CME Group CEO Terry Duffy speaks at the Piper Sandler Global Exchange and FinTech Conference in New York City, USA on June 5, 2025.
Adam Gray | Reuters
Outgoing CME Group CEO Terence Duffy said Wednesday afternoon on CNBC’s “Fast Money” that the exchange operator will sue the Commodity Futures Trading Commission over the agency’s move to approve perpetual futures.
In late May, the CFTC approved prediction market platform Karshi to begin offering Bitcoin perpetual futures (“purps”). These are futures contracts that do not have an expiration date, but allow traders to speculate on prices without owning the underlying asset. This approval marks the first time this asset class, already popular overseas, has been allowed in the United States, and since then, Kalsi has expanded its PERP offering to include other cryptocurrencies.
Mr. Duffy argued that perpetual futures are actually swaps under the Dodd-Frank Act. He said this will be the basis of CME’s lawsuit, which will be filed Thursday.
“We have exclusive licenses with all the providers of benchmarks, so they all have to go through CME, whether they’re permanent or not,” Duffy said on “Fast Money.”
“If that happens, they would have to list them as swaps,” he added.
Duffy, who will retire as CEO in March 2027, added that he has been working on the plan with the board for the past eight months and is “always ready to fight the good fight.”
“I’ve never avoided it and I never will,” he said. “I’m ready and I’m going to get through this. That’s why I wanted to announce on the show that I’m filing this lawsuit tomorrow, because we’re not taking this lightly.”
The CFTC did not return calls seeking comment.
Earlier this week, CFTC Chairman Michael Selig appeared on CNBC’s “Fast Money” to defend his agency’s decision to approve perpetual futures domestically.
“The time has come to approve regulated futures contracts with no expiration date,” he said. “We’re going to make sure the product is available, but it’s highly regulated here in the United States.”
Disclosure: CNBC and Kalsi have a commercial relationship that includes customer acquisition and minority ownership.
