Why Arthur Hayes Believes AI Agents Will Reject Stablecoins Entirely

Arthur Hayes explains Flop, a new AI-agent payment network based on floating-point operations, and argues AI agents will reject fiat and stablecoin rails in favor of a currency directly convertible into compute and memory. He says Bitcoin is not suited to this role because it lacks compute linkage. Flop will use a fair launch with no presale/VC, proof-of-useful-inference mining, and a large airdrop to bootstrap adoption. - Arthur Hayes names Flop after flops, the floating-point operations that measure compute. - Flop is designed as a native currency for AI agents to pay for compute and store memory. - He argues fiat and stablecoins are unsuitable for AI agents because they are centralized and can be frozen. - He says Bitcoin does not directly convert into compute and is not the right AI agent currency. - Flop will have no presale and no VC; tokens are acquired via testnet work, mining, or secondary markets. - Miners process inference requests while validators check behavior and maintain data availability. - About 20% of supply is planned for a 10-year airdrop to agents and users to solve discovery. - Laura Shin raises an XRP-like conversion-friction concern, which Arthur addresses with the airdrop.