BitMEX cofounder Arthur Hayes clarified on social media that Flop Labs has not issued any tokens, held a pre-sale, or launched a memecoin. He warned his audience that anything currently trading under the FLOP name is not genuine.
The clarification follows Hayes' recent announcement that he is coming out of retirement to serve as the chief executive of Flop Labs. According to Hayes, FLOP is designed to act as a native currency for autonomous software, serving as "food for your AI agent" to pay for computing power, inference, and memory storage. Under the proposed model, miners would supply compute for AI tasks and earn FLOP through block rewards and fees, while validators would check the work and hold agent memories.
Hayes stated that he will personally announce the official airdrop when it begins in a few months, with the mainnet slated to go live next year. He has previously emphasized that the token launch will feature a 100% fair distribution with no pre-sale and no venture-capital allocation.
Despite these plans, Flop Labs has not yet published a whitepaper, tokenomics schedule, contract address, blockchain selection, or test network. When questioned about the missing whitepaper, Hayes noted that the team is still speaking with interested parties and that infographics regarding tokenomics will begin rolling out soon.
The project has faced scrutiny against the backdrop of questions regarding Hayes' past trading history. On-chain investigator ZachXBT previously documented Hayes exiting positions in several endorsed tokens shortly after public mentions, and his family office, Maelstrom, faced accusations of moving CARDS tokens to a market maker shortly after Hayes discussed the project. Responding to past criticism, Hayes stated that he sold to willing sellers at market prices.
Meanwhile, Maelstrom has announced plans to shut down by September, and BitMEX plans to close its exchange on September 23, 2026.
