CME Switches to 24-Hour Trading..."Bitcoin Weekend Gap Disappears"

▲ Cryptocurrency trading, Bitcoin (BTC)

The CME Gap, which Bitcoin (BTC) investors have paid attention to every weekend, is expected to virtually disappear with the introduction of 24-hour futures trading by the CME Group.

According to the cryptocurrency media outlet Cryptopotato on May 28 (local time), the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) announced that it has started operating Bitcoin futures and options trading 24 hours a day on its Globex electronic trading platform. Bitcoin futures and options will be available for 24-hour trading starting this Friday.

This move marks the end of the long-known CME Gap phenomenon in the Bitcoin market. The CME Gap refers to the price void that occurs between the closing price of CME Bitcoin futures and the reopening price after the weekend due to the suspension of trading on weekends. While the spot market continues to operate without rest on weekends, the CME futures market stops trading, creating an empty space on the chart.

Cryptopotato reported that Bitcoin futures and options trading will operate 24 hours a day on Globex, with only a 60-minute maintenance window remaining each Sunday from 18:00 to 19:00 UTC+8. As a result, the structural price gaps created by weekend market closures will no longer form as they did in the past.

The CME Gap has been a signal frequently used by Bitcoin traders for many years. Some investors formulated trading strategies based on the view that Bitcoin prices would eventually return to the CME closing price level just before the weekend to fill the gap. As the popularity of CME Bitcoin futures grew, the gap-filling strategy also became widely discussed in the market.

As the CME transitions its cryptocurrency derivatives market to a 24-hour system, the Bitcoin futures market has moved closer to the continuous trading structure of the spot market. This change weakens the CME Gap logic that has long been repeated in Bitcoin chart analysis and will directly alter existing trading methods that utilized weekend price gaps.

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