Chicago Mercantile Exchange Halts Trading, Sparking Public Outcry

Trading was halted for about 10 hours before being restored on Friday, sparking a public backlash from derivatives and commodities traders.

The Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME), the world’s largest financial derivatives exchange, halted trading for about 10 hours from Thursday into Friday, causing an outcry from traders before service was restored.

Trading halted due to a “cooling issue” at the CyrusOne data center in Illinois, a US state, according to an announcement from the CME. Trading was fully restored, and trading for all markets resumed at 1:30 pm UTC on Friday, the CME said in an update.

Meanwhile, traders voiced their discontent with the critical failure, which locked some users in their positions, prevented others from placing new trades, and halted price discovery.

Stock trader Timothy Bozman accused the CME of market manipulation and asked how “a simple issue could take down CME’s entire futures platform?”

“Very convenient that this happens in Asia on Thanksgiving Day, when there’s already low volume. Sounds like you’re trying to manipulate the markets quickly in a certain direction,” another X user said.

The backlash from traders continued even after the issue was fixed, with many saying that trading halted minutes before silver futures contracts hit an all-time high of $54, further fueling speculations.

Related: What Bitcoin CME gaps are and how they influence price movements

The CME does not publish regular trading data for Thanksgiving Day, which occurred on Thursday this year. However, Bitcoin futures contracts closed on Wednesday at $90,355 and opened at $90,940 on Friday, according to data from TradingView.

Bitcoin futures prices continued to climb on Friday, rising to over $93,000 at the time of this writing, as BTC rebounds from the local bottom of $80,522.

Source: CoinTelegraph