Arthur Hayes Plans to Build Derivatives Around AI Compute

Flop's proposed compute contracts would use dollar margin even though the underlying market runs on the FLOP cryptocurrency. Arthur Hayes published a new essay on October 27 outlining futures and perpetual swaps tied to Flop Network’s proposed compute market, where AI agents would pay for computing power using FLOP. The plan aims to establish a reference price for compute that traders could use to build financial contracts around the resources AI systems consume. Hayes Details How FRCR Futures Would Work In a post on X, Hayes called his essay “The Trifecta” and described it as a blueprint for entrepreneurs seeking to build derivatives for the AI agent economy. His central idea is that a liquid spot market for computing power could provide the pricing benchmark needed for futures and perpetual swaps. The proposed Flop Reference Compute Rate (FRCR) would be calculated hourly using a volume-weighted FLOP price per GigaFLOP of computing capacity. Quarterly futures would settle on the last Friday of March, June, September, and December, with contracts using US dollars for margin and profits. Hayes explained that the dollar-based structure would require a quanto derivative, a contract wh...