CME Launches Compute Futures Contracts to Create 'New Oil' Market

CME Group is launching two compute futures contracts on October 5, 2026, pending regulatory approval. These contracts will provide a public reference price for the input resource used by any artificial intelligence application worldwide. This development is significant for Bitcoin miners, who have been transforming themselves into providers of compute resources for AI data centers. According to CoinShares, listed miners have inked over $70 billion worth of AI and high-performance computing contracts in the past year, with AI expected to generate between 30% and 70% of their revenues by year-end.

The CME's move is part of its efforts to create a market for compute, which it has dubbed the 'new oil' of Wall Street. Pete Keavey, CME's global head of energy and environmental products, has said, 'Compute has become the currency of the AI age.' The hourly rental rate of capacity on B200 is approximately $5.86 compared to $2.77 on the older model H100, and CME's contracts will track the forward value of such pricing for the next 36 months.

Miners such as TeraWulf, Core Scientific, Cipher Mining, and Hut 8 have become data center operators who also happen to be mining Bitcoin. The cost of Bitcoin mining hardware is estimated to be around $700,000 to $1 million per megawatt, compared with $8 million to $15 million per megawatt for AI systems. A liquid compute market can bring to this group what oil drillers and power producers have had all along: a way to hedge their output.