The bankruptcy estate of Celsius has initiated legal action against five corporate entities associated with BitMEX on September 12, putting forward accusations of fraud, market manipulation, and improper liquidations during the market crash in March 2020.
The lawsuit involves 1,325.84 BTC forfeited by Celsius alongside 5,034.33 BTC lost by the investment vehicle JST, whose legal claims were transferred to the estate—representing 6,360 BTC altogether, valued at approximately $495 million.
With BitMEX scheduled to halt trading on September 23, the estate has an 11-day window to proceed against a platform that is currently shutting down its operations.
The insolvent digital asset lender Celsius Network’s estate has taken legal action against BitMEX concerning forced asset liquidations during the March 2020 COVID-19 market downturn, demanding the recovery of 6,360 BTC valued today at around $495 million.
The legal document was submitted on September 12 to the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York by the Blockchain Recovery Investment Consortium, which serves as the designated litigation administrator for the Celsius insolvency proceedings. The named defendants consist of HDR Global Trading, ABS Global Trading, Shine Effort, 100x Holdings, and HDR Global Services—corporate structures operating across Bermuda, the Cayman Islands, England, Hong Kong, the Seychelles, and the U.S.
Celsius claims it dropped 1,325.84 BTC during a single liquidation event on March 12, 2020, and is pursuing rights transferred to it by the JST investment fund, which forfeited 5,034.33 BTC the following day. Each entity held trading positions that only generated profits if bitcoin maintained its value or increased. The court filing asserts that BitMEX maintained control over both the mechanism determining customer liquidation thresholds and the reserve fund accumulated through those forced sales.
“BitMEX intentionally designed its platform and liquidation procedures to cause liquidations of collateral and defraud its own customers,” the lawsuit states.
This claim contrasts sharply with how Celsius originally presented its operations. The platform, which distributed returns on client deposits and ultimately failed in 2022, advertised conservative, delta-neutral strategies including arbitrage, funding-rate capture, and carry trades. A July 2022 court submission from its insolvency proceedings indicated that beneath those public assertions, the company operated “several highly speculative derivative and asset deployment mechanisms,” a conclusion reinforced in the court-appointed examiner’s comprehensive final report. A leveraged long position established during the COVID-19 crash, financed via pooled customer funds, matches the exact type of strategy detailed in those documents.
These allegations remain unverified. This represents the second legal complaint brought against BitMEX following its July announcement regarding its wind-down. The exchange is set to suspend all trading activity on September 23.
Originally published at https://www.coindesk.com/business/2026/09/16/celsius-sues-bitmex-for-usd495-million-over-2020-crash-liquidations.
