Hayes Sees $1.5 Trillion AI Problem Brewing, Warns Bitcoin Could Get Caught In The Fallout

Arthur Hayes, Chief Investment Officer of Maelstrom, recently sold off a basket of altcoins and reallocated his fund's holdings. He argued that the burst of the AI stock bubble has dragged the entire cryptocurrency market into a downturn, with only Bitcoin managing to recover.

Hayes cited $1.5 trillion in debt issued to fund AI buildout from November 2022 to now, against a near-identical $1.5 trillion rise in M2 money supply over the same window. He estimated that AI 'sucked up all created dollars.'

The crux of his bearish call hinges on what he called three 'darts' that could burst the AI bubble: higher energy costs from a disruption of oil traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, the market's inability to absorb a wave of mega IPOs from SpaceX, Anthropic and OpenAI, and Trump possibly taking an anti-AI stance to win votes ahead of the November midterms.

Hayes is holding his Ethereum position despite calling it 'dead but functional', citing no near-term need to sell and his conviction that an AI-driven financial crisis would eventually force central banks into a fresh wave of money creation, sending Bitcoin lower first, then sharply higher.