Maelstrom, the investment fund founded by Arthur Hayes, begins 2026 with what Hayes calls “near maximum risk” exposure, extending an aggressive stance taken in the second half of last year and pointing toward minimal exposure to stablecoins.
Hayes said Maelstrom remains deeply rooted in risk assets, but with a refined focus on privacy coins like zcash. and emerging decentralized finance (DeFi) tokens are now at the top of the portfolio, in an essay published Tuesday.
“Maelstrom entered 2026 at near maximum risk,” Hayes wrote. “While we continue to invest available liquidity generated from various financing transactions into Bitcoin, our stable dollar position is very weak.”
This stance marks a sharp reversal from Maelstrom’s public positioning early last year, when Hayes predicted that the price of bitcoin would fall as much as $70,000 in a “mini-financial crisis” before quantitative easing resumed.
In May 2025, Hayes confirmed that Maelstrom “reduced risk and increased fiat currency” in late January. The fund, however, began adding risk aggressively, going “maximum in terms of outright crypto exposure” in April, when bitcoin briefly fell below $85,000 because of Trump’s so-called Liberation Day tariffs.
In the summer, the fund was “backing the truck” for what it described as a new altcoin cycle. This high-conviction position did not fade as the year progressed, and Hayes expanded his positions into what he believed were bargain-basement coins.
In December, Hayes said it was “time to go shopping” as the Fed’s rate cuts and reserve expansion began and said Maelstrom was “busy stocking up.”
Hayes, who is considered one of the most influential macroeconomic commentators in the crypto industry, is now betting on the same macroeconomic scenario that continues to drive crypto prices higher: rising nominal GDP, shortfall U.S. spending, and what he sees as inevitable money printing by the Federal Reserve.
He says this wave of liquidity, driven in part by geopolitical movements such as the U.S. intervention in Venezuela, will largely support crypto, but will mostly reward higher-risk plays on lesser-known tokens.
The thesis relies on the United States injecting credit into the economy in an effort to keep oil prices under control.
Hayes says Maelstrom’s performance in 2025 has been profitable, but uneven, with strong returns from tokens like BTC, HYPE, and PENDLE, and costly missteps in others, like PUMP. It now plans to rely on “credible” narratives supported by the broader liquidity environment.
The move comes as stablechain abstraction startup River revealed that it had secured a strategic investment from Maelstrom, although it did not reveal specific figures.
