Arthur Hayes, chief investment officer of cryptocurrency-focused venture capital and investment fund Maelstrom, said the bull market has returned and he is not waiting for confirmation.
Bitcoin Hayes wrote in a Substack article on Monday that the company’s stock price bottomed at $60,000 earlier this year and that a return to the October 2025 record of $126,000 is “a foregone conclusion.” The largest cryptocurrency briefly rose above $82,000 on Tuesday and was last trading around $80,600. A return to highs from current levels would yield gains of approximately 55%.
Hayes, who is also the co-founder of the BitMEX exchange, sees $90,000 as the level at which the rally will explode. At that point, writers of higher-strike call options will be forced to buy Bitcoin to cover their positions, accelerating the rise. The call option writer is betting that the price will not rise above a certain level; the buyer is betting that it will.
Hayes pointed to two tailwinds behind his goal.
The first is artificial intelligence capital expenditure, which he said has shifted from being funded by the cash flow of the largest software companies to requiring commercial banks and central banks to create credit. He said the Federal Reserve and the People’s Bank of China would ease financial conditions to support construction, with China’s banks in particular shifting capital away from real estate and into technology.
The second tailwind was the U.S.-Iran war, which forced sovereign states to rebuild domestic infrastructure and stockpile commodities rather than preserve dollar assets.
Hayes describes the inflationary impact of the combination this way: “continuing to move higher.”
War causes inflation, so does the development of artificial intelligence, and the political will to print money to fund both is what creates the environment for Bitcoin to outperform, he wrote. He pointed to Bitcoin’s performance relative to the Nasdaq 100 Index, the IGV Software ETF and gold since the war broke out on February 28 as evidence that the asset has begun to price in this shift.
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 option. He said he would explain NEAR’s paper in a follow-up article, which is based on a combination of a privacy narrative and the protocol’s intent-based architecture to create positive cash flow.
“This would reverse the coin’s disastrous price performance,” Hayes wrote.
Hayes also pointed to two scenarios that could end the rally. The first is an irresponsible large AI IPO or merger in the US or China that the market cannot absorb, taking investors out of the frenzy phase.
The second scenario could happen if a Democratic challenger in the 2028 US presidential election runs on an anti-AI platform that promises to cut capital spending, and the popularity of this message forces lenders to reconsider whether credit continues to flow to the industry.
Until then, the midterm elections in November 2026 are likely to be a “minor slowdown.”
“This is a bull market; close your eyes and push the button,” Hayes wrote. “There will always be a time to sell, but now is not the time.”