Wall Street giant CME Group is eyeing its own ‘CME Coin,’ CEO says

CME Group CEO Terry Duffy has suggested the derivatives giant is exploring launching its own cryptocurrency.

In response to a question from Morgan Stanley’s Michael Cyprys during the company’s latest earnings call, Duffy confirmed the firm is exploring “initiatives with our own coin that we could potentially put on a decentralized network.”

The comment was brief and came in response to a question about the role of tokenized collateral. In response, Duffy first noted that the world’s largest derivatives exchange is carefully reviewing different forms of margin.

“So if you were to give me a token from a systemically important financial institution, I would probably be more comfortable than maybe a third or fourth-tier bank trying to issue a token for margin,” Duffy said. “Not only are we looking at tokenized cash, we’re looking at different initiatives with our own coin.”

The company is already working on a “tokenized cash” solution with Google that’s set to come out later this year and will involve a depository bank facilitating transactions. The “own coin” Duffy referenced appears to be a different token that the firm could “potentially put on a decentralized network for other of our industry participants to use.”

The CME declined to clarify whether this “coin” would function as a stablecoin, settlement token or something else entirely when asked by CoinDesk.

However, if such an initiative goes through, the implications are significant.

While CME Group has previously flagged tokenization as a general area of interest, CEO Terry Duffy’s comments this week mark the first time the exchange has explicitly floated the concept of a proprietary, CME-issued asset running on a decentralized network.

The firm is set to launch 24/7 trading for all crypto futures in the second quarter of the year, and is also set to soon offer cardano, chainlink and stellar futures contracts.

CME’s average daily crypto trading volume hit $12 billion last year, with its micro-ether and micro-bitcoin futures contracts being top performers.

The launch wouldn’t make CME the first traditional finance giant to launch its own token. JPMorgan has recently rolled out tokenized deposits on Coinbase’s layer-2 blockchain Base via its so-called JPM Coin (JPMD), quietly rewiring how Wall Street moves money.