On Wednesday, March 11, the World Health Organization announced the global coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19). Against the background of the spread of the virus, many exchanges, departments, and companies, including cryptocurrency ones, have limited their operations or switched their employees to the remote mode.
Thus, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) from March 13 after the end of the working day will close its trading floor as a preventive measure.
CME Group will close its Chicago trading floor as a precaution at the close of business Friday, March 13. Read more: //t.co/BUlPrObBXS
— CME Group (@CMEGroup) March 11, 2020
The CME emphasized that all products will continue to be traded on CME Globex, and access to the trading floor will resume after appropriate recommendations from specialists.
In addition, many American companies transfer employees to remote work. According to CoinDesk, the Gemini exchange, the blockchain startup Blockstack, and the cryptocurrency broker Tagomi asked their employees about this. Coinbase and Messari also switched to a remote basis.
The Securities and Exchange Commission due to the symptoms of a coronavirus of one of the employees closed one of the floors in its headquarters in Washington and urged the employees to stay at home.
Earlier, a series of events were postponed due to the outbreak of coronavirus, including one of the largest Bitcoin 2020 conferences, Blockchain Week Summit and BlockchainUA.