A major system failure at CME has led to a suspension of global futures trading, with Bitcoin and Ethereum futures being taken offline simultaneously.

The Chicago Mercantile Exchange Group (CME Group) was forced to suspend all trading on its Globex platform due to a failure in the data center cooling system, affecting global stock, commodity, and Crypto Assets markets. CME stated in a declaration that the problem originated from an abnormality in the cooling system of the CyrusOne data center, and the technical team is working hard to restore the system, providing pre-market trading updates when feasible.

The impact of this interruption is massive. CyrusOne operates over 55 data centers in the United States, Europe, and Japan, and the outage has caused all CME futures and options contracts to come to a halt, including major currency pairs, crude oil, palm oil, and Crypto Assets-related products. Several traders have described this incident as a “nightmare” and have called on CME to cancel the losses caused by the trading freeze during the interruption on social media.

Trading was halted during the Asian trading session, exacerbating the low liquidity environment caused by the Thanksgiving holiday in the United States. Analyst Tony Sycamore pointed out that the market was already showing contraction due to volatility and holiday factors, and this halt further obstructed trading demand, amplifying market uncertainty.

The crypto market has also been significantly impacted. CME's Bitcoin and Ethereum futures were completely offline during the outage, coinciding with a sensitive trading sentiment. The price of Bitcoin fell by 0.55% in the past 24 hours to $90,896, a notable decline from the previous weekly increase of 8.32%. This drop is related to the concentrated expiration of $13.4 billion worth of Bitcoin options, totaling 147,000 contracts, benefiting bearish investors.

Moreover, Bitcoin has failed to test the resistance level of $91,800 three times within 24 hours, triggering automatic sell orders and amplifying short-term pressure. Currently, the price of Bitcoin is around $91,240.

As the progress of the system recovery remains unclear, the global market will continue to pay attention to CME's subsequent measures and their impact on the encryption and traditional futures markets.