A New OS for Global Capital

CME Group, Intercontinental Exchange, Robinhood Markets & Nasdaq | June 3–4, 2026

Piper Sandler Global Exchange & Fintech Conference

Perpetual Futures

The CFTC's approval of Kalshi's Bitcoin perpetual futures contract just days before the conference set the tone for what became the most hotly debated topic across all four presentations. The four companies occupy clearly distinct positions, from outright opposition to cautious openness.

CME Group — firmly opposed

Terrence Duffy was the most vocal and unambiguous opponent in the room. His core legal argument: the Commodity Exchange Act defines a futures contract as one traded with a future delivery or expiration date. A perpetual, which never expires and is kept near spot through a funding rate mechanism, is not a futures contract under that definition — it is a swap.

Beyond the legal framing, Duffy raised structural concerns about how the funding rate mechanism works in practice. He argued that the funding rate erodes the hedge — using the example of an airline trying to hedge crude oil exposure during the Iran war: as oil moved from $55 to $110 a barrel, a long perpetual holder would have had to continuously pay the short side through the funding rate, steadily undermining the hedge's effectiveness. His conclusion was that perpetuals are unhedgeable and therefore incompatible with CME's 85–90% institutionally driven business model.

On systemic risk, Duffy drew a parallel to 2007 — not to the fraud at FTX, but to the leverage structure: EU perpetuals trade at 20x to 250x leverage with auto-liquidation, versus CME's 5:1 institutional model. He worried that the CFTC approving these structures domestically would violate the agency's own 99% margin coverage requirement for futures contracts, and that the retail consequences of mass auto-liquidations could be severe and destabilizing.

When pressed directly on whether CME would list perpetuals if they became the law of the land, Duffy declined to commit either way but made his position clear: with 135 million open positions and $400 billion of institutional capital under management, chasing a small percentage of retail speculative business in a product he considers unhedgeable is not a priority.

Nasdaq — cautious and process-focused

Tal Cohen was careful and measured. On the competitive threat to Nasdaq's core business, he was relaxed — noting that options have clear utility (hedging, income generation, risk management, sentiment expression) that a linear exposure product like a perpetual does not replicate. The depth, liquidity, and institutional curation of Nasdaq's index options franchise is difficult to replicate, and Nasdaq already competes with highly leveraged futures products (13–17x on mini contracts), so the competitive environment is not new.

Where Cohen expressed concern was process. He echoed Duffy's worry on leverage — noting that 100x or 200x leverage is not comparable to the 5–15x levels already in the system, and that retail participants need to clearly understand auto-liquidation mechanics before participating. His call was for an open, collaborative regulatory consultation process involving the full industry before any broad approval, arguing that better input leads to better outcomes for investors, issuers, and markets over the long run. Cohen also stressed that the CFTC's openness to innovation is a net positive for Nasdaq broadly — pointing to the Nasdaq equity token approval and 23/5 trading launch as evidence that the company is embracing the regulatory environment constructively.

ICE — experimentally open

ICE's Stuart Williams took the most constructive stance of the four, framing the perpetuals debate through ICE's track record of entering innovative markets as they mature into regulated ones — CDS clearing post-2008 and LIBOR replacement being the precedents he cited.

Williams acknowledged the real demand signal: when the Iran war broke out on a weekend and traditional futures markets were closed, perpetuals volumes surged — suggesting genuine retail appetite for around-the-clock energy price exposure. But he was equally honest about the limits of perpetuals for commercial customers: a perpetual reflects today's spot price, not a forward curve, so it cannot fulfill the needs of a commercial hedger making multi-month or multi-year investment decisions on refineries, cargo routes, or field investment — those users need to know what Brent will be in Asia in a month's time, and a perpetual cannot answer that question.

The OKX partnership — licensing Brent and WTI crude for retail perpetuals on OKX's platform for international customers only — is ICE's way of learning without full commitment. OKX brings 120 million crypto-native retail customers, predominantly in Asia, a distribution channel ICE does not have today. Williams framed it explicitly as an experiment: if long-term demand persists after the war ends, ICE will have optionality; if it fades, the cost of learning was modest. ICE has also been actively discussing these markets with the CFTC, FCA, and MAS. His bottom line: if a genuine economic purpose can be demonstrated for commercial customers, there is a regulatory path forward.

Robinhood — ready and waiting

Robinhood's Steven Quirk took the most pragmatic retail-first stance. Robinhood already offers perpetuals in Europe through its Bitstamp acquisition and has the infrastructure (a DCM, DCO, and SEF) to launch domestically the moment regulators permit it — either independently or through an existing venue.

On the concern that perpetuals could cannibalize 0DTE options volumes — a core Robinhood product — Quirk was relaxed, noting that the use cases are different enough that direct substitution is unlikely.

Digital assets

On digital assets more broadly, the four companies diverged in emphasis but all treated the space as a legitimate and growing part of their strategic landscape.

CME sees digital assets primarily through the lens of infrastructure efficiency rather than as a new trading product category. Duffy described a potential ecosystem-specific stablecoin — not a freely floatable one, but one contained within CME's settlement ecosystem — as a mechanism to eliminate payment friction, reduce the cost of moving money, and potentially enable 24/7 trading on select products. The emphasis throughout was on stablecoins as an efficiency tool, not a speculative asset.

ICE is approaching digital assets from both a settlement infrastructure angle and a data angle. Through its OKX partnership, ICE is exploring blockchain-native settlement via OKX's crypto-native settlement capability, which it plans to stitch to its Pillar execution platform — capable of handling over 1 trillion messages per day at 10-microsecond latency — to create a true 24/7 settlement layer for NYSE equities. Regulatory approvals and API connectivity remain outstanding but Williams described them as manageable and expected to complete within months. ICE is also the exclusive institutional distributor of Polymarket prediction market data — normalising and structuring it through its consolidated feed as a novel alternative data source for commercial clients.

Nasdaq obtained regulatory approval for a tokenized Nasdaq equity product and is actively working through the collateral management implications of a tokenized 24/7 world with the 24 central banks it serves via its Calypso platform. Cohen described tokenization as taking a "static asset and putting it in motion" — and everywhere that asset moves (surveillance, payment rails, collateral management, market infrastructure) is a Nasdaq product touchpoint. The long-term addressable opportunity from tokenization has been sized at $3–6 billion.

Robinhood has the most direct and consumer-facing digital asset strategy. Robinhood Chain — a Layer 2 blockchain — is designed to be the best chain for trading real-world assets, and is at the centre of the company's tokenization ambitions. The company has crossed 1 million international customers, closed the WonderFi acquisition in Canada, received in-principle approval from the Monetary Authority of Singapore, and has planned brokerage and crypto acquisitions in Indonesia on track for later this year. A dedicated product event — Robinhood Presents: The World is Flat — is scheduled for July 1 in London, where Tenev has indicated the next chapter of Robinhood's global crypto strategy will be unveiled.

In summary, the perpetual futures debate has crystallised a clear industry fault line: CME views them as legally and structurally flawed instruments unsuitable for institutional hedging; Nasdaq is cautious and process-focused; ICE is experimentally open and partnership-driven; and Robinhood is operationally ready and commercially motivated. On digital assets, all four are engaged — but their entry points differ sharply: CME through stablecoins as settlement rails, ICE through blockchain-native settlement infrastructure and data, Nasdaq through tokenization and collateral management, and Robinhood through a consumer-grade global crypto and real-world asset platform.

It’s exciting to see these companies have different perspectives and strategies. The question is now who wins?