CME Group, the derivatives exchange giant favored by Wall Street, said it will begin offering 24/7 trading for its cryptocurrency futures and options on May 29, a major milestone for traditional institutions to enter the cryptocurrency market.
The exchange said the move was aimed at meeting growing demand from professional investors who want to continuously manage risk even on weekends, when cryptocurrency volatility tends to spike as institutional venues close.
Tim McCourt, global head of equities and FX at CME, said the decision to open around the clock was driven by growth, adding that notional trading volume in cryptocurrency derivatives on CME trading venues reached a record $3 trillion last year.
“Client demand for risk management in digital asset markets is at an all-time high,” he said.
‘Severe price swings’
However, the move will have a bigger impact on how cryptocurrencies trade over the weekend.
While cryptocurrency markets have been operating around the clock, CME’s derivatives – widely traded by hedge funds and institutions due to its strict regulations – typically close on Friday evenings and reopen on Sundays, while the spot market remains open 24/7.
This discrepancy creates what is known as the “CME gap,” the empty price area between Friday’s closing price and Sunday’s opening price, leaving institutions exposed to weekend price swings without the ability to hedge.
Experts say CME Group’s shift to around-the-clock trading could reshape liquidity and trading dynamics in institutional and retail cryptocurrency markets, especially on weekends.
“The most violent price movements occur precisely when institutional trading venues are dark,” said CoinGecko co-founder Bobby Ong. “CME’s move is a structural endorsement of what CoinGecko’s data has shown over the years.”
He said the cascading liquidations that occurred over the weekend were a “foreseeable consequence” of thin and dispersed liquidity, noting that “CME Group [is] Eventually the gap was narrowed. “
less dramatic action
This essentially makes transactions between weekdays and weekends more seamless.
Adam Haeems, head of asset management at Tesseract Group, said the change “closes one of the last structural gaps between crypto’s native markets and regulated derivatives infrastructure.”
Institutional capital flows that are suspended on Friday and restarted on Sunday will continue uninterrupted, thereby reducing the risks and costs of weekend positions. He added that weekend volatility was “a direct consequence of this structural mismatch” and continued trading should help compress price swings and narrow spreads.
However, this does not guarantee a complete reduction in large swings; instead, price movements are likely to be more gradual.
Himes warned that simply keeping places open does not guarantee deep liquidity. “Agency desks may not schedule weekend adventures as much as they do during weekdays,” he said. “Improvements will be real, but incremental.”
For retail traders, the change could mean less dramatic price action on Monday.
“Prices have tightened and gap movement has decreased on Monday morning,” Hyams said. “Historically, CME gaps are filled more than 90% of the time — retail traders tracking the futures structure will notice that signal disappearing.”
Bitcoin as a Macro Risk Proxy
Maxime Seiler, CEO of trading firm STS Digital, said the change brings clear benefits to institutions, especially those wary of forced liquidation mechanisms on crypto-native platforms.
“Being able to trade futures and options on CME Group without the risk of automatic deleveraging is a huge selling point,” he said.
He also noted that there may be a shift in how Bitcoin is used over the weekend, when other assets are unable to trade, as a professional tool to hedge against global risk events.
“As other markets close, Bitcoin can increasingly serve as a proxy for broader macro risks, pricing global events in real time.”
