Arthur Hayes, co-founder of BitMEX and chief investment officer of Maelstrom, argues in his latest essay, “The Butterfly Touch,” that Bitcoin is entering a more favorable macro setup as artificial intelligence spending, wartime fiscal demands and changing sovereign reserve priorities push governments and banks toward looser credit conditions. Hayes framed the essay as his personal view and not investment advice, but his thesis is direct: expanding fiat liquidity in the U.S. and China should provide a powerful tailwind for Bitcoin and broader crypto markets.
Hayes Says AI and War Spending Favor Bitcoin
Hayes’ argument begins with the scale of AI-related capital expenditure in the U.S. and China. He wrote that the current buildout of data centers, electricity generation and compute infrastructure is no longer just a corporate investment cycle, but a national-security project backed by political incentives. In his view, both Washington and Beijing are likely to keep credit flowing toward AI because policymakers see technological leadership as strategically essential.
“The CAPEX built out to support the training and inference of AI models and agents is unprecedented in civilized human history. Many argue that this investment in intelligence is different in terms of the value it will create for humanity than all other technological build-outs. I agree; however, as humans, we always overdo it,” Hayes wrote.
Hayes connected that spending boom to monetary expansion. He argued that large AI and electrification projects will increasingly require bank lending and easier financial conditions, rather than being funded only from the operating cash flows of major technology firms. “The combination of the political will to win the AI race and the financial will to fund the build-out with printed money and bank loans produces the perfect environment for crypto. There will be vastly more units of fiat tomorrow than today, and the rate of change is accelerating due to rapidly increasing yearly AI and electrification CAPEX expenditures. As the cost per unit of intelligence declines, the complexity of models and tasks performed by AI agents increases,” he wrote.
Liquidity, AI Capex and Conflict Drive His Bull Case
The second part of Hayes’ thesis centers on war and the global reassessment of reliance on U.S.-anchored trade and financial infrastructure. He argued that the U.S.-Iran conflict has exposed the vulnerability of countries that accumulated dollar financial assets instead of investing in domestic production, commodity stockpiles, pipelines, transport routes and defense capacity. Hayes cited Marco Papic of BCA Research to support the view that much of the world’s physical infrastructure was built around assumptions of American geopolitical dominance.
“The physical infrastructure of the planet – energy, defense, transportation, manufacturing, etc. – is quite literally built with American geopolitical hegemony in mind. And this is not just about the US maintaining its massive current account deficit – a vestige of its Imperial magnanimity, which treated Canada’s, China’s, and Costa Rica’s imports the same. It is also built on the assumption that US defense spending is enormous because it underpins the globe’s geomacro context,” Papic wrote, as quoted by Hayes.
Hayes’ conclusion is that sovereigns may increasingly redirect savings away from U.S. financial assets and toward “just-in-case” infrastructure and commodity security. He wrote that this could pressure U.S. markets unless policymakers offset the impact through dollar swap lines, regulatory changes that encourage banks to hold more Treasuries, or other liquidity-supporting measures. In his framing, those responses would expand or preserve dollar liquidity, reinforcing the same conditions he believes support Bitcoin.
Hayes was explicit about his price view. “Bitcoin bottomed earlier this year at $60,000, and with a tailwind of trillions of dollars and yuan yet to be created at its back, retaking the $126,000 is a foregone conclusion. Many haters will refuse to participate in this Bitcoin rally because it underperformed tech and gold substantially over the last twenty-four months. Many cannot fathom why Bitcoin is even relevant anymore as a hedge against wanton money printing,” he wrote. He also said he expects momentum to accelerate if Bitcoin moves through $90,000, while noting that U.S. politics around AI and inflation could become more contentious into the midterm cycle.
Hayes’ essay presents a macro-driven bull case rather than a technical trading call: AI capex, wartime spending, infrastructure security and looser credit conditions combine, in his view, to increase fiat liquidity and strengthen Bitcoin’s appeal as a monetary hedge. He also signaled risk appetite beyond Bitcoin, naming Hyperliquid, Zcash and NEAR among tokens relevant to Maelstrom’s positioning. As with all market forecasts, the claims remain Hayes’ personal investment views, but they reflect a broader debate now shaping crypto markets: whether the next leg of Bitcoin’s cycle will be driven less by crypto-native catalysts and more by the fiscal and geopolitical demands of the AI era.
AI Transparency Note: This article was prepared with the assistance of an AI system based on the sources listed and was reviewed, edited, and approved by a human editor before publication. All quotes, data points, and factual claims are intended to be grounded in the cited source material; however, errors cannot be ruled out entirely.