Starting May 29, the cryptocurrency futures and options products under Chicago Mercantile Exchange Group’s (CME Group) will open “24/7, all-day trading,” indicating that traditional financial giants are actively transforming to better align with the “never shuts down” characteristic of the cryptocurrency market.
For a long time, 24-hour nonstop trading has largely been a “signature” of cryptocurrency exchanges. CME Group’s global equities head Tim McCourt has also noted that, although market demand for “all-day cryptocurrency trading” is extremely strong, “not every market is suitable for 24-hour operations.” Therefore, this attempt by CME Group is also viewed as an important test of whether traditional financial assets can move toward 24/7 trading in the future.
In addition to the breakthrough in trading hours, CME Group will also launch Avalanche (AVAX) and Sui (SUI) futures contracts at the beginning of next month, further expanding its cryptocurrency product lineup.
At present, CME Group has already offered futures contracts including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana (SOL), Ripple (XRP), and Cardano (ADA), covering more than 75% of the total cryptocurrency market capitalization.
The newly added AVAX and SUI will also provide two contract specifications: a “standard” type and a “micro” (Micro) type. At that time, investors will be able to choose futures contracts for either 5,000 or 500 AVAX per contract, and either 50,000 or 5,000 SUI per contract, depending on the scale of their own capital.
Giovanni Vicioso, Global Head of Cryptocurrency Products at CME Group, said: “The newly launched standard and micro AVAX and SUI futures will give customers more diversified options, greater operational flexibility, and higher capital efficiency within our deep-liquidity and regulated cryptocurrency derivatives ecosystem.”