The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has requested public comment on compute derivatives contracts, its formal move toward overseeing a market that prices the computing power behind artificial intelligence.
The regulator announced the request on August 19, as the Chairman told a White House gathering that he wants the United States to dominate compute markets.
What the Agency Is Asking
The request asks about the size and liquidity of the compute cash markets. It also covers manipulation concerns, customer protection, and perpetual compute futures.
Comments will be accepted for 60 days once the notice is published in the Federal Register. The agency invited feedback on all aspects of compute markets, not just the topics it listed.
Michael Selig tied the exercise directly to competition with other countries over AI capacity.
“America cannot win the AI race without a robust derivatives market for compute…This request for comment is the first step toward establishing clear rules of the road for American compute markets,” he said.
He described compute as the commodity that will power what he called the intelligence economy, drawing a parallel to the industrial-era commodities that American exchanges once standardized.
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Why Washington Wants Compute Rules Now
Selig made the same argument at a White House event with President Donald Trump and crypto executives. He named Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick as a partner in the effort and said some observers now describe compute as digital oil.
“I’m proud to be working with Secretary Lutnick and the Department of Commerce as well to make America the compute capital of the world. This may be the most important commodity of our day. Some call it digital oil. And America needs to dominate these markets to win the AI race,” he stated.
Exchanges have already moved ahead of the agency. CME Group and Silicon Data plan to list two contracts on October 5, pending regulatory review. The contracts will track indexes that measure hourly GPU rental costs.
“Each contract will represent a month’s worth of rent for the Nvidia H100, the chip central to today’s AI ecosystem, and the next-generation Nvidia Blackwell B200, respectively,” the notice read.
The outcome matters for crypto firms that now sell computing capacity. Several public miners, including MARA and CleanSpark, have shifted toward AI hosting revenue.
Whether the comment file produces rules before or after those contracts start trading is the question the next two months will settle.
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