Whois & Analysis for bitmex.com

Bitcoin is both a cryptocurrency and an electronic payment system invented by an unidentified programmer, or group of programmers, under the name of Satoshi Nakamoto.

Bitcoin was introduced on 31 October 2008 to a cryptography mailing list, and released as open-source software in 2009.

The identity of Nakamoto remains unknown, though many have claimed to know it.

A cryptocurrency (or crypto currency) is a digital asset designed to work as a medium of exchange using cryptography to secure the transactions and to control the creation of additional units of the currency.

Cryptocurrencies are a subset of alternative currencies, or specifically of digital currencies.

Peer-to-peer (P2P) computing or networking is a distributed application architecture that partitions tasks or workloads between peers.

Peers are equally privileged, equipotent participants in the application.

They are said to form a peer-to-peer network of nodes.

In finance, a futures contract (more colloquially, futures) is a standardized forward contract which can be easily traded between parties other than the two initial parties to the contract.

The parties initially agree to buy and sell an asset for a price agreed upon today (the forward price), with delivery and payment occurring at a future point, the delivery date.

Because it is a function of an underlying asset, a futures contract is a derivative product.

In finance, leverage (sometimes referred to as gearing in the United Kingdom and Australia) is any technique involving the use of borrowed funds in the purchase of an asset, with the expectation that the after tax income from the asset and asset price appreciation will exceed the borrowing cost.

Normally, the finance provider would set a limit on how much risk it is prepared to take and will set a limit on how much leverage it will permit, and would require the acquired asset to be provided as collateral security for the loan.

For example, for a residential property the finance provider may lend up to, say, 80% of the property's market value, for a commercial property it may be 70%, while on shares it may lend up to, say, 60% or none at all on some shares.