Arthur Hayes, chief investment officer at cryptocurrency-focused investment and venture capital fund Maelstrom, said the bull market is back and he is not waiting for confirmation.
bitcoin found a bottom at $60,000 earlier this year, and retaking its October 2025 record of $126,000 is a “foregone conclusion,” Hayes wrote in a Substack essay on Monday. The largest cryptocurrency briefly rose above $82,000 on Tuesday and recently traded around $80,600. A return to the highs from current levels would mean a gain of around 55%.
Hayes, who also co-founded the BitMEX exchange, pointed to $90,000 as the level at which the rally would become explosive. At that point, call option writers with higher strike prices would be forced to buy bitcoin to cover their positions, accelerating the advance. Call option writers bet that the price will not rise above a certain level; Buyers are betting that this will be the case.
Hayes pointed to two tailwinds behind his targets.
The first is capital spending on AI, which he said has gone from being funded by the cash flow of the largest software companies to requiring credit creation by commercial banks and central banks. He noted that the Federal Reserve and the People’s Bank of China are easing financial conditions to support construction, and that Chinese banks are specifically redirecting capital from the real estate sector to technology.
The second tailwind is the war between the United States and Iran, which has forced sovereign nations to rebuild national infrastructure and hoard raw materials rather than save on dollar assets.
“Higher for longer” is how Hayes framed the inflationary impact of the two combined.
War is inflationary, AI development is inflationary, and the political will to print money to fund both is what produces the environment for bitcoin to outperform, he wrote. He pointed to bitcoin’s performance against the Nasdaq 100, the IGV Software ETF and gold since the start of the war on February 28 as evidence that the asset has already begun to value the change.
Hayes also revealed Maelstrom’s altcoin positioning. The fund holds large positions in Hyperliquid’s HYPE token and Zcash’s ZEC, with NEAR identified as the next pick. NEAR’s thesis, which he said he will explain in a later essay, is based on combining the privacy narrative and the intent-based architecture of the protocol, creating positive cash flow.
“This will flip the script on the token’s disastrous price performance,” Hayes wrote.
Hayes also pointed out two scenarios that would end the rally. The first is an irresponsible AI mega IPO or merger in the US or China that the market cannot absorb, taking investors out of the manic phase.
The second occurs if the Democratic contender in the 2028 US presidential election runs on an anti-AI platform that promises to slow growth in capital spending, and the popularity of that message forces lenders to reconsider whether credit will continue to flow to the sector.
The November 2026 midterm elections could be a “slight hurdle” before then.
“It’s a bull market; close your eyes and press the button,” Hayes wrote. “There will be a time to sell, but it is not now.”
