Why Compute Still Trades in Group Chats — Affaan Mustafa & Alejandro Soumah Fernandez, Jump Trading

Affaan Mustafa and Alejandro Soumah Fernandez lead compute trading at Jump Trading. They explain why most GPU capacity still trades out of public view: private quotes, bilateral contracts and deals struck over Slack, X and Telegram. They look at why GPU prices have held up even as token prices fell, how chips, power, buildings and capital all feed into the price of a GPU hour, and why mid-size companies get squeezed when a 15 to 25% prepayment on a three-year contract can eat a whole funding round. They also cover brokers, exchanges, futures and flexible contracts, export controls, and why the