Exchanges/OTC & Clearing
Gensler to Supreme Court: “I Was There,” and Dodd-Frank Didn’t Make the CFTC a Sports Book
WILLIAMS BAY, WI (JLN) — October 9, 2026: Gary Gensler was often a burr under the futures industry's saddle while he ran the CFTC. Now he is TradFi's best friend, filing amicus briefs telling courts sports betting isn't part of the Commodity Exchange Act and never...
DoubleZero Brings Institutional Multicast Market Data to Hyperliquid
Co-founder Austin Federa discusses bringing low-latency multicast data feeds to the fast-growing onchain venue in a Zoom interview with John Lothian News.
ELMHURST, IL (JLN) — October 5, 2026 — As onchain perpetual futures trading matures, the infrastructure supporting it is increasingly borrowing from traditional electronic financial exchanges.
DoubleZero, a market-data infrastructure provider, is positioning itself to serve high-speed digital-asset traders and emerging AI trading agents by bringing private-network multicast distribution to Hyperliquid, an ascendant decentralized trading network, as co-founder Austin Federa explained in a Zoom interview with John Lothian News.
Trading Technologies Delivers Complete Multi-Asset Trading Engine with TRAFiX Acquisition
Addition of Equities and Equity Options Completes Global Multi-Asset Stack Amid Unprecedented Market Velocity
CHICAGO, IL (JLN) — September 30, 2026: The world of capital markets is moving faster than ever before, with new products and asset classes coming in rapid-fire and 24/7 trading becoming the norm. The other norm is multi-asset trading on one platform. Trading Technologies took another step forward to meet the needs of this demanding environment by adding a crucial asset class that was missing from its multi-asset technology platform: equities and equity options. It is doing this by acquiring TRAFiX, a provider of equities and equity options order and execution management systems.
The Constitution Is Market Infrastructure
Press freedom, due process, and the right to counsel are part of the plumbing of price discovery, and market leaders should defend them together
ELMHURST, IL (JLN) — September 30, 2026: Last week I asked the leaders of our industry to speak up for CNN, MS NOW and Politico after President Trump banned them from the White House. My argument was simple. Markets run on information, and when the government decides which reporters get into the building based on whether it likes their stories, it shrinks the information that feeds price discovery. I hold freedom of the press and price discovery as sacred. Bans on freedom of the press give us fewer sources of important market information, which gives us a narrower answer.
A Weak Man’s Ban, and the Markets’ Responsibility
ELMHURST, IL (JLN) — September 21, 2026: Markets are built on disagreement. A price is not a decree; it is not a social media post demand. It is a negotiated truce between people who see the world differently. The buyer thinks the asset is cheap, the seller thinks it is dear, and the number where they meet carries the compressed judgment of everyone with information and an opinion. Take away the disparate perspectives, and you do not get a cleaner price. You get a worse one.
That is why President Trump’s decision to bar CNN, MS NOW and Politico from the White House should alarm anyone who makes a living in the capital and derivatives markets. The decision was announced Friday on Truth Social as “effective immediately,” with a warning that other outlets would follow. The ban targets three organizations for reporting and commenting on the most powerful political office in the world. It took effect on Saturday, as journalists from these organizations were turned away when they tried to enter the White House. Whatever one thinks of their coverage, removing them from the room narrows the flow of information that reaches the American people and the rest of the world. Every trader knows what happens when a data feed goes dark.
CFTC Enforcement’s Black Hole: More Power, Less Policing
Former chief trial attorney Liz Pendleton questions the agency’s enforcement retreat as Michael Selig reaches for more authority over crypto and prediction markets.
ELMHURST, IL (JLN) — September 18, 2026: Liz Pendleton, former CFTC chief trial attorney in Chicago, where she worked for the CFTC for more than 15 years, asked in a LinkedIn post, “What is happening with CFTC Enforcement?”
My answer involved quantum mechanics, Hawking Radiation, thermodynamics, and astrophysics, and came back in the form of a question. What happens in a Black Hole?
The Future of Nigeria’s First Regulated Prediction Market is Clouty
ELMHURST, IL (JLN) — September 14, 2026: David Umeh recently returned to the United States from Nigeria, where he is weeks, if not days, away from regulatory approval from Nigerian market regulators to launch a futures exchange offering prediction markets. Umeh’s Clouty Inc. is in the final stage to become the first Nigerian SEC-approved regulated prediction market, operating under the trade name Sabi.
Umeh pursued launching a U.S.-designated contract market registration and had the CFTC pre-vet his plans. However, he was missing one piece: the capital to get the exchange off the ground. This young African American entrepreneur found in Nigeria not just an easier place to raise money, but a chance to corner an enormous, untapped market: the world’s sixth most populous country, with a hyper-engaged, famously polarizing news cycle. This is a country where Dangote just launched Africa’s largest-ever IPO, and where NGX was, just months ago, the best-performing stock market in the world.
A Compilation of News Stories on the 25th Anniversary of 9/11
Here are some news stories on the 25th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks. Further stories will be added to the top as they come in.
Prediction Markets Start With “Why”
ELMHURST, IL (JLN) — September 10, 2026: For weeks, I had been puzzled by Kalshi’s never-ending submarine-sandwich commercial, trying to decide what, exactly, it was meant to say about a prediction market platform. Then I saw the company’s 1950s Grease musical-themed spot, featuring four brothers dancing their way through a deliberately goofy production.
