In seeking dismissal, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) said trading figures from Chicago Mercantile Exchange Inc. (CME) undercut the exchange's claim of financial harm from approving KalshiEX LLC's Bitcoin (BTC) perpetual contract.
In an Oct. 16 filing, the CFTC compared 2,660,960 contracts traded in May with 3,282,530 in September across 12 CME crypto futures products. That is 621,570 more contracts, or roughly 23%. The agency argues that CME has not shown financial harm from its approval of KalshiEX LLC's BTCPERP contract.
The figures measure trading in two months; they do not establish what happened to CME's revenue, customers or market share. CME says the approval increased competition for retail business. Neither side's claim of injury or its absence is a court finding.
The CFTC approved the KalshiEX contract as a future on May 29. CME sued in June, arguing that a contract without a fixed expiration date should instead be classified as a swap, which is subject to different rules. CME says the futures classification creates different regulatory and tax treatment for competing venues and puts its retail business at risk. Its complaint invokes swap rules adopted after the 2008 financial crisis.
CME made its objection to the agency's volume evidence in an Oct. 2 opposition to the dismissal request. That objection concerned earlier figures: the CFTC introduced its comparison of May and September trading in its Oct. 16 reply.
CME's parent, CME Group, has said its customers had not requested perpetual futures, though it was prepared to offer them. CME Group Chairman and CEO Terrence Duffy said in July that institutional customers accounted for 94% of the company's trading volume in the first half of 2026.
U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly has not ruled on the CFTC's dismissal request. Separately, Webull plans a November Bitcoin perpetual futures offering for eligible U.S. futures customers, with KalshiEX as the trading venue.
