Markets · Dossier

Bitcoin

BTCMBTBTCUSDThe only major market that has never once closed, trading roughly ~$60–65k as of early August 2026 — about 49% below its October 2025 record. This dossier states what the instrument actually is across its five access routes, how far it moves on an ordinary day, and how $19 billion of leverage disappeared in one of them over a single October weekend.

Primary symbol
BTC
Avg daily range
2.5%
Sources cited
37
As of
2026-07-31

The instrument

Underlying market
Global spot, 24/7/365No open, no close, no circuit breakers. Perpetual futures, not spot, carry ~70% of all crypto trading volume.
CME contract unit
5 BTC (BTC), cash-settledSettles to the CME CF Bitcoin Reference Rate (BRR). No coins change hands.
Tick
$5 per index point; min tick 5 points = $25Per full contract. A $1,000 move in the index is $5,000 per contract.
Micro contract
MBT, 0.1 BTCOne fiftieth of full size: $0.10 per index point, $0.50 per tick. The only Bitcoin most futures evaluations permit.
Hours
24/7 on CME Globex since 2026-05-28Only a ~2h maintenance pause Saturdays 03:00–05:00 UTC; weekend trades clear next business day. Before this, CME closed Friday to Sunday — the source of the famous “CME gap”. That era is over.
ETF wrapper
11 US spot ETFs since 2024-01-11IBIT alone holds tens of billions in AUM. Equity-market hours only — no weekend exposure management.

How it moves

Bitcoin ended 2025 with average daily realized volatility of 2.24% — the calmest full year in its history, and it still ran three to five times the volatility of gold (~52% annualized vs ~15.5%) and roughly five times broad equities. The averages flatter it: February 2026 fell 21.7% in a month including a single −14.1% day, and the October 2025 cascade covered −14% inside 24 hours. The tails, not the typical day, are what end accounts here.

Average daily range

2.5%

2025 (record-low year) · source

The scheduled events

WhenWhatWhy it matters
Daily, per fund US spot-ETF flow prints Market-moving since January 2024. The record: a 13-session outflow streak (2026-05-15 to 06-03) that shed $4.37B, $6.35B over 30 days.
FOMC / CPI dates US macro releases Bitcoin trades like a high-beta risk asset around rate decisions and inflation prints. BOJ policy matters too — the August 2024 yen-carry unwind took it from $67k to ~$49k in about three days.
Roughly every four years Halving Block reward halved 2024-04-20 (6.25 → 3.125 BTC); next expected around April 2028. A scheduled supply event the whole market front-runs.
Friday night — Sunday Weekend liquidity air pocket Spot and perps never close but the books thin out. The October 2025 cascade ran Friday night into Saturday for a reason.

The extremes on record

  • 2025-10-06 — All-time high $126,198 (source)
  • 2025-10-10 — Tariff-headline cascade: over $19B of leveraged positions liquidated in ~24h across 1.6M+ traders; BTC −14% from $122.6k to a $104.8k low. Roughly 9x the February 2025 crash, ~19x the March 2020 and FTX liquidation events. (source)
  • 2026-02 — Below $60,000 — a −52% drawdown from the all-time high in under four months, including a single −14.1% day. (source)
  • 2024-08-05 — Yen-carry unwind: roughly −20% in three days, ~$1.14B in liquidations. (source)
  • 2011–2022 — Full-cycle drawdowns of −93% (2011), −86% (2015), −84% (2018), −77% (2022). A −50%+ drawdown is normal for this asset, not exceptional. (source)

This instrument inside the corridor

The rulebook draws a corridor on a simulated $100,000 account: a daily floor at −5% and a phase-one target at +10%. Those two published percentages, priced in this instrument’s average day:

Inside the corridor Simulated · computed, not measured
An average day's range
2.5% of $63,000 ≈ 1,575.00 points
Worth per full contract (BTC)
$7,875 per average day
Worth per micro (MBT)
$158 per average day
Daily floor: −5% of the $100,000 sim
$5,000
Contracts until one adverse average day breaches it
none — a single full contract’s average day ($7,875) already breaches the floor
Perfect average days to the +10% target ($10,000), 1 contract
≈ 1.3 days of full-range capture

SIMULATED. Range inputs: 2.5% average daily range (2025 (record-low year)), reference price $63,000. Perfect capture of a full day’s range does not exist; this is geometry, not a promise. The 2.5% range sits just above the 2025 average of 2.24% — the calmest year on record. Tail days have run −14% in a session; no corridor input describes those.

