Arthur Hayes, co-founder of BitMEX, has expanded his thesis for Flop Labs, an AI payment project arguing that autonomous agents need money directly exchangeable for computing power rather than relying on dollars, Bitcoin, or stablecoins designed for legal entities and physical-world needs. The proposed Flop Network would have GPU operators provide inference and receive FLOP, validators cryptographically checking work, and miners staking tokens subject to slashing for false results. According to preliminary tokenomics, FLOP supply should reach approximately 17.2 billion by year 10 with no venture capital allocation or presale, featuring a Genesis airdrop of 3.5 billion tokens and a planned 90-day testnet. Hayes believes the AI investment excess lies in data center debt and unprofitable hyperscaler shares, and expects AI spending to slow then contract, triggering bailouts that would push new money toward crypto, potentially sending Bitcoin toward $1 million. Despite this bullish outlook, real-world usage remains challenged, with Coinbase’s x402 agent payment protocol settlement volume declining 93% this year.
Source: Read the original article
