CME Group CEO Terry Duffy is gearing up for a legal battle with the very regulator that oversees his exchange. The target: the CFTC’s decision to approve the first-ever US-regulated bitcoin perpetual futures contract.
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission gave KalshiEX LLC the green light on May 29 to list its BTCPERP contract, bringing a product that has long dominated offshore crypto trading onto American soil for the first time. Duffy, appearing on CNBC and at the Piper Sandler conference shortly after, made clear he views the approval as both reckless and legally questionable.
What Duffy is actually arguing
Here’s the thing about perpetual futures: they don’t expire. Traditional futures contracts have settlement dates. Perpetuals just roll on indefinitely, with periodic funding rates keeping prices tethered to the underlying asset.
Duffy’s core complaint is twofold. First, he argues the contracts may not even qualify as futures under the Commodity Exchange Act, which would mean the CFTC approved something it potentially doesn’t have the authority to approve. Second, he warned that perpetuals could incite “bad behavior” among retail traders due to excessive leverage.
