Crypto Futures Spat Continues: BitMEX Blames Binance For Copying (Again)

The plagiarism saga involving BitMEX and Binance, perhaps the two most prominent cryptocurrency exchanges in today’s market, continues in full force. After Changpeng Zhao tweeted that a certain market maker had tried to attack its futures platform and that no one had gotten liquidated because of his company’s “innovation”, citing its liquidation policy, the CEO of BitMEX, Arthur Hayes, immediately responded that he’d give Zhao a course on copying and pasting in exchange for 51% of his equity.

BitMEX’s Arthur Hayes Strikes Again

Earlier today, the CEO of the world’s leading cryptocurrency exchange, Changpeng Zhao, stated that its relatively new futures platform was under attack by a market maker. According to Zhao, no one was liquidated because “we use the index price (not futures prices) for liquidations (our innovation)”.

What followed was a wave of comments which noted that by no means is this Binance’s innovation, as BitMEX has tied its liquidations to the index price for a long time.

Naturally, the CEO of BitMEX, being the person that he is, didn’t wait for long to comment on the matter.

Next time I’m down in Singapore @cz_binance please attend my running a crypto derivatives platform 101. I teach advanced cntl+C cntl+V methods. Price of entry … 51% of your equity. https://t.co/RYGkf4aJih

— Arthur Hayes (@CryptoHayes) September 16, 2019

Zhao responded to Hayes’s tweet, acknowledging that his own tweet was indeed misleading “in the way it was written.” He explained that he hadn’t meant to call the index price liquidation methodology Binance’s innovation. Not long after that, BitMEX’s official Twitter account posted that it was “great to see traders on other exchanges being protected and benefiting from our innovation.”

How It All Started

The back-and-forth between two of the most prominent individuals in the entire cryptocurrency space began earlier this month.

When Binance announced the launch of two futures testnet platforms and acquired a crypto-asset derivatives platform, intending to launch cryptocurrency futures, options, and other derivatives, it published an overview on auto-deleveraging.

As it turned out, the content on that page was entirely plagiarized from an equivalent section of BitMEX’s site.

At the time, Zhao said that he was sorry about the mistake and that it had been missed in his team’s due-diligence process prior to the acquisition of the derivatives platform.

Regardless of whether or not the tussle has any actual implications for the market, it’s definitely refreshing, and as one user pointed out, it deflects attention from the ongoing Bitcoin versus Ethereum debate.