A conversation with BXRekt, the anonymous Twitter account that broadcasts bad BitMEX bets

A parody of a video game announcer — that's what the anonymous person behind the Twitter account of @BXRekt, better known as the BitMEX Rekt bot, is going for.

The account, which has over 13,800 followers, blasts out announcements when people blow their margins on crypto derivatives exchange BitMEX. The flashy, often emoji-studded tweets document which positions are liquidated and at what price. If several positions are liquidated consecutively, BXRekt will also flag these liquidations with fire emojis and catchphrases like "double kill," "ultra kill," or sometimes "the only way to fix this is to use higher leverage."

Liquidated short on XBTUSD: Buy 6,912,390 @ 9328 ???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????? ~ Triple kill ~ The only way to fix this is to use higher leverage

— REKT (@BXRekt) July 12, 2020

The BitMEX Rekt bot plays well in the world of crypto trading, where the availability of 100x leverage combines with the already-volatile prices to breed a hyper-competitive, gambling mentality. Like the account's anonymous owner says:

"Traders want to see their counterparty lose, that's just a fact of life because someone's loss is their gain."

And this is the essence of @BXRekt: it takes these facts of life and broadcasts them to the whole community. The Block recently reached out to the person behind @BXRekt to learn more about its history and their view on the industry.

Can you share the history of yourself and why you decided to start BitMEX Rekt?

I was drawn into crypto from the technical side. I used to run an altcoin mining pool before all this. It was after all a cool thing to do.

I [started trading on] BitMEX in December 2016. This was after I tried to launch another mining pool that went nowhere, so I decided to "invest" the money I set aside on ZEC futures.

I remember waking up and looking at the price for ZEC futures and it went up to 10 BTC per future (of course, my asks closed out that position at a much lower price). As we know, the spot price went up much higher due to the excitement on the launch date.

Having gambled and won on BitMEX I thought I might as well stay for a bit longer.

BitMEX trollbox between 2016 and 2017 was quite interesting. Arthur, Samuel, and Ben hung out in there, and some of the big players (Sleger) regularly talked in the chat. (Arthur Hayes, BitMEX cofounder and CEO, Ben Delo, BitMEX cofounder, Samuel Reed, BitMEX cofounder, Sleger, a famous trader on BitMEX)

Such was the days when people were in awe of a 1 million sized position on BitMEX. There was of course the original REKT bot, run by one of the people doing market-making, that's still in the trollbox today.

Trading is a glorified cage fight and when the price moves it's always a spectacle. You see someone win/lose 6 figures in an instant and you think "wow what's going on here."

I thought other people wanted to see this too. Twitter bots were all the rage back then so I wanted to try and make one as well.

Are you the only person operating this account? Do you see it as something that can be turned into a business?

I run the bot myself. It's just a bit of fun and it provides some market transparency by backing up the liquidation stream on Twitter.

In July 2019, the original BXRekt account, BitmexRekt, was banned by Twitter for "impersonation." What happened?

I remember logging into Twitter and it popped up a message saying something to the effect of "Twitter has identified your account as an impersonator and you must change your name in three days or be banned".

I clicked around it and it disappeared and I never saw it again. I thought it was a glitch and didn't think much of it. There was no email or anything.

You know you've become a big boy when Twitter bans your account. It had to happen at some point.

It's really difficult to reach customer service on Twitter, either you know someone that works there or you're completely out of luck. I tried contacting some friends of friends that work there but they were on a different internal team and couldn't help. In the end, I decided to just make a new account. I couldn't get the word out because Twitter was the only communications channel I had. I ended up emailing @Flood who actually has an alternative contact on his profile page. Shout out to @Flood for being so helpful and a nice guy.

BitMEX Rekt has a very creative commentary (M-M-M-M-Monster kill, Triple Kill, etc) for big liquidations. Why did you decide to add that stuff?

It's a spectacle, all the banter and memes just make it more entertaining. It's a parody of a video game announcer, shouting out every kill. (Those particular kill messages are well known from Unreal Tournament/Quake).

Do you plan to add support for other platforms like crypto derivatives exchanges Deribit or Binance?

Deribit has an incremental liquidation system that doesn't result in liquidations of entire positions at the same time, it's more akin to death by a thousand cuts. Binance has provided an API so it is doable, I have to say that real life has been really busy and I wanted to make the bot for Binance but I also couldn't work out some design issues, e.g. I didn't want to recycle the same messages so either I have to write more memes or come up with some other way. I do notice that Binance products have a lot more liquidity now so if there is interest then I can have another go at it.

What kind of impact do you think BitMEX Rekt has on the crypto market?

I don't think it impacts the market much, it's more entertainment for traders. Traders want to see their counterparty lose, that's just a fact of life because someone's loss is their gain. Arguably the bot is a risk disclaimer for crypto, but some people enjoy this risk. Note that it is entirely possible for both sides of the trade on BitMEX to make money at the same time, in the bull market, traders shorting the swap was receiving funding to the tune of 50%+ APR, traders longing the swap was making money despite the funding. This is possible because shorts was in essence, being paid to provide liquidity for the platform while carrying the counterparty risk of BitMEX disappearing with their money.

What are the plans for future of this project?

I guess I would be maintaining it, I can't see it going away. But regarding new additions will have to see if I can come up with something interesting. The source code is there for people that want to mess around with it since day one.