{"id":71720,"date":"2026-04-27T23:54:31","date_gmt":"2026-04-27T23:54:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/crowdfundjunction.com\/blog\/arthur-hayes-calls-125k-bitcoin-by-year-end-as-war-spending-floods-markets-with-cash\/"},"modified":"2026-04-27T23:54:31","modified_gmt":"2026-04-27T23:54:31","slug":"arthur-hayes-calls-125k-bitcoin-by-year-end-as-war-spending-floods-markets-with-cash","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crowdfundjunction.com\/blog\/arthur-hayes-calls-125k-bitcoin-by-year-end-as-war-spending-floods-markets-with-cash\/","title":{"rendered":"Arthur Hayes Calls $125K Bitcoin by Year-End as War Spending Floods Markets With Cash"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><b>(Originally posted on : Bitcoin News )<\/b><br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p><strong>Key Takeaways:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Arthur Hayes of Maelstrom targets <span>bitcoin<\/span> at $125,000 by year-end, citing wartime spending and rising bank lending.<\/li>\n<li>The Enhanced Supplemental <span>Leverage<\/span> Ratio, live April 1, could generate $1.3 trillion in new loans per S&amp;P Global.<\/li>\n<li>Hayes says artificial intelligence (AI) job losses created a credit deflationary event, but U.S. defense spending of $1.5 trillion offsets the drag.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>Arthur Hayes at <span>Bitcoin<\/span> Vegas 2026: BitMEX Co-Founder Flips <span>Bullish<\/span> on <span>Bitcoin<\/span> as U.S.-Iran War Shifts Credit Narrative<\/h2>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/news.bitcoin.com\/arthur-hayes-warns-bitcoin-may-stall-until-liquidity-returns\/\">Arthur Hayes<\/a> delivered the outlook during a live presentation at <a href=\"https:\/\/2026.b.tc\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Bitcoin Vegas 2026<\/a> following a reflective period after ski season, and the remarks cover three interlocking forces he believes are reshaping the credit environment: artificial intelligence-driven job losses, the Federal Reserve transition to incoming chair <a href=\"https:\/\/news.bitcoin.com\/ethics-filing-fed-chair-pick-kevin-warsh-lists-estee-lauder-wealth-and-crypto-stakes\/\">Kevin Warsh<\/a>, and a structural shift in how U.S. commercial banks will absorb government debt.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019ve turned a bit more <span>bullish<\/span>, and I\u2019ll explain why,\u201d Hayes said. \u201cIt\u2019s time to think about money creation and money printing, and what that means for <span>bitcoin<\/span>.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Hayes opened with a candid read of the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/2026_Iran_war\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">U.S.-Iran conflict<\/a>. He said he monitors the spread between the six-month WTI oil futures contract and the front month every morning to strip away political noise and focus on whether commodity flows remain functional. His conclusion was that conditions are stressed but not severe enough to trigger a flight from risk assets.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFront entries are tending toward the back end, which says that, yeah, sh**\u2019s fu**ed up, but it\u2019s not super-duper fu**ed up, so I can ignore it and continue thinking about other things,\u201d Hayes remarked.<\/p>\n<p>The central argument in Hayes\u2019 presentation is that AI-related job displacement created a quiet credit deflationary event that central banks failed to recognize. He pointed to a Bloomberg chart tracking the Nasdaq, <span>bitcoin<\/span>, and U.S. tech SaaS exchange-traded funds (ETFs) since the <span>bitcoin<\/span> all-time high in October.<\/p>\n<p>During that stretch, <span>bitcoin<\/span> fell roughly 50% while the Nasdaq held flat. The divergence, in his view, traced directly to SaaS companies losing revenue to AI tools that perform equivalent work at a fraction of the cost.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThese stocks got hammered,\u201d Hayes said. \u201cI think that it pointed to a credit deflationary event that was not being recognized by a central bank, so they weren\u2019t printing enough money, and <span>bitcoin<\/span> followed suit.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He described AI as the \u201cnew subprime,\u201d arguing that knowledge workers who hold high-salary jobs supported by commercial bank loans represent a multi-hundred-billion-dollar credit exposure that has not been priced into bank balance sheets. \u201cI want to fire all of my human accountants and lawyers,\u201d Hayes told the Vegas crowd. He added:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>\u201cI can\u2019t wait for Claude to take over. And that is going to have a very bad impact on anyone who has loans out to these folks who earn very, very good salaries.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Hayes said the calculus shifted when the U.S.-Iran war began in late February. Since then, <a href=\"https:\/\/markets.bitcoin.com\/crypto\/bitcoin\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">bitcoin<\/a> has outperformed both the Nasdaq and SaaS stocks, which he reads as the market repricing from AI deflation to wartime <span>inflation<\/span>.<\/p>\n<p>\u201c <span>Bitcoin<\/span> is now focusing on wartime <span>inflation<\/span>,\u201d Hayes said. \u201cWhat is going to change now that there is an explicit admission by the United States and a lot of other countries that they\u2019re on a wartime footing, their defense spending is inadequate, and they need to print more money to build more bombs.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>On the <a href=\"https:\/\/news.bitcoin.com\/federal-reserve-set-to-hold-rates-at-3-75-as-traders-price-99-odds-for-april-29-fomc\/\">Federal Reserve<\/a>, Hayes pushed back on the market\u2019s hawkish read of Kevin Warsh. When Warsh was nominated in January, critics flagged his long-standing criticism of the Fed\u2019s large balance sheet. Hayes detailed that those concerns miss a structural constraint: Warsh must work alongside Treasury Secretary <a href=\"https:\/\/news.bitcoin.com\/treasury-secretary-scott-bessent-calls-for-full-fed-audit\/\">Scott Bessent<\/a> to keep the bond market orderly while the government continues selling debt.