CME says perpetual contracts are taking its business, yet its own Bitcoin futures trading volume rose from 259,000 contracts in May to 268,000 in September.
#CFTC pushes back against CME’s position in perpetual futures lawsuit
Those figures came from the 31-page response the CFTC filed with the court last Friday. Over the same period, Ethereum futures also rose from 327,000 contracts to 378,000. At CME’s July earnings call, its CEO said customers had never asked for perpetuals. Now CME is telling a court that its customers are being poached. The CFTC’s response was blunt: you can’t tell the court one thing and investors another.
What CME really wants is to have perpetuals classified as swaps, which come with much heavier regulation. The CFTC’s analogy was a bit cutting, too: changing a movie from an action film to a thriller doesn’t stop the platform from showing it.
Personally, I think the CFTC is more likely to win. CME hasn’t even shown a dollar in losses. The longer the lawsuit drags on, the bigger compliant perpetuals in the U.S. will get—and by then, they’ll be hard to dismantle even if someone wants to.
#CFTC pushes back against CME’s position in perpetual futures lawsuit
Those figures came from the 31-page response the CFTC filed with the court last Friday. Over the same period, Ethereum futures also rose from 327,000 contracts to 378,000. At CME’s July earnings call, its CEO said customers had never asked for perpetuals. Now CME is telling a court that its customers are being poached. The CFTC’s response was blunt: you can’t tell the court one thing and investors another.
What CME really wants is to have perpetuals classified as swaps, which come with much heavier regulation. The CFTC’s analogy was a bit cutting, too: changing a movie from an action film to a thriller doesn’t stop the platform from showing it.
Personally, I think the CFTC is more likely to win. CME hasn’t even shown a dollar in losses. The longer the lawsuit drags on, the bigger compliant perpetuals in the U.S. will get—and by then, they’ll be hard to dismantle even if someone wants to.