Why Your Best Crypto Trades Happen When Wall Street is Awake

Many investors in cryptos are in for the long run, riding the brutal ups and downs of the crypto market, with drawdowns of up to -80% not infrequent in the past decade.

Other participants in the crypto markets prefer trading short-term crypto movement, relying on pattern analysis and expectations about cryptocurrencies’ reactions to various short-term news.

Unlike equities, cryptocurrency markets operate around the clock and are still largely outside regulatory oversight. Transaction volume on the Bitcoin blockchain peaks around 14:00 GMT, with the pattern substantially declining on weekends, indicating spillovers from traditional stock market hours.

Still, crypto markets are definitely understudied compared to equity markets. This is something two researchers at the University of Western Australia and the National Economics University, Vietnam, are looking to change. In a scientific paper¹ titled, published in Finance Research Letters, they confirmed that derivative crypto markets show strong cross-market and institutional effects.

This means that far from being separate from traditional finance, crypto markets are tightly linked to traditional trading patterns, and crypto traders should act accordingly.

The Study Findings

Focus On Bitcoin Markets

The study analyzed a comprehensive dataset from Deribit, specifically Bitcoin options trading activity. This included all transactions for the period from November 29, 2016 (when the first transaction was executed) to August 17, 202.

Source: Finance Research Letters

Preliminary analysis had shown that trading activity in CME Bitcoin futures is elevated during U.S. equity market trading hours and around the settlement window, so the researchers looked deeper into this topic.

“Unlike futures, Bitcoin options on Deribit feature frequent contract expirations and a standardized settlement time at 8:00 GMT, including on weekends. These institutional characteristics allow us to study how settlement and expiration mechanics shape intraday trading behavior in a market that operates continuously and globally.”

The hourly share of trading activity was measured by either the number of transactions or the trading volume in BTC during each hour, scaled by the corresponding daily total.

Initial Results

This analysis revealed significant intraday variation in trading activity, characterized by two distinct peaks at the 9^th hour (8:00–9:00 GMT) and the 15^th  hour (14:00–15:00 GMT).

More precisely, the 15^th hour peak remains relatively stable throughout the sample period, while the 9^th  hour peak has become more pronounced since 2019.

Source: Finance Research Letters

The 15^th hour peak was previously documented in Bitcoin futures and was not so much a surprise. However, the peak at the 9^th hour was a new discovery.

The researchers looked at the link between Bitcoin options markets and traditional stock markets by examining the intraday trading patterns of Bitcoin options in relation to the operating hours of major stock exchanges such as the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), the London Stock Exchange (LSE), and the Tokyo Stock Exchange (TSE).

It appeared that the TSE had little impact on Bitcoin options.

However, trading volume increases significantly during the trading hours of the LSE and NYSE, and declines sharply after the NYSE closes.

To rule out a mere correlation, the researcher compares weekdays to weekends, when equity markets are closed.

They found that the 9th hour peak persists on both weekdays and weekends, whereas the abnormal trading volume during the 15th hour is present but considerably weaker on weekends.

Interpretations

Options Expiration Impact

The researchers looked at the possibility that, as for other option markets, the 9^th  hour peak in Bitcoin options activity is similarly driven by expiration-related mechanisms driven by speculative traders rolling over their positions into new contracts and by delta hedgers rebalancing their portfolios to maintain appropriate hedge ratios.

On days with more option expiration activity, the 9^th hour effect was more pronounced, seemingly confirming the causality between the two.

To dig deeper, the researcher analyzed transaction data at the minute level around the 8:00 GMT settlement time. They found that trading activity remains largely stable until 7:59 GMT, increases modestly just before settlement, and then spikes sharply at exactly 8:00 GMT.

Source: Finance Research Letters

Similar results were replicated using Ethereum options, also traded on Deribit. This way, the data would come from the same trading platform, settlement timing, and contract design as Bitcoin options, but written on a different underlying asset.

Different Causes For Each Activity Spikes

The 15^th hour peak in Bitcoin option trading coincides with the opening of the NYSE, and largely disappears on weekends, suggesting that it reflects cross-market spillovers from traditional equity markets to the Bitcoin options market.

This is likely, as the same pattern is known to happen for CME Bitcoin futures.

In contrast, the 9th hour peak is specific to options markets and is tied to expiration-related position management rather than gradual information arrival.

Implications For Crypto Traders

These results show that far from a fully independent system, Bitcoin and Ethereum trading are deeply influenced by the activity in equity markets. It is likely that other crypto trades display a similar pattern.

In large part, this is likely because traders in cryptos are also often active in other forms of trading. So when they are constrained to match the activity schedule of equity markets, they are also molding their parallel crypto activities around that same schedule.

This paper also provides new insights into how cryptocurrency options markets function and how trading activity is temporally organized. It is also the first systematic evidence of intraday patterns in Bitcoin options trading, even if, of course, many traders might have independently recognized that pattern already…

It means that it is important for traders to monitor intraday concentration in trading activity.

These findings might also have implications for market liquidity, price efficiency, and the design of trading and clearing mechanisms by crypto exchanges and regulators.

Overall, this study points out to crypto traders that they should expect their best trade to occur when Wall Street is active as well, as this is the period with the most news, activities, and participants in the market.

Study Referenced

^{1. Lai Trung Hoang and Trang Thu Phan. Time-of-day effects in the Bitcoin options market. Finance Research Letters. Volume 101, July 2026, 110008. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1544612326005374}