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 in how traditional institutions access cryptocurrency markets.
The move, the exchange said, is aimed at meeting growing demand from professional investors who want to continuously manage risk even during weekends, when cryptocurrency volatility often increases as institutional venues are closed.
The decision to open 24 hours a day was driven by growth, said Tim McCourt, CME’s global head of equities and currencies, adding that crypto derivatives across all CME locations hit a record $3 trillion in notional volume last year.
“Client demand for risk management in the digital asset market is at an all-time high,” he said.
“Violent price changes”
However, this move will have an even bigger impact on the way cryptocurrencies are traded on weekends.
While crypto markets have always been active 24 hours a day, CME derivatives (widely traded by hedge funds and institutions due to their strict regulatory oversight) typically close on Friday night and reopen on Sunday, while the spot market remains open 24/7.
That discrepancy contributes to the well-known “CME gaps,” the empty price area between Friday’s close and Sunday’s open, which leaves institutions exposed to weekend price swings without the ability to hedge..
Experts say that CME’s shift toward permanent trading could reshape liquidity and trading dynamics in both institutional and retail crypto markets, especially during weekends.
“The most violent price swings occur precisely when institutional spaces are dark,” said Bobby Ong, co-founder of CoinGecko. “CME’s move is a structural recognition of what CoinGecko data has shown for years.”
He said the cascades of liquidations over the weekend were a “predictable consequence” of tight and fragmented liquidity, noting that “CME [is] finally closing that gap.”
Less dramatic movements
Basically what this will do is make trading smoother between weekdays and weekends.
Adam Haeems, head of asset management at Tesseract Group, said the change “closes one of the last structural gaps between crypto-native markets and regulated derivatives infrastructure.”
Institutional flows that stop on Friday and restart on Sunday will continue uninterrupted, reducing the risk and cost of holding positions over the weekends. He added that the weekend’s volatility has been “a direct consequence of this structural imbalance” and that continued trading should help compress those price swings and tighten spreads.
However, this does not guarantee a complete reduction of massive oscillations; rather, the price action will likely be more gradual.
Haeems cautioned that simply keeping the venue open does not guarantee great liquidity. “Institutional offices cannot take risks on weekends with the same intensity as on weekdays,” he said. “The improvement will be real but gradual.”
For retail traders, the change may mean less dramatic price action on Monday.
“Tighter prices and less discordant gap moves on Monday mornings,” Haeems said. “Historically, the CME gap has been filled more than 90% of the time; retail traders tracking futures structure will notice that signal fading.”
Bitcoin as a macro risk proxy
Maxime Seiler, CEO of trading firm STS Digital, echoed that the change offers clear benefits to institutions, especially those wary of forced settlement mechanisms on crypto-native platforms.
“The ability to trade futures and options on CME without the risk of automatic deleveraging is a big selling point,” he said.
He also signaled a change in the way bitcoin can be used on weekends as a professional tool to hedge global risk events when other assets are not available for trading.
“With other markets closed, bitcoin could increasingly function as an indicator of broader macroeconomic risk, pricing global events in real time.”
