Arthur Hayes: Bitcoin Is Going to $150K — The Bottom Is In | Trade Secrets

I think if Bitcoin could hit a million by 2030, AI bubble collapsing, massive money printing, this yield curve control of the US. We have the ingredients. The time is now. 58,000 was probably the bottom in Bitcoin. And now it's going to grind higher in this hate rally. What Trump says or does is irrelevant. Look at what Besset does. Read the Treasury. Read the Fed. Read the monetary authorities. ETH is going to hate [ __ ] your portfolio. [music] Hello. Welcome back to Cointelegraph's Trade Secrets, our very own markets show. My name is Kieran. I'm your host today and I'm joined by the one and only Arthur Hayes. Arthur, how you doing? >> Great. Thanks for having me. [laughter] >> Good to have you on, man. It's a very crucial time for the crypto market right now. We've seen a bounce in Bitcoin. Um, leads me to my first question. Are we beyond the bottom for Bitcoin? Is it only up from here? I think so. I think obviously you could retrace a bit. There's a massive and very painful short squeeze for a lot of folks. But I think the fundamental reason why Bitcoin reacted the way it did is that it's now a common knowledge that the US debt level is so high and so expensive that they are resorting to de facto yield curve control. And that was the admission by Bess that he had to conduct these um upsize of buybacks of the long end by funding it by issuing more bills at the short end. So not it's not like this is the first time that he's done this or that the Treasury Department has done this, but it's the timing. It's the level at which it happened. It's all the other context around it. And I think the market is like, "Okay, great. We know what this is. This is Bank of Japan. They might not call it yield curve control. They call it a treasury buyback. They'll be full of funky names, but at the end of the day, it's money printing. And you know, Bitcoin and coins and all these things respond very well to central bank money printing." >> [snorts] >> And you said not too long ago that over the next six months, Bitcoin might go down as low as 40,000. So, has your opinion changed since this? >> Absolutely. I mean, again, we need the fundamental liquidity driver and the 10-year yield approaching 5% elicited a response. The yen at 162 elicited a response. Right? And it's all the same theme which is the treasury market as sacrian the US government must be allowed to issue as much debt as it wants to affordably finance itself and if that is called into question they will print as much money change as many rules as possible to make sure that that happens. >> So like you know now that this has changed I feel like we're getting the first scoop from Arthur. So, how does the next six months pan out now in your like revised mind by the end of this year? >> So, again, I think obviously it's not not that much money that's actually going into the long end of the market, but it's more about the signal. And so, I think this will be a very hated rally because everyone, oh, Bitcoin didn't do as well as AI. My net my micron was up 50x and then, you know, skinex was up 30x or whatever. Like, why would you ever be in in Bitcoin? So I think there's a lot a large wall of worry that has to get oh quantum and AI oh this oh that right and so like I don't think this is like oh my god we're going to wake up next week and Bitcoin's at 120,000 no >> but it's going to slowly grind higher and higher and higher and there's going to be more signpost along the way that yield curve control is in fact in place in the United States and that treasuries are not money good you cannot sell them in size um so please buy something else with this money and so I think that will slowly lead to a you know steady methodical rise in Bitcoin and other uh cryptocurrencies. >> And it wasn't uh obviously too long ago where Trump now has not said yes, not said no, but was pretty positive when he was asked about the US government accumulating Bitcoin as well. So how much do you think that answer that he made had on Bitcoin's price rise too? >> Irrelevant. It's irrelevant. What Trump says or does is irrelevant. Look at what Besset does. Read the Treasury, read the Fed, read the monetary authorities. Like Trump is just, you know, very entertaining politician, but he has no effect on the price of Bitcoin. >> Do you think he's kind of lost that respect from the Bitcoin investors and more broadly crypto market now? I mean what he says and what he doesn't because obviously before his you know presidency and before he started things that he was saying was having a lot of meaning and people were super bullish on that but you think now people don't really care what he says and and the market kind of doesn't really react to it either. Yeah, I mean that's who knows, right? Because at the end of the day, if he says something that's consequential to the path of future money printing, that's very important to the price of of Bitcoin. But politics is politics and at the at the time in which he was super bullish Bitcoin, you know, people in the US were very sad, panicked because they didn't have any friends and Trump was their friend. And so they handed out a bunch of money and got him elected and he said all the right things. And you know, I guess you could say that the the uh Genius