Billionaire investor Mark Cuban says chips as an asset class will be the new crypto. The call arrives weeks before US markets open the first regulated futures on computing power.

Cuban added no elaboration. Chipmakers keep posting record demand; however, exchanges now move to standardize the market for processing power.

Why Chips as an Asset Class Echo Early Crypto

Cuban kept the argument to a single line.

Scarcity drives the comparison. Advanced processors remain in short supply, while buyers bid hard for every available unit. Bitcoin built its early narrative on the same logic.

Cuban has grown cold on digital assets. He sold most of his Bitcoin in May, and Blockstream CEO Adam Back challenged Cuban’s Bitcoin data days later.

Meanwhile, he keeps pushing policy ideas around artificial intelligence. In May, Cuban floated a federal AI token tax and compared his critics to early crypto opponents.

The parallel has clear limits, though. Tokens settle on public ledgers and trade around the clock. Chips, by contrast, sit in data centers, wear out, and lose value as newer models are shipped.

Wall Street Already Prices the Silicon

CME Group turns the idea into a live product on October 5. The exchange plans to list Silicon Data H100 and B200 rental index futures on NYMEX. Each contract covers one month of GPU rental costs.

Compute has become the currency of the AI age…our futures contracts will now turn compute into a standardized, tradable commodity.

Pete Keavey, CME Group global head of energy and environmental products, via CME

For now, hedging explains the early interest. AI developers and cloud operators face fluctuating rental bills, so a futures curve lets them lock in budgets months in advance.

Demand numbers support the thesis. Nvidia booked $75.2 billion in data center revenue for the quarter ending April 26, up 92% year over year. Traders now watch Nvidia’s next earnings report closely.

Total company revenue reached $81.6 billion over the same three months, an 85% annual jump. Chief executive Jensen Huang described the AI buildout as the biggest infrastructure expansion ever attempted.

Moreover, supply politics add another layer. Chinese exports jumped 23.9% in July as global chip demand surged. However, US export limits also pushed Beijing toward domestic memory chip champions.

Cuban’s comparison cuts both ways. Crypto delivered outsized returns, yet it also produced brutal drawdowns and heavy speculation. Whether chips repeat that arc may depend on how the October futures contracts trade.

Source: BeInCrypto