Bitcoin price will hit a new record as AI destroys jobs, Arthur Hayes says

Artificial intelligence will take white-collar workers’ jobs and threaten to crash the US economy, which Arthur Hayes says will pave the way for Bitcoin to reach a new record high.

In his latest missive, the Maelstrom chief investment officer argues that large language models from OpenAI and Anthropic will push office workers out of their jobs and trigger a financial downturn, as those workers fail to repay their loans.

Eventually, that will force the Federal Reserve to step in and print money to avoid deflation spiralling out of control, Hayes argues.

When that happens, Bitcoin is set to hit a new all-time high.

“Deflation is bad, but ultimately good for fiat credit-sensitive assets like Bitcoin,” Hayes wrote in his Tuesday blog.

His forecast may serve as a slight balm for investors who’ve been burned by the market downturn that has shaved 45% Bitcoin’s price since it reached its $124,000 record in October.

During that time, the overall crypto market has lost about half of its total value, or $2 trillion.

The AI crash

Hayes’ argument is simple.

Companies will replace white-collar workers with AI tools, which means those workers will be unable to pay their debts. If enough of them default on their loans, banks will suffer roughly $527 billion in losses, per Hayes’ estimates.

Those defaults risk wiping out all but the biggest banks from the market.

“This will be a rerun of the regional bank crisis in early 2023 that destroyed three banks in a fortnight,” Hayes wrote.

“But this time it will be much worse, as the genesis of the crisis is the unstoppable nature of AI, a narrative the market believes and is terrified by.”

As the crisis continues, traders will likely dump their stocks to avoid being swept up in the banking crisis, which will cause the stock market to collapse, Hayes argues.

The result of this cascading crisis is that the Federal Reserve and the US Treasury will step in to print money in order to avoid a repeat of the Panic of 2008.

“And then wham bam thank you ma’am it’s time to back up the fucking truck and buy Bitcoin and shitcoins like it’s 2020,” Hayes said.

To be sure, the BitMEX co-founder doesn’t say this will happen tomorrow or maybe not even this year, only that he believes it will happen.

Hayes’s many Bitcoin predictions

Hayes has form when it comes to making bullish Bitcoin bets.

Usually, those calls revolve around some sort of intervention from the Federal Reserve that’ll see the central bank plough more money into the economy.

In the past, he’s predicted that Bitcoin will pump thanks to the Fed printing money to bail out its Japanese counterpart, the central bank’s Reserve Management Purchases programme, falling mortgage rates, and commercial banks lending to strategic industries.

In January, he also suggested that the capture of former Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro would give the US access to the Latin American country’s oil, which would keep inflation down and give the Fed an excuse to cut interest rates.

Low interest rates usually incentivise investors to bet on riskier assets like Bitcoin.

In December, he predicted that Bitcoin’s price would reach $200,000 by March.

To be sure, Hayes has an impressive track record for forecasting the price movement of the world’s biggest cryptocurrency, but he’s been proven wrong in the past.

At the beginning of 2025, he — like Tom Lee and analysts at Bernstein, Bitwise and Standard Chartered — predicted that Bitcoin would end the year trading at $200,000.

Hayes later lowered his target to $150,000. Bitcoin ended the year trading just over $87,500.

Eric Johansson is DL News managing editor. Got a tip? Email him at eric@dlnews.com.