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Let's put ourselves in the shoes of one of these users. Remember, we want to blow up this CH network. How do we do it? We need to take on a ton of leverage & lose it all. Massive unpaid losses are a CH's Kryptonite.

CHs have strict margin limits & settle positions daily, sometimes more frequently. We can't just waltz right up to the front door and ask for billions of $. To lose enough money to bring down a clearinghouse, we need a combination of laziness, secrecy, and luck.

On the laziness front, we need an OTC counterparty (like a bank) to not care about giving us extreme off-exchange margin for a trade. Think Bill Hwang - Credit Suisse levels of margin on an equity total return swap, for example. If our OTC trade goes south we can lose billions.

Now, secrecy - we go to the clearinghouse (CME Clearing, for example) and open a futures position with max leverage. CME doesn't know about our OTC trade & we don't mention it. Leverage + leverage = the makings of a CH blowup.

Lastly, we need luck. A TON of luck. First, our OTC trade needs to go wrong & produce billions of losses in a single trading day. Then our CH position needs to go wrong AT THE SAME TIME, again in a single trading day. CME and our bank won't be able to settle in time.

So to bring CME's clearinghouse down we would need losses surpassing: Our clearing member's capital CME's $100M contribution A $5 billion Guaranty Fund The funds of every other member called by assessment powers Our loss would have to be MANY billions of dollars to do this.

A European power trader single handedly lost enough money to wipe out Nasdaq's small Member Default Fund (~$125 million). Members had to refill the fund or face default themselves. Nasdaq also spent $22 million refilling the fund with its own money.

I say all this to applaud & admire the clearinghouse system. Its design is downright beautiful & it's been working quietly for decades now. I have no worries about clearinghouses blowing up anytime soon in their current structure.