From a security point of view, Bitmex I like, because it has never been hacked or compromised, no hacker attacks have been made on it. And this is just an excellent result for a 7-year period of work. Few exchanges can show such a result. The exception was the story of the e-mail compromise, but this problem was quickly resolved and those who could be potentially at risk quickly warned them and forcibly reset their passwords to enter the exchange so that users create a new one.
As for novice traders, this exchange is unsafe and highly discouraged in terms of maintaining its balance. There is nothing for an untrained trader to do on this exchange.
I tried googling this but couldn't find it, so could be completely off mark and mixing it up with something else... but I think I read somewhere that most big platform hacks are sleepers that are woken up after a period of time. So the hackers try to infect as many points as they can, without being discovered. Hoping that every time they upgrade or bring over new security, they carry over the undetected malware or code.
Triggering them only years later in a long con when there's a lot of info or access compromised. So when an exchange hasn't ever been hacked, I think:
- they successfully covered it up.
- they're not worth hacking.
- they haven't been hacked (triggered) yet.
You're probably right to trust that level of reputation though. I also have a couple of platforms I begrudgingly trust due to my need for such fiat ramping services =)