CME Group CEO called FTX’s Sam Bankman-Fried an “absolute fraud” when they met in March

According to CME Group CEO Terry Duffy, the executive met with former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) in March at a conference, and Duffy ended up calling the FTX frontman “fraudster“. When Duffy sat down with SBF, the former FTX executive stated that his ultimate goal was to compete with CME Group.

Last March, CME Group’s Terry Duffy called SBF “fraudster” and stated that he was the only one, other than ICE, to say “no to these clowns“.

Terry Duffy, managing director of CME Group, the world’s largest derivatives marketplace, recently sat down with the hosts of the podcast “On The Tape” and discussed the recent collapse of FTX. Duffy explained that last March he sat down with former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) and they discussed competition. Terry Duffy asked the former FTX executive what his ultimate goal was and SBF replied “Well, I want to compete with you“. Duffy says he responded “Great, I’m all for competition, what do you want to do?“.

“You’re a fraud. You’re an absolute fraud.” – @CMEGroup CEO Terry Duffy recalls his encounter with Sam Bankman-Fried last March.

Listen to the whole interview with Terry, @RiskReversal & @GuyAdami: https://t.co/oMUrL1U90u pic.twitter.com/qZcojWQquU

– On The Tape Podcast (@OnTheTapePod) November 19, 2022

Terry Duffy explained that SBF said it wanted to compete with CME in crypto, so Duffy said, “I’ll give you better, how about I give you my crypto franchises worth $30 million and we’ll go from there?“. SBF responded to Duffy by asking the CME Group CEO what he wanted in exchange for the deal. “You know what I want“, Terry Duffy told SBF. “Let me be your risk manager, I’ll clear everything to make sure it’s done correctly“. SBF responded that the CEO of CME Group would not deploy its model, and Terry Duffy stated, “your model is crap“. Duffy added:

Why would I deploy a model that will introduce risk into the system? Of course I’m not going to deploy your model.

Terry Duffy then said that SBF flatly refused him and that the CEO of CME Group told the former FTX CEO, “You know what? You are a fraud. You’re an absolute fraud. You’re supposed to be worth $26 billion and you’re an altruist. If you’re a $26 billion altruist, how come there’s not a $10 billion donation to somebody right now?“The CME Group CEO continues:

How about a $15 billion donation? You know what? My net worth doesn’t start with a BS. I’ll give you three for one [odds] I’ve got more money than you. I’ll tell you what, I’ll give you four to one [odds] That I have more money in my right pocket than your net worth. You’re a fraud and I’m going to make sure we get that out.

Duffy pointed out that the idea of FTX was “flawed and posed a significant risk to market stability“, Elon Musk says SBF triggered his BS detector.

After meeting with SBF, Duffy said he went to speak before Congress just as FTX was seeking approval from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) to become a derivatives clearing organization. Terry Duffy noted that he was “reprimanded” during the congressional hearing, but that he would not back down. “I said you can lose 85% to 95% of your value overnight and [SBF] will not commit to keeping this crypto just“, Terry Duffy noted on the podcast. “He wants it deployed across all asset classes” and Terry Duffy further noted that the SBF model would lead to a “biblical disaster“.

“FTX’s proposal is clearly flawed and poses a significant risk to market stability and market participants“, Terry Duffy stated on the matter in mid-May 2022.

In the first week of October, reports indicated that CME Group was seeking to register as a direct futures commission merchant (FCM). FTX’s application to the CFTC was still pending approval, but now the application has been dropped. Terry Duffy, 64, recently spoke with Bloomberg after the FTX collapse where he said he would not stop trading crypto-currency futures just because of a “bad actor“.

“I’m not ready to say I’d take it off the list“, said Terry Duffy. “We’ve been at the forefront of innovative products, but what we’re not doing is doing it recklessly“, the CME Group executive added. During the interview with the hosts of the podcast “On The Tape“, Terry Duffy further called FTX executives clowns. “So I’m upset about this (FTX’s) situation“, Duffy remarked. “But I’m upset in a measured way. I’m a very measured upset, because no one but me has called out these clowns. My friends at the Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) are the only other exchange that has said ‘we don’t like this either’“.

In addition to CME Group’s Terry Duffy, Tesla and Twitter executive Elon Musk told the public that SBF has set off its BS detector. After someone shared a conversation between Musk and an FTX representative, in the conversation Elon Musk asked, “Does Sam really have $3 billion in cash?“When Musk saw someone share the text conversation on Twitter, he verified that the text was real. “Exactly. It set off my BS detector, which is why I didn’t think he had $3 billion“, Musk tweeted in response.