BTC is currently 36% below its October 2025 ATH, but Hayes says getting back to that point is a “foregone conclusion.”
Bitcoin (BTC) could move above $90,000 and revisit its all-time high of around $126,000, BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes said.
He says the aggressive spending by governments and banks to fund AI infrastructure, as well as military spending and energy security projects, has helped fuel the crypto bull market.
Hayes Ties Bitcoin Outlook to AI Spending and Wartime Liquidity
The core of Hayes’s argument is that the Chinese and American governments have handed themselves political cover to print money aggressively and that this flood of liquidity will lift Bitcoin more than almost any other asset.
The first driver is the AI arms race, with the former BitMEX CEO saying that both Trump and Xi view machine intelligence as a matter of national survival, not just commercial opportunity.
“The presidents of America and China both believe that AI and tech supremacy are integral to the survival of their fiefdoms,” he stated, adding that the tech industry in each country has been “more than happy to sell them a horror story of what happens to the glorious nation should the other side gain supremacy over machine intelligence.”
That framing, according to Hayes, makes any central bank pushback on inflationary lending politically impossible, meaning both dollars and yuan will flow into AI regardless of what it does to consumer prices.
The second driver is the US attack on Iran, with the crypto investor claiming that the date it started, February 28, is the moment the current bull market began in earnest.
He argued that the conflict has exposed something the rest of the world can no longer ignore: that the US will start wars affecting global commodity flows without consulting the countries most harmed by the disruption.
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The consequence, in his opinion, is that sovereign nations will stop recycling surpluses into US Treasuries and S&P 500 ETFs and instead spend that capital on pipelines, defense, and commodity stockpiles.
That will in turn create a structural problem for US markets, which Hayes believes the Fed and Treasury will patch with looser financial conditions, including expanded dollar swap lines and relaxed banking regulations.
Each of these tools will expand the supply of dollars, and more dollars in Hayes’s framework means higher BTC prices.
Where Bitcoin Stands
According to Hayes, Bitcoin’s recovery to its all-time high is a matter of when, not if.
“Retaking the $126,000 is a foregone conclusion,” he wrote.
He believes the surge will get even faster once BTC passes the $90,000 mark because he thinks many covered call sellers will be forced to buy back their positions as the price pushes through their strike levels, creating a self-reinforcing squeeze.
As of this writing, the OG crypto is trading under $81,000, up nearly 13% in the last month but still about 36% below that ATH.
Still, investment flows have shown that there is improving sentiment around Bitcoin. According to CoinShares, digital asset investment products recorded $857.9 million in inflows last week, the sixth consecutive week of positive flows, with BTC alone pulling in $706 million, to bring its year-to-date inflow total to $4.9 billion.
