Hayes details FLOP’s AI compute derivatives vision after selling his altcoins

BitMEX co-founder and Flop Labs CEO Arthur Hayes shared new details about the Flop Network and how he expects its native token could turn AI computing power into a tradable commodity, two days after selling his altcoin holdings.Hayes proposed measuring the computing power delivered for each AI inference task and using transaction data to derive a spot price for compute denominated in Flop (FLOP) tokens. He cited a lack of a universal benchmark price for AI computing power.“If Flop becomes the payments network for AI agents, then it follows that the $FLOP/compute exchange rate will be the global benchmark for spot compute,” wrote Hayes in a Monday Substack essay, adding that a liquid spot compute market would enable derivatives based on that price.Analysts at BCG in a July 2026 report considered how soon AI computing power could become a commodity. The consultancy projected that the market for AI compute will reach roughly $2.3 trillion by 2030 climbing from $360 billion in 2025. Flop Labs is developing a network that allows AI agents to pay for computing and decentralized memory services. In August, Hayes said Flop was planning a “massive airdrop” in the fourth quarter of 2026 and ...