Arthur Hayes said AI agents will use a currency directly linked to computing resources, rather than dollars or Bitcoin.
\nHe said the Flop Network will reward providers of computing resources such as GPUs with its native token, FLOP, and is considering a 20% supply airdrop with no presale or VC funding.
\nHayes said the bursting of the AI bubble could fuel a crypto rally, and that South Korea could become a key market for the AI agent economy and the Flop ecosystem.<\/p>\n
Forecast Trend Report by Period<\/p>\n
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See more mid- to long-term trend analysisInterview with Flop Labs CEO Arthur Hayes
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\nAI agent payments network \u2018Flop\u2019
\n\u2018An AI-native currency to replace the dollar\u2019
\nNo presale or VC round, with 20% airdrop under review
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\n\u2018An AI bust would be bullish for crypto\u2019
\n\u2018South Korea is an ideal market for the AI agent economy\u2019<\/p>\n
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Photo: EastPoint<\/p>\n
\u2018AI agents will use a currency that can be exchanged directly for computing resources, not dollars or Bitcoin.\u2019<\/p>\n
Arthur Hayes, chief executive officer of Flop Labs, told Bloomingbit in an Aug. 26 interview that the rise of AI agents as economic actors will require a new means of payment. He expects an \u201cagent economy\u201d to take shape, with AI agents assigning work to one another and exchanging payments without human involvement.<\/p>\n
AI agents are already being used to write code, manage email and gather information. Transactions in which one agent requests work from another and pays for it will increase rapidly, he said.<\/p>\n
\u2018AI Needs a Currency That Trades Directly for Compute\u2019<\/p>\n
Hayes said the currency used by AI agents must be directly linked to computing resources. While the Korean won and the US dollar work for humans buying groceries or housing, computing power is the key resource for AI agents.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is currently no market that efficiently converts units of money into a defined amount of floating-point operations over a set period of time,\u201d he said. \u201cThe currency that enables that most efficiently in the spot market will become the money of the agent economy.\u201d<\/p>\n
He argued that existing stablecoins and Bitcoin are limited as money for AI agents because they are not directly tied to computing resources and were built around humans and governments.<\/p>\n
\u201cAI agents are not lawyers and do not have physical bodies,\u201d Hayes said. \u201cThat makes them more likely to choose decentralized money over fiat currencies built for the human economy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Flop Network, unveiled recently, is meant to put that idea into practice. Individuals and companies can contribute computing resources such as graphics processing units, or GPUs, to the network and receive its native FLOP token in return for processing AI agents\u2019 compute requests.<\/p>\n
AI agents would pay tokens to access the inference work and computing resources they need. Miners would supply compute power, while validators would verify results. The project aims to connect AI agents directly with providers of computing resources in a decentralized marketplace.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf AI agents can swap tokens directly for computing resources, they will start demanding those tokens from other agents or humans as payment,\u201d Hayes said. \u201cIf millions to trillions of agents hold and transact in the token, that could form a large payment network.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2018Launching Without a Presale or VC Funding, With 20% Airdrop Under Review\u2019
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Photo: Flop Labs<\/p>\n
Hayes said Flop marks his return to frontline management. He co-founded BitMEX in 2014 and helped pioneer the crypto derivatives market.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I started BitMEX, I was convinced crypto derivatives trading would become one of the most valuable businesses in the industry,\u201d he said. \u201cI now feel the same conviction about AI agents using a currency directly linked to computing.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said the agent economy will grow into a very large market and drew a parallel with the opportunity he saw at BitMEX. That conviction brought him back into management to build what he described as the most valuable payments network created so far.<\/p>\n
Flop plans to launch its token without a presale or venture capital backing. Instead of selling tokens in advance to early investors, the project plans to distribute them based on participation by users, miners and validators.<\/p>\n
\u201cUsers, miners and validators should all be able to join on the same terms from the start,\u201d Hayes said. He added that he wants a structure similar to Bitcoin and early Ethereum, where the community shares in the gains from the project\u2019s growth.<\/p>\n
Flop Labs, the operating company, will receive part of block rewards for about two years after the mainnet launch, until the first halving. After that, the company\u2019s allocation of block rewards will end.<\/p>\n
