Arthur Hayes Insists on Bitcoin to $250K by Year End

BitMEX co-founder and former CEO Arthur Hayes remains unmoved in his $250,000 Bitcoin price projection, highlighting the catalysts for this rally.

It is barely 33 days to the end of the year, yet Hayes is still insistent on a 170% Bitcoin rally to a new all-time high of $250,000. In his Milk Road Show appearance on Wednesday, he refused to budge on BTC’s potential to achieve this hefty task.

“I’m going to stick with it,” he said, adding that Bitcoin either gets to the price or not.

Bitcoin Has Bottomed

Backing his bullish sentiment is the view that BTC has bottomed. Specifically, he earlier called the drop to $80,600 last week as the bottom for BTC, a prediction that appears to be playing out, at least for now. For context, Bitcoin has bounced nearly 12% from that low to its current price of $92,485.

Hayes highlighted that Bitcoin now has support from the US dollar liquidity, which he believes has also reached its bottom. He also noted that the Oct. 10 leverage washout, which wiped out billions of dollars from the crypto market, has stirred a reset.

Remarkably, Hayes suggests that the inflows into BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin ETF (IBIT) were part of a “basis trade” strategy. Large institutions like Goldman Sachs invest in the Bitcoin ETF and use it to borrow money to open short positions on the CME against the underlying asset.

As funding rates dwindle, these institutions unwind these contracts by selling the ETFs to buy back the futures contract at a gain. The BitMEX co-founder believes this leveraged institutional move has now run its full course.

“We are bottom here and can go higher,” Hayes concluded.

Liquidity and QT to Fuel Rally to $250K

Meanwhile, he expects the now-bottomed US dollar liquidity, along with the end of quantitative tightening (QT), to drive the next Bitcoin leg up. Notably, the Federal Reserve System (Fed) slashed interest rates by 25 bps in October, teasing that the days of reducing the money supply are nearing an end.

Data from Polymarket shows an 87% chance that the Fed will cut interest rates by December 10. Before then, analysts expect the Fed to end QT as early as December 1.

Hayes believes that these events would drive Bitcoin through its current all-time high of $126,220 to $250,000 before the end of the year. However, he suggested that he might be wrong, but it doesn’t matter much to him.

“I’m long, right? I’m still happy either way,” Hayes stated.