Arthur Hayes: Is it still possible for Bitcoin to reach $250K in 2025? | Korean Blockchain Week

Okay, cool.

I'd ask you some silly questions. Yeah. But it's all just, like, our viewers kind of like to have a bit of fun, so. Good. Yeah, man, good. What are you up to for the rest of it?

More shit like this. Interviews.

Speech. Lots of interviews coming up.

Yeah. And then be done by Thursday and then go back to Singapore. Yeah. You going to Token? Yeah, man.

Yeah, Token next week.

So.

Sure.

Yeah. Whole. Whole, like, Sprint and then back to vacation.

It's going to be. So I look forward to a van.

Oh, yeah, it's fun.

I love the conference. I'm living in Bali at the moment.

How are the fl. Yeah.

Oh, you saw them? Yeah, man, they were like. They were. They were crazy. But Changu is fine, which is where I live, which is like everyone in Crypto, because you did you used to.

Live there for a bit? No, no, I just. I mean, I live in the region, so I go. I've been in since COVID but.

Okay. You used to bounce around there.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

A lot of people. Crypto people love it there. Like, it's very. Oh, good to go. All right, I'll do a. I'll do a. Just a quick intro and then this is the first guess.

Cool.

So any technical problems?

What do you want me look? You want me looking at you or the camera?

Yeah, good to go. Where am I looking?

Okay.

Middle. Yeah, Cool. We're live.

Awesome.

Welcome to the Cointelegraph livestream at Korea Blockchain Week. My name is Kieran. I'm a Cointelegraph journalist. We've got loads of great guests coming and joining us here over the next couple of days at the conference, but obviously our first guest needs no introduction. Bitmex co founder, Arthur Hayes.

How you doing?

Well, man, thanks for joining us, man. When we announced you were coming on the live stream, a lot of our readers were very excited to hear about your new Ferrari.

So I get a text from the dealer and it's like, yo, I got this new car and there's the new Testarossa. And I was like, this looks fucking sick. Can't wait. When is it available? I don't know. Okay, whatever. What's the price? I don't know. Whatever. Okay. I mean, I'm definitely going to get one for sure, but, like, yeah, it looks sick.

And like, why Ferrari? Why not Lamborghini?

I have a Ferrari right now. I like the way it drives, so why not, you know, stay in the family? I mean, I've driven a Lamborghini before. I don't have a Strong preference. I'm a shitty driver, so it doesn't really matter.

Shitty driving. Driving test.

I passed the second time.

Second time I was five times in. How does this fit into your garage? Like can you describe Arthur Hayes garage?

I live in a condo so it fits perfectly fine. It's easy.

Now you bought it using the profits on the hyperliquid tokens.

Well, I intend to when I can actually buy it. It's not even out yet.

It's not even. Okay. So you sold the Hyper Liquid tokens to kind of get ready for it only a few weeks after saying it was going to pump 126X. I mean, you know, did you genuinely believe that was going to happen?

I think people the bags of it, I think people need to understand timing and timeline. Right. So my presentation that I gave in Tokyo said by 2028, yeah, today we are in 2025 that hyperliquid could pump 126x. And so I still believe that hyperliquid has a potential by 2028 to get to these levels. But there is some very serious challenges that this protocol has. Number one, no or low fee competition. Right. So now they've proven that dexes are a thing that retail wants to trade on a dex and big size, okay. And they charge a rate, a fee rate. And so because this technology, you know, this is not the first dex, it's not that difficult to build one. Yeah, maybe the marketing and all that sort of stuff is hard, but competitive is that there's not a big competitive mode. The perpetual swaps from around since 2016. And so and the customer cares about fees. Very fee sensitive especially and they're fee sensitive and they want a new token. Right. They want the new. What's the new Hyper Liquid? That's what I want. Hyper Liquid. You know, it did well but I want the new new Hyper Liquid that's going to go up, you know, 10 100x. Right. So they're very incentivized to find the new platform that's got the cheaper fees, that's got the new token that can do another 100x in their portfolio after they get the airdrop. And so customer retention is very, very difficult. And so when I pulled up the Defi llama leaderboard over the weekend and I saw there's Lidr there, there's Astra, I didn't even know what the fuck Aster was three or four days ago. And now I kind of have an idea. Maybe or maybe not. CZ is going to back it. I don't fucking know. But I do know I've been in the exchange game for a long time and I've seen what happens as a high cost exchange when somebody comes and undercuts you on price. Right. And what do you do to defend your market share? Yes, of course the overall market grows, which it could by 2028. Hyperlooker could be very in a good position. But the forward in the short term, when you've got a half a billion dollars a month of unlocks potential sell pressure and your buyback is predicated on revenue, which is getting undercut by somebody who's offering zero to low fee, then I'm like, okay, well maybe it's time to take some chips off the table. Yeah. See how Hyperlook performs. Can they figure out a way to defend their liquidity moat and then jump back in afterwards? Right. I'm not losing any if Hyperloop goes from 50 to 100 and I still think it's going to 5,000 in 228. But I cut off the 50 to 25 situation. Yeah. And I could, you know, and now I can even go back into 25. Is it still about a 5,000? Why wouldn't I take that as a precaution in terms of my portfolio management? This is why I'm a chief investment officer, not a fucking muppet. And so these are the type of decisions that we think about in terms to optimize our portfolio performance for the amount of risk that we're willing to take given the current ecosystem.

