A top derivatives market executive told Fox News on Tuesday he previously tried to warn Congress and the financial sector that disgraced FTX billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried was a "fraud."
CME Group CEO Terry Duffy, whose company comprises the merger of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange among other entities, told "Tucker Carlson Tonight" Bankman-Fried's commercial behavior was full of red flags those in power missed or ignored.
Duffy derided Silicon Valley's Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna after Carlson played a clip of the two men sparring during a hearing over FTX, calling the exchange a prominent example of the warnings he tried to raise.
"I appreciate you playing that piece [with] the genius from California telling me how crypto markets work and the difference between capital," the CME chief said.
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"What I was referring to is excess margin, which CME holds over $200 billion — where FTX was having regulatory capital, which is absolutely nothing," he said.
Duffy added he similarly made clear to CME that Bankman-Fried's endeavors were not mainly focused on cryptocurrency but on having personal influence in various major markets.
"I said to my team, you know, this is not about crypto — this is about him trying to change the world so he can list every single product under the scam that he was trying to do with crypto," Duffy said.
"Crypto is so small, but if he could deploy his model in the U.S. Treasury market, in the U.S. agricultural market, can you imagine the damage this human being could have done to our country and the world?"
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"And people literally, literally were turning a blind eye to it when you look at the people that were with him."
Duffy claimed a former executive of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CTFC) was closely aligned with Bankman-Fried, and that a former top congressional Republican was tied to him in a consulting-related manner.
Duffy later added that another premonition of his came true in regard to Bankman-Fried — and that it was not one he hoped would.
"It's absolutely an embarrassment what went on here, and nobody bothered to look at it," he said.
"I said he could lose 85% of his value in a single day. Tucker, I said that in congressional testimony. I did not know how right I would be in such a short period of time."
"It was a completely fraught proposal, what he was doing. I knew he was a fraud the day I met him, and it was quite easy to pick out."
