CFTC Prepares to Draft Rules for Trading Compute Derivatives Contracts

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) is seeking comment on the listing of compute derivatives contracts as it prepares to establish the “gold standard” for trading this commodity that powers the artificial intelligence economy, the regulator said in a Wednesday (Aug. 19) press release.

The CFTC seeks comment to better inform its understanding and oversight of derivatives markets in compute. Specifically, the regulator seeks comment on the size, liquidity and other considerations around compute cash markets; market oversight and manipulation concerns; consumer protection; perpetual compute futures; and “all aspects of the compute markets,” the release said.

The CFTC will accept comment for 60 days after the publication of the request for comment in the Federal Register, per the release.

“America cannot win the AI race without a robust derivatives market for compute,” CFTC Chairman Michael S. Selig said in the release. “Just as American markets helped establish the gold standard for trading the commodities that powered the industrial economy, we will do the same for the commodity that will power the intelligence economy. This request for comment is the first step toward establishing clear rules of the road for American compute markets.”

It was reported in June that Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan were considering entering the emerging compute trading market and exploring trading futures contracts tied to rental prices for graphics processing units as well as other ways to trade on the cost of computing power. The report said the banks were in the early stages of exploration of the idea and may not move forward.

The report said that compute trading could be a natural next step because banks already trade power and other commodities related to AI infrastructure and that making a formal financial market out of GPU rental pricing would enable prices to be tracked and hedged amid the current price swings of this major cost of AI.

At the same time, this emerging market faces challenges that include the need to overcome potential regulatory hurdles, per the report.

Polymarket said in June that it closed on its first on-chain institutional block trade tied to AI compute infrastructure and that this showed prediction markets can function like commodity futures for the AI era.

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