Act was passed, but no Clarity Act. I mean, I think it's a terrible bill, but and that's not my that's my opinion. So, there's no Clarity Act. There's no strategic Bitcoin reserve. Again, he keeps talking. He keeps talking. Cool. Whatever. Doesn't matter. You know what is going to pump the price of Bitcoin? If Trump is afraid that the Democratic Socialists are actually going to be able to mount a real electoral challenge to him in the House and the Senate, he's going to have to get those goodies out there. And he is the S&P 500 president. That is what he thinks means he's done a good job. SCP 500 number go up. So if that is his metric and their number grow up is very easy. Print some more money. Make sure the tenure doesn't go above 5%. Right? Get Besson to do all sorts of tricks. Get wor to do all sorts of tricks. Get the S&P 100 five up. Bitcoin goes up too. Great. Now when we spoke in Vegas, you pretty much said the Clarity Act doesn't matter. Crypto is going to be fine regardless of what happens with the Clarity Act. And at that point in time the odds and it was looking a lot more optimistic that the clarity act would actually pass in 2026 whereas now it's very uncertain as well. So first of all are you thinking that it's going to pass? I don't follow it really at all. But I think at a high level, if you think about the the the political meta in America, >> as much as Trump, you know, caters to crypto bros and sort of rhetoric, I don't think it's very smart politics and so he's got a lot of tight races out there, right? Is he going to spend political capital getting through the clarity act or something else that actually matters to the the median undersided voker? I don't think the median underside of broker gives two [ __ ] whether you know what a broker is on the D5 front end or any of the [ __ ] that's in this bill. Like they don't care. They do care that the data center has made their electricity bills go up, you know, and things like that, right? How is Trump what's the message be going to be on that, right? They do care that they can't afford a house. Like these are the things they do care about. Do they care about crypto pros getting some sort of regulations? No. [ __ ] No one gives a [ __ ] about [laughter] that. And so like why would you waste political capital when there's other things that you need to get done to make sure that your team wins in November? >> Absolutely, man. And can you tell us like what what scares you about crypto right now? Obviously you've been in crypto for for over a decade, Arthur. So like the current landscape and you know what you're seeing in crypto. What scares you the most about the market right now? >> I mean I'm not really scared about the market. I don't think it has anything to do with crypto. It's more like you know global war is bad bad for business. War is very bad for business. You know, there's all sorts of new types of ways people can wage war. It's much cheaper to wage war. You know, it could come to your doorstep and you wouldn't even know it. And your electricity is out or, you know, you have you lose these modern services because there's some drone attack or whatever, right? Like, if I was going to be scared of anything, that's what I would be scared of. And the crypto thing is kind of almost a secondary concern. Who cares? Doesn't matter. Like, it's it'll go up or go down. Um, I think it'll go up in time because they're gonna print more money, but at the end of the day, there's other things to be, you know, worried about outside of the crypto ecosystem. But again, I don't use any leverage. So, I guess it's it, you know, I'm not as concerned about the day-to-day price swings and the prices of cryptos. >> Now, another point we did talk about in Vegas was hyperlquid, and you're super bullish on that, and you've been very vocal about how bullish you are on hyperlquid as well, and that was something that Trump also mentioned um in his speech recently, too. So I want to know from you revised predictions since we spoke in Vegas. Um what's your thoughts on Hyperlquid now moving towards the end of this year? Are we are we going to see a big uptrend in in Hyperlid? Are we still waiting for more confirmation on where Bitcoin's price goes first? >> No, I mean Hyperlid was the best performing large cap crypto of this of this last cycle. And you know we we did well on that. I think we got in in the low30s, cashed out around 75. Great trade for us. I don't think there's any I don't think there's that type of asymmetry asymmetry in the price right now. Everybody knows that everybody knows of hyperlquid is here. >> It's not a it's not this like unknown thing that's yeah outperforming expectations, right? There's massive expectations now on on hyperlquid. It doesn't necessarily mean it's not going to go up in price, but I think there's better riskrewards at least for the capital at Maelstrom to deploy into the shitcoin space than hype. even though I think it's going to continue to go up and I I hope that it makes the CME and the NY go out of business. >> So you don't think there's the upside is there as much for Hyperlquid as opposed to other assets right now in crypto? >> So my number one pick right now is Ethereum. I think that is a better riskreward um for a spear unit of fiat that's going to be deployed into crypto than