Arthur Hayes tells CNBC AI data centres are overbuilt, and Flop is betting on the cheap GPUs that follow

Arthur Hayes, the former BitMEX CEO behind Flop Network, told CNBC that humanity is "wasting multi-trillion dollars" on building AI data centres. He also explained how Flop is meant to benefit when that happens.

What Hayes said

Answering CNBC's questions at the Gamma Prime Investing Conference in Singapore, Hayes argued that every major technology rollout is overbuilt: "There always is a crash, and there always is a bailout." According to CNBC, he expects the key test to come in late 2027 or 2028, when much of the new capacity is delivered and infrastructure providers start asking customers to pay for the compute they've committed to.

He described the bull case as AI becoming "so useful" over the next 12 months that demand grows enough for AI companies to turn a profit. He also said he doesn't like shorting AI companies.

Where Flop fits

CNBC describes Flop as an AI-agent payments project "expected to launch in the first quarter of 2027". It aims to create a spot market for computing power, where people who provide GPUs and perform inference are rewarded with Flop tokens. Hayes said cheaper and more plentiful compute would let AI agents proliferate. He told CNBC: "If agents can convert a currency directly into compute, which is what they eat and consume, then they will use this currency. That's our bet."

Flop Labs' framing

Flop Labs turned the interview into a supply thesis. On Hayes' timeline, new capacity lands in late 2027 to 2028, "before demand is there to pay for it. When the debt cracks, the GPUs stay plugged in and get cheap. That's the supply Flop is built for." Two days later the team put it more briefly: "@CryptoHayes' bear case for AI is our bull case for idle GPUs."

Our take

This is an investment thesis, not a forecast we can verify. For people with hardware, the practical point is that Flop's miner design pays for verified inference on any GPU with 16 GB+ VRAM, with no uptime requirement. That suits spare or idle capacity. See how to mine FLOP. Nothing here is financial advice. See our disclaimer.