- Arthur Hayes says Bitcoin has likely bottomed near $60,000 and sees a move above $126,000 as inevitable.
- The BitMEX co-founder argues that AI infrastructure spending, war expenditure and credit expansion are creating a bullish setup for crypto assets.
Arthur Hayes is back on familiar ground: liquidity, credit and the long trade in hard digital assets. In his new essay, “The Butterfly Touch,” the BitMEX co-founder argues that Bitcoin has already found its floor near $60,000 and is now moving toward a broader macro-driven breakout.
Hayes links Bitcoin’s next leg to credit expansion
Hayes’ argument is not really about one technical setup or one ETF flow. It is bigger than that, and rather typical of him. He sees the next Bitcoin move coming from a new global spending cycle: artificial intelligence infrastructure, higher military budgets, domestic industrial buildouts and the stockpiling of critical commodities.
In his view, none of this can happen without more credit. Governments and state-linked financial systems will need to fund data centers, power grids, chips, weapons systems, energy security and supply-chain resilience. Hayes expects that process to push continued credit expansion in both U.S. dollars and Chinese yuan. That, for him, is the actual signal.
The logic is simple enough. When credit expands, liquidity eventually finds assets that can absorb it. Bitcoin, with its fixed supply and global liquidity, remains one of the cleanest expressions of that trade. Hayes has made versions of this argument before, but the framing has shifted. This is not only about central bank easing anymore. It is about governments spending because they feel they have no choice.
Bitcoin, he says, has already bottomed near $60,000. From there, he expects a retest and eventual break above $126,000. The near-term level to watch, in his view, is $90,000. Once Bitcoin clears that area, Hayes expects momentum to accelerate as traders who waited too long are forced back into the market.
That is the part many market participants will focus on, naturally. But the more important point is his timing framework. Hayes is not saying Bitcoin rises because crypto sentiment suddenly improves. He is saying it rises because the macro machine starts printing through another channel: fiscal spending, strategic investment and credit creation.
Maelstrom leans into HYPE, ZEC and NEAR
Hayes’ positioning also gives a useful read on how he is thinking beyond Bitcoin. His family office, Maelstrom, is currently heavily positioned in HYPE and ZEC. He also indicated that NEAR is the next major focus for capital deployment.
The mix is not random. HYPE gives exposure to crypto-native market structure and decentralized derivatives, one of the areas where real trading activity still matters. ZEC sits in the privacy-asset corner of the market, which has drawn renewed attention as financial surveillance, digital identity and state control over payment rails become bigger political themes. NEAR, meanwhile, offers exposure to a large smart-contract ecosystem that has often been linked to AI-adjacent narratives.
That portfolio tells its own story. Hayes is not only buying the Bitcoin scarcity thesis. He is also looking for assets that connect to broader themes: trading infrastructure, privacy and AI-linked blockchain demand. These are higher-beta ideas, and they carry more risk than BTC. But they fit his view that the next cycle will not be driven by one clean narrative alone.
His call is aggressive, as usual. Hayes rarely writes in half-measures. Still, the argument is not just blind optimism. He is essentially saying that the world is entering another spending cycle, led by AI, defense and strategic infrastructure, and that the funding for that cycle will weaken fiat balance sheets over time.
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