BitMEX Adds Native SegWit Support to Bitcoin Withdrawals, Non-Native Support Coming to Wallets

Popular crypto derivatives exchange BitMEX is now supporting native SegWit address format, Bech32 to withdraw Bitcoin, announced the exchange on Dec. 12. This upgrade is effective immediately.

Starting now, BitMEX customers can withdraw to all three address formats, Bitcoin’s original address format Pay to Public Key Hash (P2PKH) whose address starts with number 1, Pay to Script Hash (P2SH) whose address starts with number 3, and the native SegWit address format Bech32 whose address starts with bc1.

However, it's just for withdrawals, when depositing to BitMEX, you must still send the exchange’s Pay to Script Hash (P2SH) format addresses due to their multi-signature wallet solution.

This upgrade will reduce the usage of the exchange's blockweight, allowing its customers to enjoy lower transaction fees.

“The key advantage of Bech32 addresses is that transaction fees can be saved when spending Bitcoin, which was already sent to a Bech32 address. Therefore this upgrade will not directly result in fee savings when customers withdraw from BitMEX, however in the next transaction, when the bitcoin already withdrawn from BitMEX is spent again, our customers may benefit from lower transaction fees.”

Last month Bitfinex exchange also added native SegWit support for Bitcoin withdrawals.

Segregated Witness or SegWit is an optional protocol upgrade first implemented in 2017 that increases block capacity and thereby help lower costs per transaction.

From 36.6% on Sept. 1st 2019, SegWit adoption hit its peak in early October at 56.8% only to drop. Currently, we are at a 51.9% adoption rate, as per Woobull Charts.

BitMEX further shared its future plan to enable Segwit non-native support to its wallet. This will help them save 65% of blockweight, more than the usual 25% to 40%, the exchange said.