He Yi Claims Price Discovery No Longer Waits for Monday Opening
Binance co-founder and co-CEO He Yi stated that a 24/7 market does not wait until Monday to digest new information, as price discovery continues over the weekend. She attributed this change to the challenge posed by crypto assets and tokenized financial markets to traditional trading hours.
Crypto asset spot and perpetual contracts typically trade year-round, allowing for immediate buying and selling in response to political events, regulatory news, macroeconomic data expectations, geopolitical conflicts, and corporate announcements during traditional market closures. In contrast, U.S. stocks, bonds, and most commodity benchmark markets primarily operate during fixed trading hours on weekdays, with weekend information often reflected in Monday's gap openings.
Binance previously disclosed that its on-chain U.S. stock product bStocks averaged a 92% reflection of Monday's opening gap over seven consecutive weeks of observation; in 41 samples where Monday's gap exceeded 3%, bStocks correctly predicted the opening direction 41 times. This data, released by Binance, has a limited coverage period and product sample and cannot be directly equated to the overall performance of all securities markets.
Research from Hyperliquid tracked 614 traditional markets over the weekend, 68 markets, and 103 stocks, commodities, forex, and index perpetual contracts, stating that the median bid-ask spread over the weekend was 1.43 basis points, with typical order execution costs at 1.58 basis points; when weekend price changes exceeded 100 basis points, the accuracy of predicting subsequent reopening direction was 94.9%. The study also noted that 84% of markets returned to within 10 basis points of oracle prices within five minutes after traditional assets reopened.
24/7 trading does not imply equal liquidity throughout the day. Research cited by Binance shows that the non-liquidity indicator for USDT cross-exchange trading over the weekend is about three times that of weekdays, with approximately 85% of major USDT supply changes occurring on weekdays and concentrated around U.S. stock market openings; CME data indicates that Bitcoin's weekend volatility is about 75% of that on weekdays. Weekend markets can quote prices, but depth, participant structure, and price resilience are still significantly weaker than during traditional financial working hours.
In terms of market mechanisms, weekend buyers are primarily traders needing to hedge against news, geopolitical, crypto risks, or exposure to tokenized assets; sellers include market makers providing quotes and taking on inventory risks, as well as arbitrageurs. Continuous trading disperses risks that would have been concentrated on Monday to the weekend, directing capital towards perpetual contracts, stablecoin settlements, oracles, on-chain trading venues, and cross-market arbitrage infrastructure; however, low liquidity periods can also amplify risks of liquidation, slippage, and manipulation, with retail investors lacking mature risk controls being the most vulnerable.
Source: Public Information
ABAB AI Insight
The traditional financial "Monday gap" is essentially a systemic mismatch between the closure of exchanges and the continuous generation of information. Events like Black Monday in 1987, the 2008 financial crisis, the pandemic shock in 2020, and the Silicon Valley Bank incident in 2023 all demonstrate that when high-impact information arises over the weekend or overnight, cash markets cannot trade immediately, and risks can only accumulate until the next opening, resulting in significant gap repricing. CME Bitcoin futures have already transitioned to 24-hour trading by May 2026, indicating that traditional derivatives exchanges are beginning to view continuous risk management as a product competitiveness factor, not just a special rule of the crypto market.
Capital flows first to venues that can securitize "closed market risks." Tokenized stocks, commodities, and forex perpetual contracts allow traders to establish long and short positions using stablecoins without waiting for the underlying market to open; market makers earn spreads based on this, trading platforms receive fees, and oracles are responsible for re-anchoring on-chain contracts to real spot prices after the underlying resumes trading. In Hyperliquid's research, 84% of reopening cases returned to oracle prices within 10 basis points in five minutes, indicating that the value of weekend markets lies not in permanently replacing spot markets but in forming a tradable opening expectation in advance.
Historical comparisons should focus on the forex market rather than the stock market. Forex operates almost continuously across global time zones, with prices changing as liquidity shifts between Asia, Europe, and North America; the crypto market extends this continuity into the weekend and expands it to stocks, indices, and commodities that originally had clear closing systems. The current industry is in a transitional phase where "price discovery first goes on-chain, while legal settlement remains offline": on-chain perpetual contracts can trade Apple, gold, or S&P directions over the weekend, but shareholder rights, physical delivery, securities custody, and ultimate legal ownership still rely on traditional systems.
This essentially represents a transfer of pricing power. In the past, the opening and closing hours of exchanges determined who could digest information first and who could provide liquidity at the opening; continuous on-chain markets shift part of price discovery and risk to global market makers, stablecoin liquidity, and oracle mechanisms. The more weekend quotes can predict Monday's opening, the harder it becomes for traditional exchanges to monopolize the first effective price; however, when liquidity decreases threefold over the weekend, pricing power may also concentrate in the hands of a few market makers. A 24-hour market eliminates time barriers but does not automatically eliminate liquidity and information advantages.
ABAB News · Cognitive Laws
- Markets can close, but information never does.
- Continuous trading eliminates time barriers but does not eliminate liquidity barriers.
- Whoever forms the price first gains the risk pricing power.