CME CEO Terrence Duffy says the exchange operator will sue CFTC over perpetual futures

Terry Duffy, CEO of CME Group Inc., speaks during the Piper Sandler Global Exchange and FinTech Conference in New York City, U.S., June 5, 2025. Adam Gray | Reuters Outgoing CME Group CEO Terrence Duffy said on CNBC's " Fast Money " on Wednesday afternoon that the exchange operator will sue the Commodity Futures Trading Commission over the agency's move 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 overseas, was allowed in the U.S. Kalshi has since expanded its perps offerings to include other cryptocurrencies. Duffy asserted that perpetual futures are actually swaps under the Dodd-Frank Act. He said this will be the basis of the CME's lawsuit, which will be filed on Thursday. "We have an exclusive license with every single provider of the benchmarks. So all of these would have to go through CME regardless of the perpetual," Duffy said on "Fast Money." "They would have to list them as swaps, if that's the way that it came out," he added. …