CME Head Appears To Say He Bribed CTFC Official

In an appearance on Fox News on Wednesday to discuss the FTX collapse, CME Group boss Terry Duffy appeared to say that he bribes or bribed a Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CTFC) official.

Tucker Carlson asked Duffy where SEC chairman Gary Gensler was while FTX was mismanaging clients’ funds. Duffy answered: “I don’t know where Gary Gensler was, but my regulator at the CTFC I bribe, I asked them, why in the world are you invoking the Commodity Exchange Act?” 

It is possible Duffy misspoke in the highly circulated clip, but as of Sunday afternoon, four days after the TV hit, he has not clarified.

CME Group did not immediately respond to Decrypt’s request for comment.

FTX collapsed earlier this month after allegedly using customer funds to make risky investment bets through Alameda Research, FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried’s trading firm.

The company later admitted it did not hold one-to-one reserves of customer assets, which culminated in a freezing of withdrawals and subsequent bankruptcy filing.

Chicago-based CME Group is the world’s largest financial derivatives exchange. It offers Bitcoin and Ethereum futures—options contracts that allow investors to place a bet on the future price of the asset with the option to cash out at any time before the contract expires. And it’s looking at adding futures for other top crypto assets.