Ways in

ChannelSymbolWhat it actually is
Spot exchange BTC Coinbase, Kraken, Binance and peers — actual coin ownership, 24/7, no expiry, no leverage required.
CME futures BTC Five-coin contract, regulated, cash-settled to the BRR, now trading 24/7. Roughly $315k notional at $63k.
Micro futures MBT One tenth of a coin — ~$6.3k notional at $63k. The same tape at 2% of the size, and the standard prop-firm route.
ETF IBIT / FBTC Spot exposure in any brokerage account — but US equity hours only, so the weekend belongs to everyone else.
CFD BTCUSD A broker’s synthetic price, near-24/7 minus maintenance windows. What CFD prop firms offer.
Offshore perpetuals BTCUSDT et al. The bulk of global BTC derivatives volume at 50–100x leverage — and not lawfully available to US retail. The CFTC treated perps as swaps and pushed the market offshore; the first US-regulated perp (Kalshi, June 2026) caps leverage near 5.7x.

Do prop firms let you trade it?

Availability is a rulebook question, not a marketing one: an instrument a firm lists but voids trades on around its scheduled events is only half offered. Check the current terms before relying on a row below — firms change theirs without notice, and we publish ours.

FirmOfferedThe detail that matters
up·me opens at v1.2 The corridor above is our published rule set for it. The instrument list ships with rulebook v1.2, before anything can be bought — the row you can hold us to. Create an account to be in the first cohort when it opens.
FTMO Yes, as CFD BTCUSD plus roughly 30 crypto CFD pairs, tradable through the weekend subject to platform maintenance. Crypto leverage 1:3.3 on Normal accounts, 1:1 on Swing. (source)
FundedNext Yes, as CFD BTCUSD, ETHUSD, XRPUSD, SOLUSD on Stellar 1-Step/2-Step/Lite at 1:2 leverage. Positions may be held over weekends but new trades cannot be opened during closed hours. (source)
FundingPips Yes, as CFD BTCUSD and ETHUSD at 1:2 leverage. Weekend holding is allowed in evaluation phases; on funded Master accounts positions are auto-closed before the Friday close. (source)
Topstep Micros only MBT and MET are on the permitted list; full-size BTC is not. Each micro counts as a full contract against the maximum position size. (source)
Apex Trader Funding Micros only MBT and MET only — no spot, no altcoins, no perps. (source)
upme Not yet Nothing is live here. The instrument list ships with the product and will be published, versioned, before launch.

How traders blow up on it

The same account-ending patterns recur on this instrument often enough to have names. None of them requires being wrong about direction.

  1. Perp leverage meeting a headline. The canonical case is 2025-10-10: a tariff headline, then over $19B liquidated in ~24 hours across 1.6M+ traders as forced selling begat forced selling into vanishing liquidity — collateral tokens momentarily printed near zero (ATOM touched $0.001 on Binance). At 33x, a routine 3% wick is a full liquidation; offshore venues offer 50–100x. (source)
  2. Weekend stops in a thin book. Crypto CFDs quote near-24/7, but weekend books are thin and venues take maintenance windows; stops fill with slippage in fast markets. CFD props restrict or auto-close weekend positions for exactly this reason — FundingPips flattens funded accounts before the Friday close. (source)
  3. Full-size CME on an evaluation account. One BTC contract at $63k is ~$315k notional, and a 2.24%-average day moves about $7,000 of it. That is most of a typical evaluation drawdown in one ordinary session — which is why the futures props that allow Bitcoin at all permit only the micro.
  4. Treating a −50% drawdown as impossible. Every completed Bitcoin cycle has drawn down at least −77% (2011: −93%, 2015: −86%, 2018: −84%, 2022: −77%), and 2026 delivered −52% from the October 2025 high in under four months. Position sizing that assumes the record high is a floor has been wrong in every cycle so far. (source)
  5. Trading yesterday’s market structure. The famous CME weekend gap — Friday close, Sunday open, price “magnets” in between — stopped existing on 2026-05-28 when CME went 24/7. Three 2026 gaps (~$80.0k, ~$78.5k, ~$70.0k) were still unfilled at the changeover, and strategies built on gap-fill mechanics no longer have a mechanism. (source)

On the forecast desk

Questions this dossier suggests, in the form the forecast desk uses: a resolution rule and a named source, published before any probability is. These are drafts — nothing below is open for forecasts, and none has a desk number yet.

