Arthur Hayes, co-founder of BitMEX and CEO of Flop Labs, offered fresh insights regarding the Flop Network and his vision for how its native cryptocurrency might convert AI processing power into a marketable asset, coming just 48 hours after he liquidated his alternative coin positions.
Hayes suggested tracking the processing capability utilized for every AI inference operation and leveraging transaction records to calculate a baseline spot cost for compute priced in Flop (FLOP) coins, noting the current absence of a standardized global benchmark for artificial intelligence computational resources.
“If Flop acts as the transaction layer for autonomous AI agents, it naturally follows that the $FLOP/compute ratio will serve as the worldwide benchmark for immediate compute pricing,” Hayes stated in a Monday Substack essay, mentioning further that a fluid market for spot compute would pave the way for derivative instruments tied to that valuation.
In a July 2026 report, analysts at Boston Consulting Group explored the timeline for artificial intelligence processing power to transition into a standardized commodity, estimating that the total valuation for AI compute will expand from $360 billion in 2025 to approximately $2.3 trillion by the year 2030.
Flop Labs is currently building an infrastructure designed to let AI agents settle payments for computational and decentralized storage capabilities, with Hayes announcing back in August that Flop intended to execute a major token distribution event in the final quarter of 2026 alongside his appointment as the firm’s chief executive officer.
The release of Hayes’ breakdown regarding Flop followed his Saturday announcement that he had completely exited his positions in Ether (ETH), Ethena (ENA), and Uniswap (UNI) within Maelstrom’s directional portfolio to lock in gains, pointing to uncertain macroeconomic and political landscapes.
Subsequently, analytics firm Lookonchain highlighted roughly $22 million in crypto assets liquidated by wallets associated with Hayes, which consisted of $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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Originally published at https://cointelegraph.com/news/hayes-flop-ai-compute-vision-selling-altcoin?utm_source=rss_feed&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rss_partner_inbound.
