Arthur Hayes, co-founder of BitMEX and chief investment officer at Maelstrom, said on Thursday that he has sold his full positions in Hyperliquid and Near Protocol's native cryptocurrencies.
In a post on social media platform X, Hayes summarized several reasons behind the sales, mostly related to macroeconomic trends and conditions.
One of the reasons was higher energy prices due to the war in the Middle East and inventory restocking, which may act as a headwind for risk assets such as altcoins.
AI was also a part of his decision to sell the two cryptocurrencies. Hayes cited three "mega" AI firm initial public offerings slated to take place by the early part of the third quarter, which may drain liquidity away from cryptocurrencies. While Hayes did not name the three AI companies, Anthropic, OpenAI, and SpaceX are currently gearing up for an IPO this year.
Additionally, the BitMEX co-founder predicted that President Donald Trump would take an anti-AI stance to secure a win for the Republican Party in the U.S. midterm elections, scheduled for Nov. 3, potentially impacting projects like NEAR, which has positioned itself as an "AI-native" blockchain.
"I think highs in markets will happen between now and September," Hayes also wrote. "Time to take profit, and two-step in beefa without worrying about my positions."
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Pump-and-dump accusations
The announcement comes just days after Hayes reiterated his bullish outlook Hyperliquid and Near Protocol. In an interview with The Rollup podcast, published on May 25, Hayes predicted that HYPE's price is going to go "much, much higher."
"One thing [Hyperliquid] did was they fixed the tokenomics … No VC sales, only a team allocation, and pretty much all revenue going back to token holders," Hayes said. "No other project does this at scale, in terms of the revenue that HYPE generates."
Hayes further noted that Hyperliquid has broadened access for retail investors to trade and discover prices in traditional markets — such as oil — on weekends, which was previously unavailable on conventional exchanges.
Hayes said in the May interview that NEAR has the potential to grow 20-fold as intents play a core part of the privacy narrative by being a multichain protocol allowing users to send money anonymously on multiple networks. He also said he saw a 5x potential for ZCash.
Several users on X criticized Hayes following the announcement, with some accusing him of a pump-and-dump-style strategy after he sold the tokens days after publicly promoting them. On May 22, Hayes wrote on X that HYPE, NEAR, and ZEC were the "holy trinity."
Hayes said he would provide detailed explanations for his decision to sell HYPE and NEAR in his next essay, set to be published on June 9.
According to The Block's crypto price page, HYPE (HYPE) fell 8.3% in the past 24 hours to trade at $66.44. NEAR (NEAR) has taken a harder fall, trading down 17.8% in the past day at $2.34.