ComputeCapital Markets
Three instruments on one physical anchor: the energy cost of computation, measured by proof of work.
Three instruments, three surfaces
Together they form a complete capital market for energy-denominated computation. Futures produce the spot curve, bonds the term structure, options the volatility surface. Every other instrument prices off one of these three.
Futures
A perpetual, cash-settled futures contract priced against the Qi energy index. Hedges and discovers the price of compute today.
- Perpetual future
- Qi energy index
- QUAI settlement
Bonds
A zero-coupon bond collateralized by locked coinbase emissions, tokenized for liquid secondary trading. Finances the price of compute tomorrow.
- Zero-coupon bond
- Locked coinbase
- QUAI settlement
Options
A convertible claim on deferred mining rewards, written by miners against the block election they are currently forced to waste. Prices the uncertainty.
- Convertible LMT
- Qi conversion ratio
- QUAI settlement
Futures answer what is compute worth right now? Bonds answer what is the future cost of compute today? Options answer how uncertain is that cost?
It measures what vendors charge —
not what compute costs.
A rental rate aggregated from commercial platforms reflects vendor margins, market positioning, capacity utilization, and competitive dynamics. It answers what is the current ask — not what it costs to produce the computation.
The distinction collapses the moment markets thin out, vendors coordinate pricing, or a new hardware generation reshapes the cost curve overnight. Survey indexes are backward-looking by construction: they report what was charged, not what the physics demands.
Non-manipulable, anchored to physical reality, forward-looking by structure.
Rental-rate surveys provide none of these. An index built on delivered work per unit of energy provides all three, because the underlying quantity is metered rather than reported.
All three share one anchor.
The energy cost of computation, measured by proof of work. This is not an arbitrary design choice — it is the only honest unit of account for compute pricing.
A benchmark denominated in silicon expires on the next tape-out
- An H100 is not an H200, and training and inference depreciate on different curves
- A hardware-tracking benchmark must be rewritten every generation
- That rewrite lands exactly when collateral values and financing paths need it to hold still
- Fungibility fails: an hour of a named chip is not comparable across clusters or terms
Work does not decay
- Beneath every token there is an irreducible thermodynamic cost to erasing a bit
- The ratio of useful output to energy spent is measurable in any generation, on any architecture
- It holds for architectures not yet designed — the invariant a durable benchmark needs
- One H100 in Virginia is approximately one H100 in Frankfurt, once you price the watts
Compute Index
WTI — the reference rate all three instruments settle against, plus the open contract specification.
Infrastructure
Energy systems, mining deployments, full-node RPC endpoints, and the telemetry the index is calibrated from.
Qi / Quai Controller
The dual-token mechanism keeping energy-indexed pricing and QUAI settlement equivalent. Interactive simulator.