Here’s the time for Arthur Hayes to buy Bitcoin again

Arthur Hayes said he expects BTC to rise above $100,000, but is waiting for central banks to print Bitcoin again before buying it.

BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes said he wouldn’t buy Bitcoin (BTC) today if he only had $1 to invest.

However, he predicts that the cryptocurrency will eventually return to above $100,000 once central banks return to printing money.

Waiting for Fed to print

In a March 10 interview with Nathalie Brunel on CoinStories, Hayes claimed that the ongoing conflict between the US and Israel with Iran poses a real risk of a broader market decline that could see BTC drop below $60,000.

“The longer this situation drags on, the more stock prices could fall, and Bitcoin could fall a little bit more, below $60,000, and it could be a kind of massive chain liquidation,” Hayes said in an interview.

He said every major Middle East conflict in his lifetime ultimately prompted the Fed to print, leading him to conclude that the signal to monitor was not the war itself, but what central banks actually did in response.

“If you had a dollar to invest right now, would you invest it in Bitcoin? No,” he said. “I’ll wait. The longer this conflict drags on, the more likely it is that the Fed will have to print more money to support the American war machine. That’s when I’m going to buy Bitcoin.”

But he cautioned against trying to time the moment, noting that most people are following the same mainstream reporting and are likely to misread the situation.

When asked why BTC has underperformed over the past six to nine months, the former CEO of BitMEX pointed to a lack of liquidity rather than weak demand for the king of cryptocurrencies itself.

“Bitcoin is a liquidity alarm,” he said, arguing that job losses due to AI are quietly increasing deflationary pressures on the U.S. economy. In his view, there is not enough dollar liquidity to offset other capital needs, particularly spending by big tech companies building data center infrastructure.

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Hayes also refuted the idea that institutions like Jane Street and large market makers are suppressing the price of BTC.

“I don’t think there’s any kind of nefarious conspiracy or nefarious conspiracy by Jane Street or any other market maker to drive prices down,” he said.

The crypto trader said most such claims come from investors looking to blame someone else after making a wrong entry, and advised those without a professional trading setup to avoid leverage and short-term positions altogether.

He personally described himself as “a very, very long Bitcoin and other coin structurally,” adding that the need for stateless money is much stronger now than in 2009, when Bitcoin was launched.

Hayes’ comments came as Bitcoin has been trading sideways for months, trading just below $70,000. However, contrary to the BitMEX co-founder’s suggestion that the asset could fall to $60,000, analyst Markus Thielen believes that BTC’s defiance of rising oil prices and geopolitical noise over the past week is a bullish sign, increasing the likelihood of a move towards $80,000.