Sam Bankman-Fried went to Washington this week to press his case for modernising US financial services and ran into a problem. Some of the nation’s farmers are worried that billionaire chief executive of the FTX cryptocurrency exchange could cost them sleep.
Their bedtime concerns were aired at an all-day open meeting of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which is considering a proposal by FTX to bring the automated risk management systems it uses in 24/7 crypto trade to the leveraged futures markets where participants take positions on everything from the direction of stocks to the price of corn.
So seriously is the FTX plan being taken by the US derivatives regulator that all five CFTC commissioners attended the gathering, listening to more than six hours of discussions that pitted Bankman-Fried against an array of interested parties — ranging from farm groups to such financial-services heavyweights as JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs and the CME Group.