Bitcoin miners are getting a new AI hedge, but it may protect them from the wrong risk

The US derivatives regulator is exploring a market for futures tied to AI computing power just as Bitcoin miners pour hundreds of millions of dollars into data centers, but the contracts may leave their biggest risks untouched.

On Aug. 19, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) opened a consultation on compute derivatives, seeking feedback on the size and liquidity of underlying markets, manipulation risks, customer protections and perpetual futures tied to computing capacity.

CFTC Chairman Michael Selig said a robust derivatives market for compute would be important to US competitiveness in artificial intelligence, describing the consultation as an initial step toward establishing rules for the emerging market.

Exchanges are already preparing products. CME Group plans to launch H100 Rental Index Futures and B200 Rental Index Futures on Oct. 5, pending regulatory review. The cash-settled contracts would track Silicon Data benchmarks for hourly rental prices of specific Nvidia GPUs. Intercontinental Exchange is separately developing futures linked to GPU compute indexes.

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