According to the CEO, despite the bear market, the company has seen significant demand for its crypto products since November.
Terrence A. Duffy, chairman and CEO of leading derivatives marketplace Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME), revealed that demand for his company’s crypto products has increased since November.
Duffy made the revelation during a recent interview with CNBC’s Closing Bell, when asked about the state of institutional demand for its Bitcoin futures product.
The CME CEO believes that market conditions in 2022 may have influenced institutional demand for its products.
Many critics would have expected institutional interest in crypto assets to dwindle significantly after the Terra ecosystem collapsed in May, FTX’s insolvency in November, and a string of bankruptcies in a contagion that followed suit.
Duffy, on the other hand, revealed that demand for CME’s crypto derivatives products has increased since November.
“It’s really been interesting what’s going on with Bitcoin after we saw what happened at the end of last year with some of the issues going on in the industry. The entire crypto industry suffered, and then we saw an uptick in our trades around November, December, and it’s still going on here,” the CEO explained.
Clients’ trust in CME, according to Duffy, may have also aided sales. Clients may prefer regulated markets such as CME due to the lack of regulatory clarity in the crypto industry and its entities.
“I believe people are looking at the regulated market, particularly the institution issue. If we’re going to trade this stuff, we’re going to trade it on a regulated exchange like CME. So, we’ve actually seen an increase in our crypto products, which makes us quite happy,” he added.
Meanwhile, despite the harsh crypto winter, CME revealed on February 8 during its Q4 2022 Earnings Conference Call that last year was the best in the company’s history, with significant growth.
The firm’s financial products drove the expansion, with revenue increasing by 5.27% from 2021 to $1.21 billion and earnings per share reaching a new high of $1.92.
