, banks such as Citibank and Deutsche Bank are the best choices. Once you enter these places, you will never leave unless there is a special reason.

     BitMEX founder and CEO Arthur Hayes did the opposite. After graduating from Wharton School in 2008, Arthur came to Hong Kong and worked at Deutsche Bank and Citibank at the same time. But in mid-2013, he left the bank and devoted his energy and time to what he saw as the future of finance: Bitcoin.

     To be precise, it should be a Bitcoin financial product. Bitcoin, a digital currency, can be exchanged for US dollars and used to buy goods online; but more importantly, it can enter the stock market or stock derivatives market. It is not easy to build such a platform to facilitate such transactions and gain the trust of users. But Arthur and his two other co-founders, Samuel Reed and Ben Delo, firmly believe that their team can accomplish this task.

From an idea to $5 million a day

The three co-founders came up with the concept of BitMEX in early 2014. In just six months, CTO Samuel, who had extensive experience in building large-scale real-time web interfaces, created the BitMEX Beta version, and then the website was launched.

     BitMEX is a real-time trading platform based on Bitcoin. Currently, its services are still limited to currency futures trading, but services for stock derivatives and other financial products are being actively prepared. Currently, BitMEX still functions as a Bitcoin-based platform for analyzing the future value potential of digital currencies.

     In the early days, BitMEX was unknown. Since its launch at the beginning of this year, BitMEX has 3,400 registered users. To be honest, BitMEX's user base is not large, but these 3,400 users have completed more than $250 million worth of financial product transactions since the website went online. Now, BitMEX's average daily trading volume has reached $5 million, and Arthur said that by this time next year, their goal is to reach $50 million in daily trading volume.

     BitMEX takes a cut of each trade and has long been profitable.

     BitMEX is particularly attractive to Chinese users, who are bullish on the future of bitcoin and eager to enter the international market.

     “Chinese investors cannot invest in companies like Tencent and Alibaba that are listed on foreign stock markets,” Arthur said.

     At present, Chinese residents are separated from the international financial market, and currency speculation, derivatives trading, and purchasing foreign stocks are not realistic for ordinary people.

     “China has the largest number of bitcoin users and traders in the world,” Arthur said. Despite occasional controls on cryptocurrencies by the authorities, bitcoin has exploded in the domestic market. “Chinese users are hungry for more bitcoin trading products, and BitMEX is targeting these users.”

The BitMEX Team

Asia, the Bitcoin Capital

     Due to the regulation of the US government, Bitcoin operations are prohibited in the United States, which provides conditions for the outbreak of Bitcoin in the Asian market. In the middle of this year, in order to enter the Asian market, BitMEX entered the Chinaccelerator project, a startup incubator located in Shanghai.

     "Through this project, as a foreigner, we learned how to integrate into the Chinese market," said Arthur. In addition to China, BitMEX also involves the Korean and Japanese markets. Arthur said that these countries, including China, are the world's largest Bitcoin trading markets.

     BitMEX is also committed to building trust with potential users. In addition to participating in Asian Bitcoin fan meetings, the three founders are also very active on social media to answer users' questions.

     BitMEX received $180,000 in its first round of financing from friends, relatives and VCs. Now, the company plans to raise $2 million to expand its business. In the future, Arthur hopes that BitMEX can become a full-featured Bitcoin trading platform, providing financial product trading including stocks, bonds, commodities and currencies.

     "BitMEX is the Goldman Sachs of Bitcoin," said Arthur.