Draft — not yet a live question

Will CME Bitcoin futures (front month) settle above $65,000 on Friday [date]?

Resolves via the official CME Group daily settlement price, anchored to the CME CF Bitcoin Reference Rate at expiry.

Draft — not yet a live question

Will US spot Bitcoin ETFs record cumulative net inflows above zero for the week of [dates]?

Resolves via the Farside Investors daily flow table, summing the five sessions.

Draft — not yet a live question

Will the CME CF Bitcoin Reference Rate print at or above $80,000 on any day before 2026-09-30?

Resolves via the daily BRR publication on the CME CF benchmarks page. $80k is also the region of the highest unfilled 2026 CME gap.

Sources

Every number above is drawn from one of the documents below; a figure that cannot be traced to one does not belong on this page. Corrections: hello@upme.com.

  1. CoinGecko API — BTC/USD spot price, fetched 2026-08-02
  2. CME Group — Bitcoin futures (BTC) contract specifications
  3. CME Group — Micro Bitcoin futures (MBT) contract specifications
  4. StoneX — Understanding CME Bitcoin and Micro Bitcoin futures specifications
  5. CoinDesk, 2026-05-28 — Bitcoin’s famous CME gaps are about to disappear (CME 24/7 changeover)
  6. FTI Consulting — Crypto Crash October 2025: Leverage Meets Liquidity (perps ~70% of volume)
  7. Congress.gov CRS IF12573 — SEC approval of spot Bitcoin ETFs, 2024-01-10
  8. Mintz — SEC approves spot Bitcoin ETFs, 2024-01-12
  9. The Block — BlackRock IBIT AUM data
  10. Fidelity Digital Assets — A Closer Look at Bitcoin’s Volatility (~52.2% vs gold ~15.5%)
  11. iShares/BlackRock — Bitcoin volatility trends (BTC ~54% vs gold 15.1% vs equities 10.5%)
  12. Backpack Learn (CoinDesk year-end recap) — 2025 avg daily realized vol 2.24%; Feb 2026 crash
  13. CCN — February 2026: −21.7% month, single −14.1% day
  14. CoinGecko Learn — The October 10 crypto crash explained
  15. CoinDesk, 2026-01-01 — How crypto’s promised year-end fireworks turned into a bloodbath ($19B cascade)
  16. US News, 2025-10-05 — Bitcoin hits all-time high above $125,000
  17. coinlaw.io — Bitcoin all-time-high statistics ($126,198, 2025-10-06)
  18. investingnews.com — Bitcoin price history (March 2024 ATH ~$73,738)
  19. cryptopragmatist.com — The August 5, 2024 meltdown (~$1.14B liquidations)
  20. NPR, 2024-12-04 — Bitcoin’s first $100,000 print
  21. TradingView (Glassnode data) — Bitcoin historical ATH drawdowns by cycle
  22. CoinGecko — Bitcoin halving schedule
  23. Kraken Learn — Bitcoin halving history
  24. CoinDesk, 2026-06-05 — Bitcoin and Ether ETFs end record multi-billion outflow streak ($4.37B / $6.35B)
  25. Yahoo Finance — Bitcoin ETF outflows hit record
  26. CoinDesk, 2026-04-14 — BOJ policy as a Bitcoin risk factor
  27. Katten — Perpetual futures come onshore: the CFTC’s new regulatory framework
  28. mubite, 2026 — US perpetual futures, CFTC, and prop traders
  29. The Defiant — CFTC approves first US-regulated Bitcoin perpetual (Kalshi, ~5.7x)
  30. FTMO — symbols list (BTCUSD and crypto CFDs)
  31. bestpropfirmguide.com — FTMO leverage FAQ mirror (crypto 1:3.3 Normal / 1:1 Swing)
  32. FTMO blog — Holding trades over the weekend
  33. FundedNext help center — Can I trade cryptocurrencies with FundedNext (1:2 leverage)
  34. FundingPips help center — crypto instruments, leverage, and weekend rules
  35. Topstep — permitted products (MBT/MET micros only)
  36. The Rock Trading, 2026 — Apex Trader Funding review (MBT/MET only)
  37. Farside Investors — daily US spot Bitcoin ETF flow table

Trade it inside published rules

The corridor this dossier prices — the −5% daily floor, the +10% target, and every other limit — is published, versioned and dated in the rulebook, before any account exists to apply it to. When the product launches, this instrument trades inside those rules or it does not trade here.

Read the rulebook Create account