The Bitcoin Mercantile Exchange (BitMEX), a top crypto derivatives exchange, is leasing some of the most expensive office space in the world. It is moving into the Cheung Kong Center in Hong Kong, which costs HKD 225 per square foot, or USD 29 per square foot per month. The space BitMEX has leased is on the 45th floor and is 20,000 square feet, so this comes out to USD 580,000 per month and nearly USD 6.9 million per year.
The Cheung Kong Center also has offices for Bloomberg, Barclays, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, and La Ka-Shing who is a billionaire with a business empire. Perhaps this clustering of financial powerhouses in the same building will prove beneficial for the exchange’s operations long term.
This is perhaps a strange time for BitMEX to be buying some of the most expensive office space in the world, considering the entire crypto market is in a bear market which has seen Bitcoin decline from USD 20,000 to USD 6,000 in less than a year, and declines for other cryptocurrencies have been even more extreme. However, BitMEX trades Bitcoin and Ethereum derivatives contracts that can be used to go long or short. Additionally, it offers 100x leveraging.
This makes BitMEX and its traders in a prime position to profit from volatility. It doesn’t matter if the market is going down, as long as the market is volatile BitMEX makes tremendous profits, and the crypto markets have been defined by volatility in 2018. BitMEX has seen rapidly growing volume in 2018 despite the bear market. For example, as of this writing on 23 August 2018, BitMEX has USD 3 billion of trading volume, which is quite common. BitMEX’s volume has exceeded USD 6 billion on record days.
It also seems strange from a geopolitical standpoint that the largest fiat to crypto related exchange in the world is moving to Hong Kong. To clarify, BitMEX has the most volume by far out of any crypto exchange but they trade derivatives, not actual cryptocurrency. Although Hong Kong has an autonomous government that is more favorable towards crypto than China, it is still a territory of China. China has banned trading of its native currency, the CNY, to crypto. More recently, it has blacklisted practically every crypto exchange website.
It is not disclosed if this office in Hong Kong will be BitMEX’s headquarters. Right now BitMEX is incorporated in the Seychelles.
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