Because I no longer watch much NBA basketball, I did not recognize Giannis Antetokounmpo, the two-time MVP and Kalshi investor who headlines the ad. I told a Kalshi executive I genuinely liked the commercial, and he shared with me who the star was. That small exchange made me look more closely at Kalshi’s marketing, not merely at the celebrities it is recruiting, but at the larger proposition behind the campaign. Prediction markets are no longer being positioned as a niche tool for political forecasters or sophisticated traders, but as a mainstream, multi-demographic social activity.
Two Aussies Walk Into Chicago and Bet the Farm on the Hat Trick
A pair of derivatives traders from Sydney want you to short the Blackhawks. The CME just handed them the keys.
CHICAGO, IL (JLN) — September 3, 2026: On a hazy afternoon in a South Loop conference room, a group of Rhodes19 sailboats on Lake Michigan drifted past the windows like ticks on a slow market tape. Inside, seated side by side, were two Australians interviewed on video by John Lothian News, with the patience of men who have done this a hundred times, about why a hat trick should have a price.
Leigh Taylforth and Rhett Dinsdale are the co-founders of FutureSports, a Chicago-by-way-of-Sydney startup that has spent four years convincing skeptical league executives, a very interested CME Group, and a somewhat bewildered Commodity Futures Trading Commission that the box score is, in fact, a part of a futures contract waiting to happen. On Sept. 28, pending regulatory review, the CME will begin trading the world’s first NHL team futures, tied to indexes the two men built one scarce statistic at a time. The puck drops the next night. The following evening, Taylforth and Dinsdale fly to Houston for the HOOD Summit, as in Robinhood, because when you are trying to turn hockey into a hedge, sleep is a luxury good.
When the State Becomes the Sheriff
From Venezuelan crude to civil asset forfeiture, a conservative case that takings are takings — no matter who does the taking
WILLIAMS BAY, WI (JLN) — August 31, 2026: I want to talk about takings. Expropriation or theft by the state.
The Trump administration’s recent announcement that it had a deal to take 20 percent of Venezuelan oil for no cost to the American public raised my conservative hackles. Yes, I have them. Property rights are the foundation of a free economy, and they do not yield to the political needs of the moment.
If this rogue American government is taking from Venezuela, who are they taking from next, I ask myself? Will they try to drain Lake Ontario/America to prove a point? Good luck!
CFTC’s New AI Playbook: Industry Titans Push for ‘Compute’ Derivatives, Seek Clarity, Warn Against Over-Regulation
ELMHURST, IL (JLN) — August 28, 2026: In a setting worlds away from the litigation-heavy atmosphere of the previous administration, industry leaders and regulators gathered at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission headquarters last week, signaling a sharp pivot in how Washington intends to govern the coming “AI supercycle.”
During the inaugural meeting of the CFTC’s Innovation Advisory Committee (IAC), moderated by FIA Chairman and CEO Walt Lukken, a former CFTC acting chairman, the discussion shifted from the defensive, victim mentality and persecution posturing that defined recent years to a proactive policy dialogue buoyed by the support of an administration with skin in the game.
DTCC’s Tom Sullivan: Tokenization Service Aims to Bring Blockchain Speed Without Sacrificing Investor Protections
After a landmark July 15th trial testing near-real-time settlement, collateral mobility and multi-chain interoperability, DTCC’s Thomas Sullivan tells John Lothian News how the clearing giant plans to fuse traditional securities infrastructure with blockchain rails ahead of a full production launch later this year.
WILLIAMS BAY, WI (JLN) — August 28, 2026: The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation, which has spent five decades building the plumbing that keeps US securities markets settling smoothly, is betting that blockchain technology can keep assets moving efficiently as trading speeds up and demand grows for round-the-clock liquidity.
The New Commodities: Electricity by the Hour, Computing Power by the Month
CHICAGO, IL (JLN) – August 25, 2026: Two announcements out of Chicago this month, taken together, tell a bigger story than either does alone. The financial markets are busy inventing brand new commodities, and both of them trace back to the same source: the enormous appetite of artificial intelligence for electric power.
On August 10, ElectronX, the Chicago-based startup exchange for electricity derivatives, announced it had received an amended order of designation from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. The change allows customers to trade on ElectronX through futures commission merchants, or FCMs, the brokerage firms that have long served as the front door to the futures industry. Intermediated trading is expected to begin this fall.
Welcome to the Beltway Bucket Shop: “Fake News,” Floral Mishaps, and Prediction Market Fireworks
From 2,500 unchallenged self-certifications to Michael Selig cutting off the CEO of the world’s largest derivatives exchange, the inaugural CFTC Innovation Advisory Committee meeting was peak political theater.
WILLIAMS BAY, WI (JLN) — August 21, 2026: Welcome to the wild world of Washington derivatives politics. Yesterday, I reviewed the video of CFTC Chairman Michael Selig kicking off the CFTC’s Innovation Advisory Committee Meeting and the full meeting chaired by FIA President and CEO Walt Lukken. I might need to spin up whole new MarketsWiki categories to track the sheer volume of political theater. How about [[Category:Regulatory Pandering]], or [[Category:Gensler Rent-Free Zone]]? ([[Category:Regulatory Boogie-Man]] might be added too.)
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