Arthur Hayes Says Bitcoin Bull Market Underway After Treasury Buyback Cap Hits $4B

Arthur Hayes: Buyback Doubling Opens a New Bitcoin Phase

Arthur Hayes, the BitMEX co-founder and chief investment officer at Maelstrom, said in an Altcoin Daily podcast interview that Bitcoin’s bull market has just begun, pointing to U.S. debt stress and the Treasury’s expanded bond repurchase program as the catalyst. Hayes described Bitcoin as a “liquidity relief valve” for a system in which the U.S. carries roughly $40 trillion in debt and can no longer rely on foreign central banks to absorb its securities. He argued that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s decision to at least double long-end buyback limits is a signal that officials are moving toward yield-curve control, a process that suppresses long-term yields through central-bank money creation. That, Hayes said, pushes additional dollar liquidity into markets, and Bitcoin is positioned to capture the spillover. He noted that the Aug. 19 announcement had already prompted a sharp move higher, and warned that a more explicit yield-curve-control framework could push Bitcoin to “several hundred thousand dollars” very quickly. He also said the CLARITY Act is unnecessary for Bitcoin, which has operated since 2009 without a comprehensive U.S. regulatory framework; his year-end target is $126,000, just above the previous all-time high. Hayes downplayed technical analysis and called the $60,000 level and the prior all-time high around $126,000 the most important markers. He pointed to the Federal Reserve’s FIMA repo facility as an even larger liquidity tool, saying it could eventually let foreign governments sell U.S. Treasuries to the Fed without a cap, funding dollar weakness and overseas spending. He likened the moment to the pre-2008 setup, saying the bailouts of Bear Stearns and AIG ultimately created the conditions for Bitcoin’s birth. He added that his former exchange, BitMEX, which he co-founded in 2014, is scheduled to shut down on Sept. 23 after an 11-year run. His preferred altcoin remains Ethereum, which he says has lagged other large-cap assets while retaining the largest developer community.

In his Aug. 25 essay “Same Same But Different,” Hayes expanded on the same argument, pointing to the Treasury statement that confirmed the maximum size of certain long-end liquidity-support buybacks would rise from $2 billion to at least $4 billion per operation between Sept. 9 and Nov. 4. Bitcoin had traded below $65,000 before the announcement and climbed above $80,000 by Aug. 25, with an intraday high above $81,000. Spot Bitcoin ETF products in the U.S. took in about $517 million of net inflows on Aug. 19, the strongest single-day total since early May, while derivatives liquidations and a weaker dollar added to the breakout. Hayes compared Bessent’s approach to former Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen’s increased reliance on T-bills in late 2023, saying that strategy pulled money out of the Federal Reserve’s overnight reverse-repurchase facility. He also identified the Treasury General Account, which held about $940 billion, as a potential source of buying power, calling a large drawdown the “middle road” for liquidity. Treasury officials stress that the program is a debt-management tool for older, less liquid securities, not a form of quantitative easing. Hayes wrote before any operations had been executed under the larger caps; the first purchase window opens in September. The 10-year Treasury yield initially declined toward 4.65 percent before recovering part of the move. Separately, the New York Fed is buying about $10 billion of securities during its current monthly operating period to keep bank reserves ample. The Treasury’s latest quarterly borrowing estimate assumes a $950 billion cash balance at the end of September and about $739 billion in privately held net marketable debt borrowing for the July-to-September quarter, figures traders will watch as the program unfolds. Hayes said Maelstrom has moved to “maximum risk,” with major exposure to Bitcoin, Ether, Ethena and Ether.fi, though he did not disclose position sizes.

Taken together, Hayes’s interview and essay frame the buyback expansion as one step in a broader liquidity transmission story. The Treasury’s own language is more cautious: it describes the operations as debt-management tools designed to improve liquidity in older securities, not as quantitative easing. Because no purchases under the enlarged caps have been executed yet, the Bitcoin bull case remains conditional until Sept. 9, when the first operations under the new limits are scheduled. Until then, the market is trading on expectation rather than confirmation, which leaves room for sharp pullbacks even in a sustained reversal of the bear market. Spot data from the past 24 hours shows the price up about 4.1% as traders front-run the next policy milestone.