How Binance (Un)intentionally Made BitMEX to Promote Their Futures

Eimantas Žemaitis
Last updated: | 2 min read

It appears that major crypto exchange, Binance, was caught red-handed plagiarizing BitMEX’s FAQ sections about Auto-Deleveraging and Funding Rate. The entire conversation was then turned into an amusing blame game by the most ardent fans of both exchanges, while one of the theories claims that this is exactly what Binance wanted to achieve, as the major competitor just promoted their new futures platform.

Source: iStock/drante

In a humorous exchange on Twitter, BitMEX tweeted a message with images displaying 100% matching texts on both BitMEX and Binance Futures sites. The identical documentation texts explain how Auto-Deleveraging and Funding Rate Calculations. The only difference is between the two is the different exchange names.

Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao was quick to respond. He took all the blame, admitted his team had overlooked the mistake and provided a link to “The official docs of Futures A platform.”

However, this wouldn’t be a crypto Twitter story if there wasn’t a twist. Some people accused BitMEX of copying the works from OKC International when Changpeng Zhao worked there. According to the Twitter user @BTCVIX, BitMEX simply copied the Bitcoin futures model from the other cryptocurrency exchange OKEx.

“Insurance fund was 100% OKC and CZ’s creation — BitMEX copy and pasted that. OKC created the socialized loss model and BitMEX changed the name to DPE Dynamic Profit Equalization — CZ is just copying back now,” according to the user.

Meanwhile, Su Zhu, CEO of Three Arrows Capital, also shared his opinion on this amusing matter:

Going deeper down the rabbit hole, some crypto Twitter users told an entire history lesson and taught that even though BitMEX didn’t conceive crypto futures trading along with the insurance fund, neither did the OKEx exchange. They claim that Bitcoin futures trading was started by a now little-known 796.com online casino that reportedly lost around BTC 3,000 to a scam in 2015 and has lost its leadership position in the BTC futures trading market ever-since.

Also, this whole situation marks the BitMEX CEO and co-founder Arthur Hayes’s return to the public eye. After disappearing from the public right at the time when the news broke that U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission is investigating BitMEX, Hayes restrained from social media and only posted a few pictures saying that he has traded “trading in a yacht for a jungle.” Now, apparently, he is back to business from his holiday visiting Macchu Picchu.

Hayes didn’t take long to make a jesting remark of his own:

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