Buy Bitcoin If This Happens, Says Arthur Hayes

Arthur Hayes, the Chief Investment Officer at Maelstrom and co-Founder as well as former CEO of BitMEX, has published a new essay titled “The Ugly,” in which he contends that Bitcoin could be poised for a profound near-term pullback before ultimately marching to unprecedented highs. While retaining his characteristic bluntness, Hayes lays out two scenarios when to buy Bitcoin.

Buy Bitcoin If This Happens

Hayes’ essay begins by recounting a sudden shift in sentiment that caught him off guard. Comparing financial analysis to backcountry skiing on a dormant volcano, Hayes recalls how the mere hint of avalanche danger once forced him to stop and reassess. He expresses a similarly uneasy feeling about current monetary conditions, an intuition he says he last felt in late 2021, right before the crypto markets collapsed from their record highs.

“Subtle movements between central bank balance sheet levels, the rate of banking credit expansion, the relationship between the US 10-yr treasury/stocks/Bitcoin prices, and the insane TRUMP memecoin price action produced a pit in my stomach,” he writes, emphasizing that these signals collectively remind him of the market’s precarious situation prior to the 2022 and 2023 downturns. He clarifies that he does not believe the broader bull cycle is finished, but he anticipates that Bitcoin could drop to somewhere around the $70,000 to $75,000 range before rallying sharply to reach $250,000 by year’s end.

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He describes this range as plausible given that equity markets and treasury markets appear, in his words, deeply entangled in a “filthy fiat” environment still grappling with the vestiges of inflation and rising interest rates. Hayes points out that Maelstrom, his investment firm, remains net long while simultaneously raising its holdings in the USDe stablecoins to buy back Bitcoin if price falls below $75,000.

In his view, scaling back risk in the short term allows him to preserve capital that can later be deployed when a genuine market liquidation occurs. He identifies a 30% correction from current levels as a distinct possibility, while also acknowledging that the bullish momentum could continue. “if Bitcoin trades through $110,000 on strong volume with an expanding perp open interest, then I’ll throw in the towel and buy back risk higher,” he writes on his second scenario.

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