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Author: Admin | 2025-04-27
CoinMarketCap Academy takes a dive into Bitcoin CME gaps — exploring what they are, why do they occur and how professional traders use them as entry/exit points.Where crypto markets operate round-the-clock, many traditional markets remain closed during the weekends. So what happens when one of these traditional exchanges starts offering Bitcoin? In today's article, CoinMarketCap Academy dives into this situation to see how it affects crypto prices.In the past five years, the number of exchanges offering Bitcoin pairs has skyrocketed. Especially around the highs of crypto bull markets, platforms scramble to list crypto pairs. Among these platforms is the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, commonly referred to as the CME (CME Group or Chicago Merc), an exchange that closes on Friday afternoon – and only reopens late Sunday afternoon.The Chicago Mercantile Exchange or CME, is one of the biggest and most diverse derivatives trading exchanges in the world, trading approximately a quadrillion (one with 15 zeros!) dollars in volume per year. It took quite some time for CME to get to that level though.The CME was founded in 1898 under the name “Chicago Butter and Egg Board.” It wasn’t until 1919 that the name Chicago Mercantile Exchange was used. In the year 2000, the CME became the first financial exchange to be a publicly traded, shareholder-owned corporation.The CME offers futures and options on any asset you can possibly imagine. It offers a regular bunch of assets including stocks, energy, commodities, foreign exchange and interest rates - but it does not stop there! Traders also use CME to trade live cattle or even weather futures!Fun Fact: In 1961, the CME launched its first futures on frozen pork bellies!With such a wide range of assets to trade, it only made sense for the CME to offer Bitcoin trading as well. And so it did, announcing the launch of CME Bitcoin Futures at the height of the 2017 cryptocurrency bull market.Previously, CoinMarketCap Academy published an article discussing the relationship between the CME’s Bitcoin Futures expiry and cryptocurrency prices. Following that, the gap between CME’s trading hours and the 24/7 activity in Bitcoin markets offers some interesting insights as well.As said earlier, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange closes for the weekend, observing trading hours from Sunday (5 PM ET) to 4 PM the next Friday. For most of their offering, this presents no problem, but Bitcoin keeps moving while the CME closes up the store. This can have big consequences for CME traders, as some of the bigger moves happen right in that time frame. In some cases, this causes them to miss out on great trading entries.Let’s look at an example. The BTC chart below visualizes price action over a weekend in January. The chart on
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