CFTC Files Sept. 3 Motion to Dismiss CME’s June Suit Over Crypto Perpetuals

The US Commodity Futures Trading Commission on Wednesday filed a motion to dismiss the civil lawsuit brought by CME Group over crypto perpetual futures, arguing the exchange operator lacks standing to sue. Two independent outlets, Cointelegraph and AMBCrypto, reviewed the same court filing in the US District Court for the District of Columbia and reported matching quotes from the CFTC’s brief, including the line calling the case “much ado about nothing.”

What the filing actually says

CME sued the CFTC in June, claiming the regulator improperly treated crypto “futures” as “swaps” with expiration dates. The complaint targeted CFTC Chair Michael Selig’s approval of bitcoin-tied perpetual futures for prediction market Kalshi, plus a no-action position on similar products for Coinbase. CME argued Selig acted without a full five-commissioner panel, in violation of the Commodity Exchange Act.

The CFTC’s Wednesday response rejects both the legal theory and CME’s right to bring it. Its lawyers wrote that CME “does not argue that it could not list this same type of futures contract,” pointing out that any exchange holding a Designated Contract Market license, CME included, can already offer crypto perpetuals under the same framework.

“CME has not alleged, and cannot plausibly allege, that it suffered a financial injury from the CFTC’s authorization of perpetual futures contracts. CME therefore lacks standing.”

The standing argument, in numbers

The CFTC’s core claim rests on a single procedural fact confirmed by both reports: any CFTC-registered DCM can list perpetual futures on digital assets right now, without further agency action. That means CME’s asserted competitive harm, if it exists at all, stems from its own decision not to list the product rather than from anything the CFTC did to Kalshi or Coinbase.

Both sources agree the CFTC is asking the DC federal court for a hearing on the motion to dismiss, rather than for summary judgment. No hearing date has been reported yet, and the court has not ruled on the motion as of publication.

What is still unclear

AMBCrypto’s account includes an additional claim, that the CFTC also disputed whether CME falls within the “zone of interests” protected by the Commodity Exchange Act, a separate standing test from the financial-injury argument. That detail did not appear in the Cointelegraph account reviewed here, so it should be treated as single-sourced pending further confirmation from the underlying court document.

What both reports independently verify is the dismissal motion itself, its Wednesday filing date, the “much ado about nothing” characterization, and the CFTC’s position that any DCM, including CME, remains free to list crypto perpetual futures today. The underlying dispute over whether the CFTC’s Kalshi and Coinbase approvals exceeded a single chair’s authority has not been resolved by this filing. It has simply moved the fight to a threshold question: whether CME was ever entitled to sue in the first place.

Traders using either platform’s bitcoin perpetual contracts face no immediate operational change from this filing. The products approved for Kalshi and the no-action position covering Coinbase remain in place while the standing question works through the DC court.

Sources

• cointelegraph.com
• ambcrypto.com