Hayes Details FLOP’s AI Compute Derivatives Vision After Selling Altcoins
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Written by Zoltan Vardai, staff writer Edited by Robert Lakin, staff editor
Hayes details FLOP’s AI compute derivatives vision
Latest News
Published: Oct 27, 2026
Arthur Hayes, BitMEX co-founder and Flop Labs CEO, revealed the derivatives market design for the Flop Network and his expectation that the native token, FLOP, could transform AI compute into a tradable commodity. He shared these details two days after selling his altcoin holdings.
In a Monday Substack essay, Hayes proposed measuring computing power delivered for each AI inference task and using transaction data to derive a spot price for compute denominated in FLOP tokens. He cited the lack of a universal benchmark price for AI computing power as a motivation.
"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. He added that a liquid spot compute market would enable derivatives based on that price.
Analysts at BCG projected in a July 2026 report 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 announced Flop’s plan for a “massive airdrop” in Q4 2026 and confirmed his role as CEO.
Hayes' Flop explanation followed his statement on Saturday that he "dumped it all" and realized profits from Ether (ETH), Ethena (ENA), and Uniswap (UNI) token holdings in Maelstrom’s directional trading book, citing "dicey" macroeconomic and geopolitical conditions.
Lookonchain later flagged approximately $22 million worth of tokens sold by Hayes-linked wallets, including $15 million in ETH, $2.7 million in ENA, $2.2 million in UNI, and more.
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