Arthur Hayes is positioning for a 2026 liquidity rebound, arguing that Bitcoin\u2019s weak 2025 wasn\u2019t a referendum on \u201ccrypto narratives\u201d so much as a straightforward dollar-credit story. In his latest essay, \u201cFrowny Cloud,\u201d the Maelstrom CIO says he is adding risk via Strategy (MSTR), Japan\u2019s Metaplanet, and Zcash (ZEC) as he expects US dollar liquidity to inflect higher after a year in which Bitcoin lagged both gold and US tech stocks.<\/p>\n
Hayes frames<\/a> 2025 as an awkward year for the standard cross-asset shorthand that treats Bitcoin as either digital gold or a high-beta proxy for US tech. In his telling, Bitcoin behaved \u201cas expected\u201d under tightening conditions, while gold and the Nasdaq 100 rose for different reasons despite falling dollar liquidity.<\/p>\n He argues gold\u2019s bid is being driven by sovereign balance sheets rather than retail mania, rooted in distrust of US Treasury exposure after prior asset-freeze precedents. \u201cIf the US president steals your money, it\u2019s an instant zero. Does it then matter what price you buy gold at?\u201d he writes, casting central banks as price-insensitive buyers.<\/p>\n On equities, Hayes leans into an industrial-policy interpretation of the AI trade. His claim is that the US and China have effectively treated \u201cwinning AI\u201d as strategic, dulling the usual market discipline and helping explain why the Nasdaq decoupled from his dollar-liquidity index in 2025. That divergence matters because it sets up his core takeaway for 2026: Bitcoin needs expanding dollar liquidity to regain momentum.<\/p>\n \u201cBitcoin and the Nasdaq rise when dollar liquidity expands. The only problem is the recent divergence,\u201d Hayes writes, before returning to the \u201cvicissitudes of dollar liquidity\u201d as the primary driver he wants to track.<\/p>\n Hayes\u2019 2026 outlook hinges on a sharp rebound in dollar credit creation. He cites three channels: a growing Fed balance sheet via Reserve Management Purchases (RMP), commercial-bank lending into \u201cstrategic industries,\u201d and lower mortgage rates catalyzed by policy-driven demand for mortgage-backed securities.<\/p>\n In his account, quantitative tightening faded as a dominant headwind in late 2025, with QT ending in December and RMP beginning as a new, steady buyer. He claims RMP \u201cat a minimum\u201d expands the balance sheet by $40 billion per month, and expects that pace to rise as government funding needs increase.<\/p>\n The second leg is bank credit creation, which he says accelerated in 4Q25, with large lenders willing to extend loans where government equity stakes or offtake agreements reduce default risk. The third is housing: Hayes points to Trump-backed directives for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to deploy $200 billion toward MBS purchases, arguing that lower mortgage rates could unlock a familiar wealth effect and, by extension, more credit.<\/p>\n He ties the pieces together with a simple conclusion: if liquidity turns, Bitcoin should follow. \u201cBitcoin \u2026 and dollar liquidity bottomed around the same time,\u201d he writes, arguing that the next major leg depends less on sentiment than on renewed credit expansion.<\/p>\n Hayes describes himself as a \u201cdegen speculator\u201d and says Maelstrom is already \u201cnearly fully invested,\u201d but he still wants \u201cMOAR risk\u201d to capture upside convexity if Bitcoin reclaims higher levels<\/a>. Rather than using perpetuals or options, he says he\u2019s long Strategy and Metaplanet for levered exposure via corporate balance sheets.<\/p>\n His timing argument is valuation-relative: he compares each company\u2019s \u201cDAT\u201d to Bitcoin priced in the relevant currency (yen for Metaplanet<\/a>, dollars for Strategy) and says those ratios sit near the low end of the past two years, after being \u201cdown substantially\u201d from mid-2025 peaks. He adds a key condition: \u201cIf Bitcoin can retake $110,000, investors will get the itch to go long Bitcoin through these vehicles. Given the leverage embedded in the capital structure of these businesses, they will outperform Bitcoin on the upside.\u201d<\/p>\nThe Three-Pillar Liquidity Pitch<\/h2>\n
MSTR, Metaplanet, And ZCash<\/h2>\n