What happened
CME Group flipped its bitcoin and ether derivatives complex to round-the-clock trading at the start of the session, and Ripple confirmed its prime brokerage unit, Ripple Prime, went live as a day-one clearing and financing partner. The announcement was carried by U. Today early Monday, citing Ripple's own statement.
Ripple Prime, the institutional arm built out of the 2024 Hidden Road acquisition, will route client trades into CME and handle the margin and financing side of the equation. CME's traditional crypto session ran from Sunday 6 p. m.
ET to Friday 5 p. m. ET, with a one-hour daily maintenance break.
The new schedule kills the weekend halt outright and trims the maintenance gap, putting US-regulated BTC and ETH futures on the same clock as offshore perpetuals at Binance, OKX, and Bybit. Ripple Prime is one of a small group of clearing and financing partners CME named for the launch.
Why it matters
For five years, the gap between Friday's CME close and Sunday's reopen has been the cleanest arbitrage in crypto. Weekend moves at Binance or Coinbase priced into the CME open as a gap, and basis traders booked the spread. That trade just got harder.
A 24/7 CME also means US institutions, hedge funds, and the prop desks that clear through FCMs can hedge weekend risk in size without touching offshore venues. That's the structural shift. Ripple's positioning here is the second story.