Arthur Hayes, chief investment officer of crypto-focused venture capital and investment fund Maelstrom, said the bull market is back and he is not waiting for confirmation.
Bitcoin found a floor at $60,000 earlier this year, and regaining its October 2025 all-time high of $126,000 is a “foregone conclusion,” Hayes wrote in a Substack essay Monday. The largest cryptocurrency briefly topped $82,000 on Tuesday and recently traded around $80,600. A return to the high from current levels would represent a gain of around 55%.
Hayes, who also co-founded the BitMEX exchange, flagged $90,000 as the level at which the rally would become explosive. At this point, sellers of call options with higher strike prices would be forced to buy bitcoin to cover their positions, thereby accelerating the advance. Call option writers bet that the price will not exceed a certain level; buyers are betting it will.
Hayes pointed out two tailwinds behind his targets.
The first is capital spending in AI, which he says is no longer financed by the cash flows of the largest software companies but now requires credit creation by commercial banks and central banks. He reported that the Federal Reserve and the People’s Bank of China are easing financial conditions to support construction, with Chinese banks specifically redirecting capital from real estate to technology.
The second tailwind is the war between the United States and Iran, which has forced sovereign countries to rebuild their national infrastructure and stockpile raw materials rather than save on their dollar assets.
“Higher for longer” is how Hayes described the inflationary impact of the two combined.
War is inflationary, AI development is inflationary, and the political will to print money to finance both is what creates an environment for Bitcoin to outperform, he wrote. He pointed to Bitcoin’s performance against the Nasdaq 100, IGV software ETF and gold since the war began on February 28 as evidence that the asset has already started to factor in this change.
Hayes also disclosed the positioning of Maelstrom’s altcoin. The fund holds significant positions in Hyperliquid’s HYPE token and Zcash’s ZEC, with NEAR identified as the next pick. NEAR’s thesis, which it explains in a follow-up essay, relies on combining the protocol’s privacy narrative and intent-based architecture, creating positive cash flow.
“This will flip the script on the token’s disastrous price performance,” Hayes wrote.
Hayes also discussed two scenarios that could put an end to the recovery. The first is a mega-IPO or an irresponsible AI merger in the US or China that the market cannot absorb, thereby taking investors out of the manic phase.
The second occurs if the Democratic challenger in the 2028 US presidential election runs on an anti-AI platform that promises to reduce capital spending, with the popularity of that message forcing lenders to reconsider whether credit will continue to flow to the sector.
The November 2026 midterm elections could be a “slight speed bump” between now and then.
“It’s a bull market; close your eyes and push the button,” Hayes wrote. “There will be a time to sell, but it’s not now.”
