Cash-settled futures or physical delivery? Why the order matters

In 2026 two exchanges announced GPU futures. CME's contract settles on the Silicon Data index and is under regulatory review until November. ICE's settles on the Ornn index. Over the counter, FalconX has offered an H100 swap and Wintermute a forward. None of these contracts delivers a GPU. They pay the difference between two numbers.

The problem with the numbers

Both indices measure on-demand rental prices. Almost nobody's exposure is on-demand: it is a contract, a window, a block with a start date. And the two indices disagree. On 31 August 2026 one put the H200 at $3.10 and the other at $4.42, forty-three per cent apart on the same chip on the same day.

A contract that settles against a price nobody can deliver at is a bet, not a hedge. It is useful to traders and useless to an operator who needs the machines.

How other markets did it

Power markets were built physically first. The delivery grid, the spot auction and the settlement rules came first; the financial contracts came after, settling on a price that real megawatts had cleared at. Oil did the same. The tape has to exist before something can trade against it.

That is the order here. Every trade on this site is a block of GPUs somebody runs on, delivered and accepted. The record of those deliveries becomes a price per instrument. When the record is long enough, a cash-settled market can sit on top of it, with a regulated partner. Not before.