Terry Duffy, CEO of CME Group Inc., speaks during the Piper Sandler Global Exchange and FinTech Conference in New York City, United States, June 5, 2025.
Adam Gray | Reuters
Outgoing CME Group CEO Terrence Duffy said on CNBC’s “Fast Money” Wednesday afternoon that the exchange operator will sue the Commodity Futures Trading Commission over the agency’s decision to approve perpetual futures.
The CFTC approved prediction market platform Kalshi in late May to begin offering Bitcoin perpetual futures, or “Perps.” These are futures contracts that have no expiration date, but allow traders to speculate on a price without owning the underlying asset. This approval marked the first time that the asset class, already popular abroad, was permitted in the United States. Since then, Kalshi has expanded its Perps offering to include other cryptocurrencies.
Duffy claimed that perpetual futures were actually swaps under the Dodd-Frank Act. He said this will be the basis for the CME’s lawsuit, which will be filed Thursday.
“We have an exclusive license with every single provider of the benchmarks. So they would all have to run through CME, regardless of the perpetual license,” Duffy said on “Fast Money.”
“You would have to list them as swaps if that came out,” he added.
Duffy, who will step down as CEO in March 2027, added that he has been working with his board on this plan for the past eight months and that he is “always up for the good fight.”
“I’ve never shied away from this before and I won’t shy away from this one either,” he said. “I’m prepared and I’m going to be prepared. And that’s why I wanted to announce on your show that we’re going to file this lawsuit tomorrow because we don’t take this lightly.”
The CFTC did not immediately respond to a call seeking comment.
Earlier this week, CFTC Chairman Michael Selig defended his agency’s decision to approve perpetual futures domestically in an appearance on CNBC’s “Fast Money.”
“It’s time to approve regulated futures contracts with no expiration date,” he said. “We will make sure the product is available, but it is well regulated here in the United States.”
Disclosure: CNBC and Kalshi have a business relationship that includes customer acquisition and minority ownership.
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