Hyperlit. That doesn't necessarily mean that Hyperlid won't rise in price. I just don't think it's poised for a 5xer and like where I think Ethereum could do, you know, three to 5x pretty quickly. >> Yeah. And what makes you bullish on Ethereum now? >> Because everybody hates it. It's the one meggaap crypto that has not eclipsed its uh 2021 all-time high. It's the base layer for DeFi and it's, you know, hated for a lot of good reasons, but at the end of the day, um, it has not performed and I think now it's time to perform because it's so been so beaten down and so forgotten and we saw it ripped 20% when Bitcoin ripped, you know, was five, six%, whatever it was, right? So, there is that pent up, oh [ __ ] I got to chase ETH. ETH back now. Oh yeah, ETH. you know, base layer, most developers, da da da da, and you can name all the things about why ETH is the best, right? But you needed to see that price scope of it first before you start to name them. >> So, you think purely like your bullishness for ETH comes from there's going to be a hate rally that that comes because people are just hating it right now. >> ETH is going to hate [ __ ] your portfolio. [laughter] >> And then where does it go after that? Look, we got we got Ethereum that say goes up like crazy. Are we going to start seeing all the maybe some of the other dinosaur tokens as well have its moment? Like do you see Cardano coming back and maybe having another rally too? [laughter] >> I'm a Cardano hater. I don't think so. I mean the other I think great riskreward trade right now is Athena because Athena is usefulness is predicated on the price of dollars synthetically being expensive and that only happens when Bitcoin starts going up and so you know a lot of shorts got torched yesterday especially in the V space so if you were a call overrider you had absolutely creeped yesterdays are up massively spots up massively it's just a perfect negative storm for anyone short gamma on a short volatility which again a lot of people are because it was a it was a yield harvesting strategy during this very boring bare market but that people got torched right and so you're going to start seeing people buy back into the market bases expand the circulating supply of USD will increase and that is going to levitate Athena off the bottom I think Athena is poised for an easy 5xer in the next six months >> and right now like you know a retail investor might be watching this and thinking god I've got to get into ETH I've got to put money into Bitcoin Athena hype. There's all these tokens. So, you know, for a retail investor with maybe $10,000 right now and they want to allocate it across the crypto market, what would you say they should do, Arthur? >> I'd say they should be patient. They should think about their goal, >> how much money they are willing to make, how much money they're willing to lose, and how much stress that they want in their life. Right? How much does that $10,000 mean to you? I don't have any other recommendation other than that because you know my trading style is not your trading style right and so I think everyone this is a personal journey and for me to tell you you need to buy this or that token it's not really the prepper type of advice >> and what's your year-end Bitcoin I mean I know last year was 250k for Bitcoin for yourself so [laughter] um and like you weren't alone there was others as well in the space but what's your um your new year end Bitcoin price for 2026 Oh, 150,000. Let's go there. >> Yeah. And can you give us like when you come up with predictions, is that just something you kind of feel like before you said about Ethereum and the hate rally and you're like, look, everyone's hating it, so it's going to pump back with Bitcoin end of year price targets. What's your what's your thinking and and uh mentality? >> I have no methodology because it because it's a dumb thing to do is predict the the price is irrelevant, right? I predict the narrative. I predict the money printing and then I say, "Okay, I buy some Bitcoin or I buy some ETH or I buy some Athena." And then I wait for my if my narrative is right, great. You hold it until the narrative changes until the liquidity situation changes. The price at which that ceases to be true, it's a price that ceases to be true and that is what it is. Who I don't know what that's going to be. >> I have an idea of what I think it could be, but what it could be, what it is, who cares? Doesn't matter, right? Is there any prediction that you remember being bang on for yourself? Like you were you were spot on and you were like, "Yes, I got that one right." >> I think I called ETH as a two digit shitcoin when it was like 250 or something and it went traded down to like 60 or something. So like, yeah, I got it right. Cool. Whatever. Um, but like the amount of times that I've actually gotten a price prediction right is like so small. But I still make money because that's not how you make money in trading because you're never going to be right about the price. It's all about in my at least in my philosophy and my style of trading, you know, you get the liquidity situation right first, then you pick the fastest horse and the horse goes as far as the horse can go and then you get off the horse and do it again. Now I want to talk to you about um BitMX as well because obviously