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 announced that he would be the company’s CEO.
Hayes’ Flop explainer came in the wake of his statement on Saturday that he “dumped it all” and took profits from the Ether (ETH), Ethena (ENA) and Uniswap (UNI) token holdings in Maelstrom’s directional trading book, citing “dicey” macroeconomic and geopolitical conditions.
Lookonchain later flagged about $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, $1.2 million in Ether.fi (ETHFI), $398,000 in Aerodrome Finance (AERO), $244,000 in Pendle (PENDLE) and $214,000 in Zama (ZAMA) tokens.
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