The CME Bitcoin futures opened for trading on Monday with the largest gap of nearly $5,000 following the adverse price developments during the weekend. The question remains if BTC would spike to close that gap as it has done multiple times in the past.
Launched in late 2017, the cash-settled BTC futures platform from the Chicago Mercantile Exchange enables institutional investors to trade bitcoin on a regulated platform. It operates within the workweek and halts trading during the weekend or official holidays.
Keeping in mind that bitcoin doesn’t have days off, though, this difference could create discrepancies, known as CME gaps. They could appear in either direction after the regulated exchange closes for trading on Friday and opens on Monday (excluding holidays).
This is precisely what transpired last week. Bitcoin closed at roughly $62,000 on CME on Friday afternoon. However, the highly volatile weekend in which the primary cryptocurrency dropped by $9,000 and then recovered $6,000 meant that CME’s next trading day will come with a significant price difference.
Data from TradingView exemplifies this disparity as BTC opened for trading at just over $57,100 today. This near $5,000 difference actually became the largest CME gap to date in terms of the US dollar.
Historically, the primary cryptocurrency has closed the gaps on most occasions in the first week. Such was the case at the start of 2021.
At the time, bitcoin had spiked after a long weekend by about $4,500. On the first working day after the holidays, though, the asset plummeted by about $5,000 and filled the gap in a matter of hours.
This raised the question in the community if history will repeat itself again, but the situation is somewhat different this time. If BTC is to surge back up again to $62,000, it will actually fill two CME gaps.
The other one is left open between $59,000 and $60,000 from the previous weekend when the cryptocurrency added $1,000 of value.