recently it was announced that BitMX the exchange that you founded um you know around a decade ago has is now going to be shut down as well. I mean first of all you know how do you feel about you know your your own baby shutting down after so long and being a a leader in the space as well. Um how does that how does that feel for you? >> It feels excellent. We shut it down because we wanted to shut it down not because we got hacked. Um, and so I think that is the best way to to go, right? We landed the plane on our own terms. And so I'm very happy with what we did, our decisions, and I'm excited. It's great. I'm thankful. >> Do you think other exchanges are going to in the I mean, look, the the markets obviously had a rough year as well. Do you see other exchanges following suit as well, or do >> I mean, I'm sure I mean, there's so many exchanges that we don't hear about that shut down all the time. Maybe that's nefarious or not, but like they come and go. It's a perfectly competitive market. There hasn't really been a new product since the perpetual swap that we created. And so like unless you have scale like a Binance or a Bybit or an OKX, like it's really a Mug's game. There's no point in even playing because it's just so expensive to secure it, so expensive to run the tech um uh and the data centers like it doesn't make any sense as a business. So thankfully we were able to extract some value out of that uh as BitMX over our time but I would not be starting a new centralized derivatives exchange today in a crypto ecosystem. >> And tell us like you're you're now uh the new you've got a a job again Arthur as well. You're uh setting up your own >> I'm employed. [laughter] >> You're a CEO again. You're a busy busy man now. You're um your new company Flops. So tell us about that. So, you know, back in 2014, 2013, I had this feeling that crypto derivatives are going to be so massive and I was so lucky to have the opportunity to try to make a successful business. I have the same feeling today about the AI agentic economy. It's going to be massive and there will be a payments network that powers this economy and whoever owns that is going to be fabulously wealthy. It's just going to be that big. Now, that doesn't necessarily mean that Flop Lab is going to be that that that entity. I hope it is, and that's the bet that I'm making, but I want to go elephant hunting. I want to be really successful or you fail. Um, nothing in between. That's not the point of this. And so when I saw that and I saw the gap in the market of a lack of a decentralized place where you can buy compute using any currency but obviously a native one to flop and the fact that agents don't have a way to consume their life force in a decentralized fashion away from a centralized company or opaque pricing from these frontier labs. I found a perfect opportunity to sort of create the demand function for why an agent should want to hold flop. If if our proof of useful inference blockchain which creates a spot market for compute floatingoint operations per unit of time, this is what you're actually doing when you're telling an agent to do some work. They're, you know, they're doing some sort of computational um output. Then we have a ability we have the um way in which we can create the demand for flop and uses will use it and then the network become very very valuable, right? And to overcome the coordination problem of getting self-interested entities to come together to create one network from the cold start, >> there's a magical thing called the token. If used correctly and given out to the right people for the right reasons who participate in the network, then you can create the positive flywheel and get your network going. So that's why there's no pre-sale. That's why there's no, you know, you know, let's go get A16Z to give us $100 million at some, you know, ridiculous valuation. Who cares? Doesn't that doesn't mean that anyone's going to use your network. Let's take this token, create some demand, create some hype, and say, "Hey, you get some minor, you get some validator, you get some K who's going to bring your community in, you get some average person who just wants to have their agent process a request. We want everyone to use this to work towards this goal of creating a future where agentic economy is based on the flop network and we all got wealthy together." And if we can do that, then you know the sky is the limit in terms of the valuation of this network. And I'm excited about that type of arc, right? This isn't sort of like, oh yeah, we made a 10 billion market cap project, pat ourselves in the back. No, that like we're either like moving up in terms of Bitcoin type market caps or we're a zero. And I think that is the way I look at this opportunity and that's why I'm so excited about it. >> And tell us how can uh your everyday investor get in on the airdrop then? Um, so follow our exit. It's flop_labs. And at the lowest level, all you'll have to do is create a wallet, go to the faucet, get some test net flop, take that test net flop, and spend it on inference on the network. And that alone will guarantee you some small amount of flop on the main net. So, we make it as easy as that to as hard as get a bunch of GPUs together and mine the currency and help upkeep the network, right? There's participate