Fox News’s Tucker Carlson on Tuesday brought on CME Group CEO Terry Duffy to talk about the collapse of the crypto exchange FTX and its founder and former CEO Sam Bankman-Fried. But that’s not all they talked about.
This wasn’t the first interview that Duffy did on the matter. He has been openly critical of SBF, and recently called him “an absolute fraud” and also claimed that he saw the collapse coming months ago.
CME Group, like FTX, is also a rather large exchange firm. But unlike FTX, CME does not have a lot of crypto exposure, and it seems to have a better relationship with regulators, at least enough for them to be called “my regulator.”
Carlson, who was most probably setting up an attack on the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), particularly its chair, Gary Gensler, asked Duffy where Gensler was while FTX was doing what it did. Duffy then opened his complicated-sounding, statute-quoting response with:
I don’t know where Gary Gensler was, but my regulator at the CFTC, I bribed. I asked them, why in the world are you invoking the Commodity Exchange Act?”
Wait, what?
It’s possible that he misspoke. That it was a Freudian slip, where he didn’t actually mean to say that he bribes his regulator at the CFTC, just that he was thinking of bribery right when he was constructing his response.
Or maybe this is really where we are now, it’s gotten so bad that CEOs are casually talking about bribing regulators the way they name people they play golf with.
As of this writing, Duffy has yet to address the slip-up.
Information for this briefing was found via Twitter, and the sources and companies mentioned. The author has no securities or affiliations related to this organization. Not a recommendation to buy or sell. Always do additional research and consult a professional before purchasing a security. The author holds no licenses.
