We're going to kick things off with a bit of a banger here. He spent the first quarter of 2026 in self-imposed silence. Called crypto a no trade zone while the rest of the market tried to find a floor and will be taking the consensus main stage this morning to tell us exactly when he plans to flip the switch back on. Chief Investment Officer of Maelstrom and co-founder of BitMEX, Arthur Hayes, joins the show. Arthur, hello.
All right, we're in Miami. Obviously, you told me. Thanks, Jen. Yeah. I think the last time we spoke, you said you were excited about hitting the curb.
Yeah. And so I hit it really hard three days in a row.
Yeah, it was great. F1 weekend was amazing. Thank you for having this conference and finding me an excuse to come here.
Well, thank you for showing up. I mean, three days in a row and now you're here. Um, all right. You heard my intro. You published your no trade zone essay. Uh, what happened in Q1 that changed your calculus since the last time you and I spoke?
So, obviously, we had the sort of AI scare in the first quarter. Tech stocks got crushed, these SaaS stocks in the United States. And I put out a thesis that I think Bitcoin was telling us that there's not enough money being created to forestall this AI deflationary event of people losing their jobs, not being able to service their debts. And that's what Bitcoin was telling us. And you know, that progressed up until February 28th when the US and Iran war started. And I think we switched into a wartime economy, not only in the United States, but across the world. And that means more money printing. And at least in the United States, that's going to mean that the Fed and I think the commercial banking sector is going to take up the baton and start issuing loans, increasing credit, and that's why Bitcoin has outperformed the NASDAQ, tech stocks, and gold since February 28th.
Arthur, we keep hearing about this potential of AI to really reimagine the entire sort of labor ecosystem. Where do you think this is going in the next like two, three, four, five years when it comes to like this disruption? Is it a slight disruption? We saw Coinbase's announcement this morning. Um, or is this a major one that we should all be prepared for very soon?
So, because at least in some advanced Western economies like the United States are very leveraged. It doesn't take that many people to lose their jobs for this to be a problem. So, I know on some respects some people derive this argument saying not everyone's going to lose their jobs because of AI. People will find new things to do. And I don't disagree with that. My point is that let's take the bottom 10 to 20% of knowledge workers who no longer have a purpose at least for the short term, say next one to two years in a company like Coinbase and Block and these tech companies that can now automate the coding of tech using AI and they're firing I think what 14% is that what Brian said? Uh Coinbase and other companies it's 20, 30, 40%. So you're talking about the bottom tier of workers who still make quite a bit of money who no longer have a job and nobody is hiring those type of workers right now. So, how are they going to pay their mortgage, their credit card payment, or just consume at the level they were consuming pre this sort of AI disruption? And that's what I'm saying. This is an overleveraged global economy. And if you move the people who make the most money, who consume the most from that equation, then you're going to have an issue, at least in the banking system.
I mean, look, late last week, we saw SIBO make an announcement that they're going to um it's kind of like a double-pronged approach. So they're going to lay off 20% of their staff and they're going to refocus on things like tokenization and growth aspects of their business. So refocus on exactly what their core business is and lean into things like tokenization. So this is a real trady player that is trying to find a way to kind of wedge its way into crypto. How are they going to fund that? They're going to take advantage of some of this technology disruption and reduce their workforce. So to agree with you, Arthur. Yeah.
You know, I just unpack that a little bit for our audience. You know, you said that we're going to have an issue in the global banking system. What does that look like? Like just talk to us a little bit more. I think people are probably watching this interview and wondering, you know, what does this mean for me? What are the next months, year, what is it, what's that going to look like?
So, you know, every loan is an asset at a bank, right? And so, if you have credit card payments, auto loans, mortgages, somebody is servicing that debt. And at the higher income end, you know, $150, $200,000 a year annualized income, they have a lot of debt and they're paying it off and they were paying off quite fine. And once you lose your job, then you're on unemployment at least in the United States. And that caps out in like $30, $40,000 a year. So you were earning say 150,000. Now you're earning 40. And what do you do? You have to cut back on spending. You're not going to the fancy restaurants, the malls. You're not buying the discretionary items. And you're certainly not using these SaaS companies like Adobe and all these sorts of things, right? These are why these companies are getting crushed. And then you think about consumer finance. Well, if the bank cuts it as an asset and now you have an asset that was paying fine, worth 100, now it's worth zero. You have a hole in your balance sheet. And what do we know? What happens when it happens? The Fed comes and prints money. But as we stand right now, the Fed believes and every other central bank believes that AI is a productivity enhancer. We're going to grow. There's not going to be inflation. So therefore, they don't need to provide more money. Uh and so until that's recognized, that is what I think Bitcoin is saying. Hey, we're not printing enough money. We're not recognizing this problem is going to happen in the next say 6 to 12 months. Therefore, you know, Bitcoin is going to fall alongside some of these tech stocks.
I would say that like the market is always true. And so just what I was talking about SIBO, the stock rallied like 8, 10% last Friday. And I think that the fact that Bitcoin is responding to this, you know, truth in the market is more telling us that this is an asset that now has ubiquity, uh, and it has brought enough adoption that it's going to act in a way that's going to tell us what's happening in the market in a much more efficient way than it has in the past. So
Arthur, I love that you've been someone who sort of is not as excited as the rest of the industry about the Clarity Act when it comes to stablecoin legislation. You really believe it's just a rush into treasuries. It may not actually help the dollar or might it help crypto in general. Where are you thinking this is going considering the fact that you know Friday seems to be we cleared a hurdle when it comes to stablecoins?
So I mean I'm going to give a presentation in a few minutes about how crypto needs no regulation and the price performance is indicative of that. And so I think yeah regulation some people who own centralized companies obviously want this and that makes complete sense like if you own a centralized company you want a regulatory moat around your business. Of course you're going to lobby politicians to get what you want. We'll see what happens at least in the United States and other countries around the world. But that has no effect on whether Bitcoin or crypto is effective. The reason why we're all here, why is Bitcoin worth what is it 82,000 or whatever it is instead of zero is because it has some utility. It has a utility outside of the Tier 5 banking system. If it was just another fixed supply asset that was on Tier 5 balance sheet, we wouldn't have this conference right now because there'd be no point. Like you can just go on your brokerage account and buy Bitcoin in an ETF or whatever wrapper and it does nothing. It doesn't help you transfer value outside of the banking system, outside of state control. And so I think that everyone who's clamoring for these regulations doesn't understand why this is valuable in the first place. Why do clients actually want to own this thing? It's because it does something different. And so if you take that difference away and it's just another asset on the bank's balance sheet, then what are we doing here?
Yeah. So if I accept everything that you've said there, how do you balance that with like further clarity, no pun intended, on the regulatory side is going to bring much larger scale global players into the ecosystem that allows in its entirety, you know, crypto to grow or Bitcoin to grow?
Uh I'd say I don't care if they come. Um the the white paper's there. It works. If that's something that you want to integrate in your business or you believe your clients need that asset, you'll find a way just like you found a way from you know 2009 till the present just because there's been what the um whatever the bill was that passed, Genius Act, the only bill in the United States that's passed since crypto has been around yet we're here right? It's worth however many trillions of dollars in spite of the fact that there has been no clarity. So what is clarity going to bring? Nothing unless there's what I'm going to argue is there's more money printing. Otherwise there's no value here because it's just another asset on a bank balance sheet and we know how to trade those. We know how to value those and they're worth what they're worth. But it certainly isn't anything exciting which is why people get out of bed and come into these conferences and speak.
I know your Bitcoin target is $500,000. I'm not sure if that's changed since