in any way you can. [snorts] >> Awesome. Um, and look, just more broadly speaking around, you know, AI tokens was a big narrative um last year as well and a lot of them have obviously uh gone down since with the market downturn. Do you see a resurgence where you know the next uptrend in the market we're going to see a lot of those same AI tokens come back or is it more like they're all done and now it's kind of moving towards these the new the new wave of tokens the flops and everything else that comes alongside it >> depends on the tokconomics right as again as I said a lot of teams [ __ ] up their tokconomics >> so they don't even have the chance to participate in this wave because maybe they have a massive VC overhang or they the farm was given out in the wrong way for the wrong type of usage. So the wrong type of holder has their their token and they burned all the goodwill of the community, right? So I don't know. I think it really depends on how you use this magical thing called a token because the ideas and the theories that they presented is not original. People have been saying this for a very long time. The the gap of the market is there is no spot market for compute and people have not used tokens correctly to get participation in the network. If we do those things, few things correctly, I think we have the greatest shot at hitting this home run. >> And why are you so passionate about, you know, bringing this token to light now? Is it because over the years you have seen so much messy tokconomics and everything that you just want to get this one right for for the community or what is it that you know you're you're so passionate about doing it this way? >> Um because yeah, I've I have very strongly held opinions about how token projects should be launched. Obviously, one of my businesses at Mailstream is advising projects. And to be honest, most projects don't take my advice. You know, they listen to the brand name VC who tells them this and that and you know, look at the token. It's not 99%. Right? So, I want to show people how this should be done. Like this is if you care about your community, you can create another Bitcoin. You can create another Ethereum, right? The playbook is there. The early people did it because that was the only way to do it. But then we got greedy. we oh let's just you know sell sell sell a piece of our project to the VC and go party and whatever okay you know everyone's got their own gig but the thank thankfully I don't need to make money on this for my own livelihood >> which is why you can go with a model where you're very generous to the community there's no pre-sale and making sure that people can actually make money at this thing because if you do that then I think that you know the price drives the behavior they're going to talk about it they're going to use it they're going to want their agent to use it because they're making money too. And the problem with AI and this is something that I think is going to have a political ramifications across the world is essentially we humanity both alive and dead and long dead built these AI with our data with our interactions and all these tech companies stole the data and then sold it back to us at $2 trillion valuation IPOs. So I want to say a [ __ ] you to them. Let's build something all together and have the most valuable network that's powering this agentic life force that we created via our human interactions. >> Amazing. Now, um Arthur, you're known as a billionaire. Um you still are assuming with the market downturn as well in crypto. >> Maybe, maybe not. Who knows? [laughter] Do you think that um you know somebody that is getting into crypto today, whether they're starting a project, whether you know they're jumping in, how much harder is it now to get to billionaire status in crypto than it was, you know, even 5 years ago? Is it is it is it still a possibility now or is it just so so rare to see? >> I mean, at the end of you, you have to have an original idea >> or be a very good trader. And I think I don't think that's changed today or you know 12 years ago when when I got started in the industry. you know this is no easier or harder right you can speak to any OG and you know talk about the types of experiences they had you know are completely different but there is definitely was hardship then there's hardship now right there's a lot more eyeballs a lot more competition but again good idea product market fit or very good trader you can still make a lot of money in crypto >> and a lot of people obviously compare crypto now to AI which many have said AI has sucked a lot of the capital out of crypto in recent times as well so if somebody was deciding between you know building a crypto project and an a AI project you know for example yourself if you were starting now what would you lean towards is it equal opportunity or you think that one has the upper hand right now >> I think they're both complimentary right so in this project the team is four people >> right and I think we're going to be able to execute very very quickly on on building this type of thing without sort of a coding tools we would not be able to do this um with this lean of a team And to be fair, I wouldn't do it because I don't want to work with a large team. I did that before and you know, I didn't like it. So, I