CME Sues CFTC Over Kalshi Perpetuals as Fidelity Launches Stablecoin Reserve Fund, Kalshi Eyes IPO at $22B

Crypto News

Derivatives giant CME has signaled it will sue the Commodity Futures Trading Commission over the agency’s approval of Kalshi’s Bitcoin perpetual contract, known as BTCPERP. CEO Terrence Duffy argued on June 17 that the product is effectively a swap under the Dodd-Frank Act, not a futures contract, claiming the CFTC misread the law when it granted the first U.S. regulated perpetual approval on May 29. The distinction is consequential: classifying perpetuals as swaps would impose clearing, reporting and swap-dealer registration requirements, narrowing which firms can offer them. Should the CFTC’s ruling stand, operators like Kalshi could continue under existing futures rules, keeping a lower compliance barrier to the market.

Fidelity Investments has set up a government money market fund aimed squarely at stablecoin issuers, ticker FYMXX, established June 15. The fund restricts holdings to assets eligible under the GENIUS Act — short-, medium- and long-dated Treasuries, cash, overnight repos and other compliant money market funds — so issuers can park the reserves backing their tokens. The minimum initial investment is $1 million, with a 0.25% management fee and a $1 net asset value target. State Street launched a comparable GENIUS-compliant vehicle the same week, while BNY Mellon, Goldman Sachs and BlackRock have set up similar funds since last year. The stablecoin market now sits near $310 billion, led by USDT at roughly $186 billion.

Prediction market platform Kalshi has begun informal talks with several investment banks about a public listing, with its annualized revenue now topping $2 billion — double the figure circulating in March. A surge in NBA and World Cup contract trading drove the gain. In May, Kalshi closed a $1 billion Series F led by Coatue, lifting its valuation to $22 billion, with Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, IVP, Paradigm, Morgan Stanley and ARK Invest joining. The firm’s May trading volume hit $16.8 billion, more than double rival Polymarket’s $7.08 billion, even as Kentucky and other states sued over alleged unlicensed sports betting.

Texas grid operator ERCOT is rolling out a new interconnection framework called Batch Zero after the state’s Public Utility Commission approved the process, a potential tailwind for Bitcoin mining firms expanding into AI data centers. ERCOT’s interconnection queue holds more than 438,000 MW of application-based demand, roughly 89% of it tied to data centers. Rather than evaluating projects one by one, Batch Zero assesses multiple projects together to map transmission upgrades more holistically. The shift matters for miners that already built large power footprints in Texas and are increasingly repurposing them for AI and high-performance computing workloads, as surging electricity demand strains grids nationwide.

The head of the Japanese Bankers Association, Mizuho president Masahiko Kato, warned on June 18 that domestic banks may proactively suspend ATMs and online banking if frontier AI models pose a serious threat to their systems. Kato said advanced AI capable of rapidly identifying software vulnerabilities has changed the dimension of cyber risk. Anthropic’s Project Glasswing disclosed that its Mythos Preview model uncovered thousands of high-severity flaws across major operating systems and browsers. Japan’s Financial Services Agency and the Bank of Japan asked institutions on May 22 to adopt short-term measures, noting that AI can compress the window between vulnerability discovery and exploitation.

GMO Coin has signed a long-term strategic partnership with investment AI firm BridgeWise to deliver AI-driven financial insights to Japanese investors, announced June 17. The two had already collaborated since February 7, providing BridgeWise’s SignalWise price-alert system as push notifications in GMO Coin’s app. SignalWise pairs near-real-time event detection with AI-based predictive analysis, converting market signals into personalized, contextual alerts spanning crypto, forex, crypto-linked equities, indices, commodities and overseas ETFs. BridgeWise frames the deal as part of its Asian expansion, pledging transparent, multilingual AI investment intelligence aligned with local regulatory frameworks, alongside its StockWise, FundWise, Bridget and AltWise product lines.

Across these stories runs a single arc: institutional finance and regulators are racing to formalize crypto’s plumbing — from derivatives classification and stablecoin reserves to AI-era operational risk. COINOTAG’s aggregate market data underscores how fragile sentiment remains against that backdrop, with the Fear & Greed Index at 14, deep in Extreme Fear, and Bitcoin dominance near 70% as total crypto market capitalization holds around $1.79 trillion. The GENIUS Act framework cited in Fidelity’s prospectus and the CFTC’s own BTCPERP approval document are the primary anchors here. With capital concentrating in Bitcoin and regulated wrappers, the structural buildout is advancing even while risk appetite stays suppressed.