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWarsh is not going to get into a fight with Bessent,\u201d Hayes said. \u201cAt the end of the day, we\u2019ve issued $38 trillion of debt, and you need to fund the government. The Federal Reserve will do what it\u2019s asked to do, which is make sure the market is orderly so that people can buy this debt.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Hayes walked through a balance sheet framework showing how the Fed and commercial banks would execute what he called a swap. Banks holding roughly $3 trillion in Fed reserves would trade those reserves for <a href=\"https:\/\/news.bitcoin.com\/invesco-takes-over-superstates-tokenized-treasury-fund-ustb\/\">Treasurys<\/a> and repos, reducing the Fed\u2019s stated balance sheet without removing <span>liquidity<\/span> from the system. The net effect on dollar <span>liquidity<\/span>, he said, is neutral.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe could get up and tell people that he has engineered a smaller Fed balance sheet,\u201d Hayes said of Warsh. \u201cBut in reality, for us as investors, all we care about is the net effect, and the net effect is nothing.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The third piece of the thesis centers on the Enhanced Supplemental <span>Leverage<\/span> Ratio, a rule change that went live on April 1. The regulation allows large banks, including <a href=\"https:\/\/news.bitcoin.com\/latam-insights-jpmorgans-jpm-coin-pilot-compliance-advances\/\">JPMorgan<\/a> and Citibank, to hold fewer reserves against assets, enabling them to absorb more Treasurys and repos. Smaller banks gain room to expand construction and industrial loans.<\/p>\n<p>S&amp;P Global estimates the change will produce $1.3 trillion in new lending. Hayes applied a banking multiplier of roughly three times to project approximately $4 trillion in total credit creation, a figure he argues exceeds the credit destruction caused by AI job losses.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe great thing about bank lending is it has a higher multiplier than central bank lending, about three times,\u201d Hayes explained. The BitMEX co-founder added:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>\u201cSo roughly $4 trillion could be created, which outweighs the credit destruction from AI job losses. That\u2019s why I\u2019ve turned more <span>bullish<\/span> on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.binance.com\/en\/price\/bitcoin\" class=\"lar_link lar_link_outgoing\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">bitcoin<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Foreign demand for U.S. Treasurys has flattened even as total debt has climbed, Hayes noted, meaning a new buyer must fill the gap at scale. With defense budgets rising and the <a href=\"https:\/\/news.bitcoin.com\/bernie-sanders-trump-family-4-billion-crypto\/\">Trump<\/a> administration projecting a new Pentagon budget near $1.5 trillion, roughly 50% above the prior allocation, Hayes stressed that the demand side of the loan equation is already visible.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMonitor construction and industrial loans,\u201d Hayes said. \u201cYou can get that data weekly from the Fed. The credit must flow.\u201d His <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bitcoin.com\/get-started\/what-is-liquidity\/\" class=\"lar_link lar_link_outgoing\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">liquidity<\/a> index, which he said bottomed in November alongside <a href=\"https:\/\/www.binance.com\/en\/price\/bitcoin\" class=\"lar_link lar_link_outgoing\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">bitcoin<\/a>, has since recovered. Hayes closed his Vegas speech by reaffirming his year-end target and framing the current moment as the start of a breakout.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019ve had some chop. We\u2019ve had a war. Now it\u2019s time to break out,\u201d Hayes said. \u201cThat\u2019s why I believe <a href=\"https:\/\/www.binance.com\/en\/price\/bitcoin\" class=\"lar_link lar_link_outgoing\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">bitcoin<\/a> is going higher. I think my end-of-year target is around $125,000.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/news.bitcoin.com\/arthur-hayes-calls-125k-bitcoin-by-year-end-as-war-spending-floods-markets-with-cash\/\">Source link <\/a><br \/>\n<br \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>(Originally posted on : Bitcoin News ) Key Takeaways: Arthur Hayes of Maelstrom targets bitcoin at $125,000 by year-end, citing wartime spending and rising bank lending. The Enhanced Supplemental Leverage Ratio, live April 1, could generate $1.3 trillion in new loans per S&amp;P Global. Hayes says artificial intelligence (AI) job losses created a credit deflationary [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":71721,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[32],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crowdfundjunction.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71720"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/crowdfundjunction.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/crowdfundjunction.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crowdfundjunction.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crowdfundjunction.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=71720"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/crowdfundjunction.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71720\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crowdfundjunction.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/71721"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crowdfundjunction.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71720"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crowdfundjunction.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71720"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crowdfundjunction.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71720"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}