Continuous Market Gap Risk
Digital asset markets trade without pause, so a move that equities would spread across sessions and halts can complete in minutes with nothing interrupting it.
How it happens
Spot markets run every hour of every day, with no opening auction to gather orders, no exchange-mandated trading halt, no limit up or limit down band, no market-wide circuit breaker, and no designated market maker under an obligation to keep quoting. Liquidity is thinnest at times when professional desks are least staffed, which is when large orders and liquidations often arrive. Related venues do close, notably regulated futures exchanges that observe weekends, which produces gaps between a Friday settlement and a Sunday reopening even though the underlying traded throughout. Stop orders in this environment execute at whatever price exists when they are triggered, which in a thin book can be far from the trigger.
What you can actually observe
Compare depth and spread during weekend and overnight hours against weekday peaks on the same venue, and look at the largest observed short-interval ranges rather than at daily candles. Cross-venue price divergence during past stress windows is observable and shows where arbitrage stopped functioning. Read each venue's published policy on halts and on cancelling trades, since practice varies and some venues have unwound executions after the fact.
Precedent
CME bitcoin futures close on weekends while spot markets do not, and gaps between Friday settlement and Sunday reopening are a routinely observed feature of that contract.
What makes it more or less material
Check overnight and weekend depth relative to peak hours, the venue's stated halt and trade-cancellation policy, historical maximum short-interval moves, and whether related regulated markets close while spot continues.