think that these AI is a tool. It's a tool to accomplish a goal in business. And that business could be an AI itself. It could be in crypto. But with this new tool, you have more power to be creative if you have your own ideas. Not just feeding an AI some slop and then getting some slop back, which is what we see a lot of these days, I think. But if you actually have a [clears throat] true idea, true to, you know, true originality, the the AI tools can make you a superhuman >> if you were looking ahead of time and you know the the the most probable reason that say if flop was going to fail, what would be that reason right now for you Arthur? >> I think we didn't get the economics right. be, you know, the game theory, right? We didn't anticipate a certain way it was used and then the flywheel breaks down and then all of a sudden you don't have sort of that complimentary interaction between the miners, the validators, the speculators and the agents, right? At the end of the day. And so if we don't get that right, we can have the most beautiful code base ever. It doesn't matter. It's all about it's a coordination game. Like the tech is a table stakes. Everyone has decent tech, right? You're not going to outperform on that. you outperform on your economics and the way in which you get humans and silicon based life forms to work together to create something beautiful. >> Amazing. Now, I spoke to Gracie Chen recently on the show as well and we're talking about meme coins. So, I do just want to touch base with you, Arthur, on memecoins as well. Um, she doesn't think that another memecoin season is is going to happen ever. I mean, what's your thoughts on this? I know we've spoke about before with altcoin selective altcoin seasons, but memecoin season specifically. Do you think there's going to be another period in in our life where we see all the meme coins just all go up together? >> No, I think it'll be like everything else, right? There was the initial proof of the concept and now you have to actually have a real community and real personality behind some memecoin. So like imagine if BTS, the Korean K-pop group, launched a memecoin. that [ __ ] would be, you know, a billion, 10 billion in an instant, right? But like random person on social media is not going to be able to create like hundred million dollar meme coins that like they were back in the pump fund days of of old yonder. So I think it just changes. It becomes harder, but you know, the asset class is there and you can use it if you want. >> And we saw Yeah. Like we had some celebrities that did launch tokens. I mean obviously Trump token before his inauguration as well. And then there's been a whole lot of celebrities, some have done better than others. But do you think that uh now even you know a celebrity with a super super loyal following, do you think those days of actually getting getting a token moving are are gone because of all the the downfalls in celebrity tokens? >> No, I mean I I think I we're going to keep perfecting this goal of how do you monetize celebrity outside of like you know the centralized big tech platforms. I think that every celebrity realizes that they're at the whim of Zuckerberg um and some of these other you know tech bros right by dance I don't know who this is you know by Dan is by dance is but like they're at the whim like they can literally deplatform them and all of a sudden there goes their reach right so they want to use decentralization but decentralization is expensive you'd essentially have to stop using one of these centralized big tech platforms move all your um fans to another one That's extremely hard to do and extremely expensive. It's a big switching cost. So that's the problem. We'll solve it eventually, I think. But, you know, we keep we tried, you know, memecoin, we've tried other sort of methods to sort of do this celebrity um distribution and you know, we'll we'll hopefully we'll land on one that works. >> Yeah. And um I just want to also touch base on prediction markets as well because um that's obviously been a big big uh trend over the last you know 6 12 months. Do you use prediction markets for uh for crypto prices? I know we see them all now. Bitcoin's price is going to >> No, I use I use prediction markets for election information. So I want to know especially especially in the United States, right? You basically just want to know what does the market think versus the polls and the market will have ingested all the relevant information. So they don't have to worry about this poll or that poll. If people are betting with their money, that's the real opinion. And so I think prediction markets are very useful for understanding the tides of election. >> Amazing. And just to cap it off, Arthur, um I have to ask you, I ask every guest as well about Bitcoin. Is it going to a million by 2030 or is that a prediction that um is not is not uh I think for the [laughter] >> I think I think if Bitcoin could hit a million by 2030 um AI bubble collapsing massive money printing as yield curve control of the US. So we have the ingredients the time is now. So I think that you know the 60 58,000 was probably the bottom in Bitcoin and now it's going to grind higher in this hate [ __ ] rally. >> Amazing. Thanks so much, Arthur. Appreciate your time. >> Thanks for having me. [music]