Arthur Hayes on Why AI Agents Will Want to Transact in Units of Compute

Macroeconomic liquidity management and the inevitable expansion of central bank balance sheets provide a bullish backdrop for Bitcoin and Ethereum. Arthur Hayes, CEO of Flop Labs, argues that unsustainable US debt levels force the Federal Reserve and Treasury to engage in "soft yield curve control," effectively printing money to prevent market collapse. This environment, coupled with the eventual bursting of the AI capital expenditure bubble, will drive capital into crypto assets. Hayes introduces his new venture, Flop Labs, which aims to establish a decentralized agentic payments network. By defining the "Flop" token as a unit of compute, the project provides AI agents with a censorship-resistant, global currency for accessing processing power and storing memory, bypassing the limitations of fiat-based systems and centralized AI infrastructure.