The term “tokenomics” currently refers to the economics of cryptocurrency tokens, but there may be a new definition on the horizon as AI adoption soars amid a severe computing supply crunch: Large exchanges are designing derivative products around AI tokens, which are increasingly being considered less a computational output and more an infrastructure raw material input, like electricity or bandwidth.

China’s Shanghai Futures Exchange is currently designing such a derivatives market for AI tokens, Reuters reports. The news comes as major derivatives exchange CME Group and the Intercontinental Exchange (the owner of the NYSE) have separately said they’re working on launching futures contracts for renting GPUs.

GPU markets are still maturing, but given the wide range of companies using, selling, and renting GPUs, there’s a robust market for spot prices on GPU rental, typically charged by the hour. According to data from AI Mining Co., which tracks daily GPU rental pricing across 28 marketplaces and cloud providers, median prices for Nvidia H100 GPUs ranged from $1.40 to $4.27 per hour across 13 marketplaces, while the average price for H200 GPUs were between $2.34 and $5 per hour across 10 marketplaces. And just over the past seven days, average H100 prices ranged from $2.79 to $3.33.