Arthur Hayes Reveals Why Hyperliquid Could Be Bigger Than NYSE
The BitMEX co-founder and Maelstrom CIO sat down with Anthony Pompliano to break down the Iran war, AI deflation, Bitcoin's next move, and why he thinks one decentralized exchange with 11 employees is about to reshape global finance.
- Hayes believes Hyperliquid is an existential threat to Coinbase and Binance.
- WTI oil was the second most traded product on Hyperliquid at $3 billion in volume.
- He holds 90% of his net worth in Bitcoin but is not deploying new fiat into it.
- He is waiting for a major Fed print event triggered by AI-driven credit deflation.
- Gold, Hyperliquid, and Zcash make up the rest of his portfolio alongside Bitcoin.
The Exchange That Could Swallow Everything
Arthur Hayes does not use the word existential lightly. When asked about the biggest challenger to Coinbase and Binance, the BitMEX co-founder and Maelstrom Chief Investment Officer did not hesitate. Hyperliquid, he said, represents an existential risk to every centralized exchange currently operating in crypto, and his reasoning goes well beyond the standard decentralization argument.
The data point he leads with is specific. Yesterday, WTI crude oil was the second most traded product on Hyperliquid by volume, approximately $3 billion in a single day. A decentralized exchange built by eleven people was the only venue in the world offering price discovery on traditional oil markets over the weekend, when every regulated exchange was closed.
That, in his view, is what crypto was always supposed to be. There are roughly 7.5 billion people outside the United States who want to trade the same assets Americans take for granted, stocks, oil contracts, commodities, but have been structurally barred from doing so. Hyperliquid gives them 100x leverage, 24/7 access, and permissionless listing. All they need is a stablecoin, Bitcoin, or HYPE token as collateral.
The comparison Hayes reaches for is historical. He would have loved to own a piece of the New York Stock Exchange right after Black Monday in 1929. He would have loved to own the CME when electronic trading started in the mid-1990s. Both were generational investments. Hyperliquid, in his assessment, is the exchange that will power 8 billion people entering the global financial system, and you can own a piece of it today by buying the HYPE token. Ninety-seven percent of all fees generated on the platform are used to buy back HYPE, making the token deflationary as volume grows. For the Maelstrom CIO, that mechanic is not a tokenomics detail. It is the intersection of his two biggest macro views: a platform that benefits from global money printing, wrapped in an asset that becomes scarcer as it does.
Why Centralized Exchanges Cannot Respond
The structural reason Hayes is so confident in Hyperliquid is not just the product. It is the speed. Coinbase and Binance are large, slow-moving organizations facing regulatory pressure, compliance requirements, and the organizational drag that comes with scale. Hyperliquid is eleven people shipping code.
The permissionless listing model is the specific mechanism he identifies as the killer feature. Anyone who stakes enough HYPE can list any market they want. This is what Hayes and BitMEX attempted to build when they invented the perpetual swap, a permissionless derivatives market where any asset could be traded with leverage at any time. Multiple teams tried and failed before. Hyperliquid executed.
Prediction markets are the next frontier he is watching. Hyperliquid’s HIP4 upgrade will bring prediction markets onto the platform in the near term. He observes that PolyMarket and Kalshi currently charge fees of 2% to 7%. Hyperliquid will likely charge 50 basis points or less, the same model China has used to displace competitors across every industry it has entered. Hayes expects the same outcome here.
Bitcoin, AI, and the Event He Is Waiting For
Despite holding approximately 90% of his net worth in Bitcoin, Hayes is not deploying new fiat into it. The reason is not the Iran war. It is AI, and that is the most contrarian position in the entire interview, because it implies the ceasefire that markets have been pricing as Bitcoin’s primary bullish catalyst is essentially irrelevant to where Bitcoin goes from here.
Hayes describes Bitcoin as a liquidity smoke alarm. When there is not enough money being created in the system, Bitcoin falls first and fastest because it is the most credit-sensitive asset in existence. AI is creating a deflationary force in knowledge worker employment, companies are replacing entire teams with orchestrated AI agents at a fraction of the cost. The workers losing those jobs cannot service their debts. The banking system holds those assets. The credit deflationary spiral that results is, in his view, the real reason Bitcoin sold off from its all-time high.
His position is that Bitcoin does not sustainably recover until the Federal Reserve and other central banks respond to that deflationary pressure with a significant money printing event, what he calls the big print. Until that event occurs, Hayes holds what he has and earns T-bill yield on any new fiat that enters the portfolio. Even if the Iran war ended tomorrow, he argues, Bitcoin would not return to $100,000. The AI deflation problem exists independently of the geopolitical situation.
The war added an inflationary layer on top of a deflationary foundation, and the combination has left central banks paralyzed between cutting into an oil shock and hiking into a weakening labor market. That paralysis is itself a function of the Iran conflict, which is why the only chart Hayes tracks on the war is the one that tells him whether the oil shock is temporary or structural.
The Iran Framework He Actually Uses
Hayes ignores the ceasefire headlines and tracks one chart: the spread between front-month and sixth-month WTI oil futures contracts. If back-end oil prices stay contained while front-month spikes, the market is assuming the disruption is temporary and oil will flow through the Strait of Hormuz in the medium term. That is manageable. If back-end oil starts ratcheting higher, the market no longer believes the strait will reopen, and that is when the problem becomes structural for every risk asset.
His position is unsentimental. If oil flows through the strait, the geopolitical situation is, from a pure market perspective, irrelevant to most investors. If oil does not flow, everything changes. Hayes watches the spread. Everything else is propaganda or anecdotal noise that cannot be objectively verified.
That same unsentimental logic extends to how he thinks about gold, because if the only thing that matters is whether oil flows, the asset quietly lubricating global trade when it does is worth understanding.
Gold, Zcash, and Why the Portfolio Is This Simple
The number one US export for the past four to five months is not a manufactured good. It is non-monetary gold, flowing to Switzerland and then to China. Hayes reads this as evidence that a quiet gold standard is being rebuilt beneath the surface of the dollar system, not announced, not formalized, just visible in the flow data. Nations that need Chinese goods but run trade deficits with China are acquiring gold, bringing it to China, and using it to settle. Gold is becoming the sovereign lubricant of global trade while the dollar remains the official reserve currency on paper.
On Zcash, his thesis is straightforward. Bitcoin is pseudonymous, not anonymous. AI makes de-anonymization of Bitcoin addresses increasingly trivial, what once required significant resources can now be done cheaply and at scale. For anyone who wants genuinely private digital money, Zcash provides zero-knowledge proof-based privacy that Bitcoin will never offer. Hayes expects the price to reflect that demand as surveillance capabilities expand.
The thesis underneath the entire portfolio is the same one that has guided Hayes since he started BitMEX. Governments will eventually print the money they need to keep the system functioning. Hard assets that exist outside the traditional banking system, Bitcoin, gold, a deflationary exchange token, a privacy coin, are the primary beneficiaries when that printing arrives. The portfolio is not complicated. It is just consistent.
The information provided in this article is for educational purposes only and does not constitute financial, investment, or trading advice. Coindoo.com does not endorse or recommend any specific investment strategy or cryptocurrency. Always conduct your own research and consult with a licensed financial advisor before making any investment decisions.
Kosta joined the team in 2021 and quickly established himself with his thirst for knowledge, incredible dedication, and analytical thinking. He not only covers a wide range of current topics, but also writes excellent reviews, PR articles, and educational materials. His articles are also quoted by other news agencies.
