CME to start trading crypto futures 24/7: What changes for Bitcoin?
CME Group will extend its Bitcoin and Ethereum futures to round-the-clock trading in early 2026, pending regulatory approval.
The move brings the largest US-regulated futures market in line with the always-on nature of crypto exchanges, a structural shift that could reshape how liquidity flows between traditional finance and crypto-native venues.
CME futures currently trade Sunday through Friday with daily maintenance breaks, mirroring the exchange’s equities and commodities model. That leaves long stretches (Friday night through Sunday afternoon, and brief weekday pauses) where the global spot market trades on Binance, Coinbase, and Deribit without a parallel CME market.
The result has been a structural feature known as the “CME…