The project is considering a plan to airdrop about 20% of the total token supply in October. Users who create wallets on the testnet and carry out AI inference and other tasks with test tokens would receive mainnet tokens based on their activity.<\/p>\n
The tokenomics and airdrop terms have not been finalized. Hayes said the team is refining the structure after gathering community feedback, with tokenomics materials to be released first and a white paper due within weeks.<\/p>\n
The company will also run a testnet for about three months to verify security and reliability. Hayes said the source code will be made public for anyone to review. If agents decide the network is unsafe and refuse to use it, the project will fail.<\/p>\n
He added that trust comes from releasing technology that works after sufficient testing.<\/p>\n
\u2018An AI Bust Could Fuel a Crypto Rally\u2019<\/p>\n
Hayes said the large amount of debt flowing into the AI industry could eventually expand liquidity in the crypto market. His argument is that heavy corporate bond issuance used to build AI data centers will compete with Treasuries and other investments for capital, push market interest rates higher, and ultimately lead to intervention by the US government and central bank.<\/p>\n
The US Treasury recently decided to more than double long-dated Treasury buybacks in response to rising long-term yields. Hayes said he sees that as a sign the US is moving toward a looser form of yield curve control, or YCC.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf the yield on the 10-year US Treasury approaches 5%, authorities will begin supplying liquidity,\u201d he said. \u201cThe more debt is issued to fund AI data-center investment, the more liquidity will be needed to absorb it.\u201d<\/p>\n
He also said a cooling in AI investment could become a tailwind for crypto, as governments may expand money supply to deal with bad AI-related debt and prevent broader financial-market shocks.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe deflation of the AI bubble and the cleanup of misallocated credit will fuel crypto gains,\u201d Hayes said. \u201cRight now, a perfect storm is forming in the crypto market.\u201d<\/p>\n
He pushed back on the idea that President Donald Trump\u2019s pro-crypto stance is the market\u2019s core driver. In his view, Bitcoin is driven less by any individual politician\u2019s policies than by money supply.<\/p>\n
\u201cTrump, like any other US president, is not decisive for the crypto market,\u201d Hayes said. \u201cWhat Bitcoin needs is not a particular politician, but an expansion in money supply.\u201d<\/p>\n
No matter who is president, fiscal expansion is unavoidable if campaign promises are to be carried out and benefits delivered to supporters, he said. Trump is not inherently good or bad for crypto, but a politician making rational choices.<\/p>\n
\u2018South Korea Is an Ideal Market for the AI Agent Economy\u2019<\/p>\n
Hayes identified South Korea as a key market for the Flop ecosystem. He said the country\u2019s high internet penetration, investors\u2019 understanding of AI and semiconductor industry base position it to play an important role in the early growth of the agent economy.<\/p>\n
\u201cSouth Korea is at the center of the AI investment boom, and investors there understand the future and growth potential of the AI industry very well,\u201d he said. \u201cThey should not stop at buying expensive shares in large corporations. They should seize the chance to help build a new AI ecosystem from the ground up.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said South Korean chipmakers such as Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix are likely to play a central role in the AI computing market. South Korea has strengths in producing the key equipment needed for semiconductors and AI data centers, he said, adding that semiconductors are ultimately the foundation of computing resources.<\/p>\n
Hayes is scheduled to attend EastPoint: Seoul 2026, a private global conference on Web3, digital assets and AI, in Seoul on Sept. 28. He plans to present his vision for the AI agent economy and Flop there.<\/p>\n
\u201cSouth Korea is a market with outstanding connectivity, high education levels and strong belief in AI\u2019s future,\u201d Hayes said. \u201cI hope South Korean users and companies will understand the agent economy and help build the new ecosystem together.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Arthur Hayes said AI agents will use a currency directly linked to computing resources, rather than dollars or…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":151517,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[405,7537,8263,8257,3278,8255,8256,8262,8261,8259,8258,8260,3277,4637,7966],"class_list":["post-151516","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-agentic-ai","tag-ai-agents","tag-artificial-intelligence-agents","tag-bitcoin","tag-bitcoincommunity","tag-blockchain","tag-bloomingbit","tag-coincommunity","tag-coininfo","tag-coininvest","tag-coinnews","tag-coinreview","tag-coinstats","tag-cryptocurrency","tag-ethereum","tag-solana"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151516","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=151516"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151516\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/151517"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=151516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=151516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=151516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}