So hype holders that are watching right now, maybe they bought after your 126 experts prediction, hoping for a Ferrari themselves.

Maybe it might still be true in 2028. I don't know. Could be, could be not.

So also it's late September now as well. Time's ticking on the Bitcoin 250k prediction. Yeah, I mean are we still going to get that?

I think so. I think we're in a bit of weakness. I think it's going to be interesting to see how the US 10 year trades versus fed funds. If you take a look at the charts since September 17th, the 10 year has rejected the Fed cut. Tenure is up 14 basis points. I don't know what it is now since the cut and which one's right are equities, Right. Because I pulled up my Bloomberg, NASDAQ and S and P were up on the day. Bitcoin is down, which one's right? Equities are bitcoin. Gold's up, so. But gold doesn't care about the short gold. Saying I got central banks around the world who want to get out of the dollar, so I'm going to be good gold and silver. Right. And I've been suppressed for so long, so it's not really worrying about whether or not the 10 year rejects the Fed or not. But we're at this critical junction in equities. Which one's right, bitcoin or equities? I don't know right now, but I do believe that money printing, and I just got off stage talking about how Trump invested, are going to take over the Federal Reserve for the next 12 months is going to accelerate and that's how we get to this, you know, $250,000 possibility for a year in bitcoin.

I love the Fed just cut rates now in September and you know, the market's largely anticipating that they're going to do it again next month and potentially the following month again. I mean, do you think that's only going to help?

It helps, but what we really need is we need the supply of money to increase. We need quantitative tightening to stop. We need quantitative easing to start. We need the Fed to unshackle the banks so that they can lend again and create more credit. And this is what sort of the most recent board member appointed by Trump, Stephen Moran, has been advocating. He just got off an interview yesterday saying he thinks fed funds is 2% too expensive. He also believes that they should have stopped quantitative tightening and started quantitative easing. That is what we need to really get the money printing going. And I think we just have to wait a bit longer for that.

Now a hot debate within the industry as well is the four year cycle. Some are saying that bitcoin is still following the cycle and others are saying it's not even relevant anymore. I mean, what's your thoughts on that?

I don't like to be tethered to a particular time length in the cycle. I like to say the cycle lasts how long the cycle lasts and I want to evaluate things as they come. Right. The same manner which I said hype was going to 126x by 228, but I dumped my entire stack yesterday. Right. So I think that we have to be flexible. I think that the money printing is structural, that this is a reordering of the world, the world order. And every single participant wants to make sure their population doesn't feel any pain and reduce the volatility by printing their own currency, handing out goodies to the people, America, China, European Union, Japan, et cetera. Right. So. And we're only going to have one of these situations once, right? These changes in monetary order are not every four years. Could maybe once in a few decades or once in a few generations. And so that's why I think we're at a unique moment where if in the past four years was a cycle, well, let's think about what is different about today's situation monetarily and say, do we still think that that applies? I don't particularly think so. But even if I'm wrong, I'm not saying oh, it must be longer than four years. And therefore if the indicators point to it being a four year cycle, I'm not going to take profit on certain positions. I'm saying I'm going to stay flexible. But with a. I believe it's probabilistically more probable that we are not in a four year cycle and we're in an extended cycle that's being extended by this aggressive money printing of fiat currencies around the world because of this structural monetary, political world order change.

And you've also been quite bullish about Ethan in recent times as well. You've been making big predictions for eth. I mean a lot of people generally tend to think after ETH pumps altcoin season starts, are we going to get a explosive altcoin season?

We had a very explosive altcoin season, just depending on which we're in Hyper liquid did very, very well, right? From $3 in a listed to whatever 60 that it got to. But obviously most new issues have done very, very what ripple is ripple? Buffy dollar was close, right? Like that's insane. Ripple's a piece of shit. But again, it's up there, it's crushing it. Right?

But I think as well people want to know, are all the ships going to rise again?

I don't think so. I think that we've gotten more discerning in terms of how we allocate capital. We're not just giving money to a team that put up a website or a team that put up a paper or a team that does a farm. Right? We're saying I want real users who pay real money and I want that money to go to me as the token hold. And if you don't do those three things, I am not buying our token. If you're playing VC FTV games like most of these tokens, I am not buying your token. And that's what we've seen. And there has been an alt season, but not in the most of the dog shit that's out there.

Awesome. Well, thanks so much, Arthur. Appreciate it. Cheers.

Awesome. All right, lunchtime.

Thank you.