Arthur Hayes: Money Printing Will Push Bitcoin to $250,000
Arthur Hayes, co-founder of BitMEX and head of Maelstrom, told podcast host Anthony Pompliano that the recent commitment of bond market support by U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent will lead to continued money printing, with Bitcoin expected to rise to $250,000. He stated: "Get ready, start buying; there won't be a massive credit crisis like in 2008, just continued money printing, and then look up to see Bitcoin at $250,000."
Hayes' logic is that if the market does not operate according to Bessent's wishes and repeatedly tests it, the latter will have to increase the supply. He likened the endpoint to former Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen's operations—issuing more short-term Treasury bonds to pull funds from the Fed's overnight reverse repo facility into the bill market, reducing the reverse repo balance from about $2.5 trillion to around $100 billion, effectively injecting about $2.4 trillion in liquidity into the market.
This week, officials indicated that the Treasury might use nearly $1 trillion from the Treasury General Account to assist in bond purchases. This account is the government's checking account at the Fed, currently around $950 billion, higher than the previous administration's target of about $550 billion to $600 billion. Bessent has raised the long bond repurchase from $2 billion per session to at least $4 billion, effective from September 9 to November 4, and stated that the scale could be further increased.
Hayes referred to the additional purchase of about $20 billion in long bonds as "negligible" relative to the nearly $40 trillion in Treasury debt. He noted that the ten-year yield briefly fell and then rose back to pre-announcement levels. Public market quotes show the ten-year yield at about 4.70% and the thirty-year yield at about 5.17%, close to recent highs. Investor Peter Boockvar stated on a television program that the Secretary cannot use yield curve manipulation to overpower the bond market.
Hayes stated that Maelstrom maintains a high-risk exposure to cryptocurrencies, with Bitcoin being about ten times that of gold in the portfolio, and holds shares in gold mining companies and ExxonMobil. Bitcoin has rebounded about 20% in recent months but remains below the approximately $112,000 level from a year ago; the price briefly surpassed $80,000 around the time the TGA bond purchase news was released.
Mechanically, buyers are crypto funds equating fiscal liquidity to fuel for risk assets, while sellers are bond investors challenging the official long-end yields. The event is driven by increased repurchase activity and rumors of available general accounts. If funds are replaced from the TGA or short bonds into bank reserves, high-beta crypto assets and gold mines benefit, while long bond pricing, which requires larger interventions to suppress, is pressured.
Source: Public Information
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Hayes' method for setting target prices has not changed in a decade: first define the accounting alias for "money printing," then write Bitcoin as a thermometer for that alias. After BitMEX created a global pricing venue for perpetual contracts, he left the exchange and used Maelstrom to productize the same macro narrative. He has previously used $250,000 with a year-end deadline for 2025, and after it did not materialize, he pushed the deadline to the coming years. The path is a trader translating Treasury debt management into a narrative that can be ordered in the crypto space, rather than discovering a new on-chain fundamental.
He outlines the flow of money in three steps: the Treasury uses the general account or short bonds to buy long bonds, dormant dollars in reserves or reverse repos are activated, and the excess credit enters Bitcoin. Bessent needs to keep the nearly 5% ten-year yield in check to prevent mortgages and corporate bonds from freezing; Hayes needs the same action to be called money printing by the market. The motivations of both parties differ: one aims to maintain the issuance window, while the other seeks to leverage the portfolio. Specific actions include doubling the repurchase scale, releasing rumors of nearly $1 trillion cash account usage, and funds pushing positions to "maximum risk."
Similar precedents include the Fed's easing after the panic in 2013, direct fiscal market entry in 2020, and Yellen draining reverse repos with short bonds in 2023. Each time, the crypto market has framed it as a primary engine beyond halving. The current Treasury market is in a "post-failure control escalation phase"—announcements can only suppress for one trading day; Bitcoin is in a trading phase where macro rumors are quickly discounted, yet the scale of interventions cannot be independently verified.
The essence is the transfer of pricing power: the pricing power of long-end rates is tugged between bond traders and the Treasury toolbox, while Bitcoin marks the tug-of-war itself as a call option. The mechanism is that the stock of debt is too large, and small repurchases cannot change the term premium, thus the market forces steps closer to directly utilizing cash accounts or the central bank cooperating with short bonds; the more the steps resemble money printing, the more Hayes' target price is treated as a trading script rather than a fulfilled prediction.