Déjà Boom—Arthur Hayes Says Bitcoin’s 2022 Rally Setup Is Back

Arthur Hayes (co-founder of BitMEX and now running the Maelstrom family office fund) believes that the macro-cocktail which ignited Bitcoin’s six-fold increase from 2022 to 2025 has been mixed up again. Speaking on The “Forward Guidance” Hayes stated in his podcast that the current environment is not as favourable to investors, just minutes following a Trump press conference designed to soothe markets. “feels like November 2022.”

Bitcoin can increase sixfold again

Hayes tellingThe US Treasury, and not the Federal Reserve, is at the center of this next wave. “People forgot about the other side of the equation,” He argued. “Yellen printed two-and-a-half trillion dollars just by switching issuance to bills, and now Scott Bessent is talking about Treasury buybacks—another form of stealth quantitative easing that needs no input from the Fed.” Hayes pointed to his own calculations from a previous episode. From September 2022 until early 2025 Bitcoin grew roughly six times while the Fed’s balance sheet was shrinking. This is a change he attributes almost completely to Treasury-engineered liquidity.

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He says that dynamic has returned. Trump’s initial statements “maximalist” tariff scheduleIn mid-April Trump announced a plan to cut the US current-account surplus. This sparked a violent but brief selloff of bonds and stocks before Trump took office. “concession after concession.” Hayes confirmed that the rapid retreat of policy confirms this. “the American financial system is so highly levered it couldn’t take one week” Trade hardball. He believed that this one week had exposed the impossibility for fiscal restraint and led to additional money creation. “They can call it whatever they want—just don’t call it QE—but it has the same effect: liquidity rises and Bitcoin benefits.”

Hayes’s thesis of decoupling is as much a mathematical argument as it is narrative. If tariffs reduce the current-account deficit, then the mirror image financial-account excess must fall as well, decreasing foreign demand of US mega-cap stocks.

“Mathematically, if Trump is serious, foreigners have to sell stocks. Period,” He said. Bitcoin is not driven by equity beta in this world but by global panic for safe stores of value as currency volatility and trade friction escalate. He expects “US-tech exceptionalism” Bitcoins’ structural bid is strengthening just as they are fading.

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Former BitMEX CEO also believes that Japan has a hidden tail risk. Washington’s encouragement of a stronger yen could cause Japanese investors to dump huge USD carry trades and push yields to levels that would threaten the stability of Treasuries. “corner the Fed into covert curve control.”

Any volatility spike of that kind, Hayes noted, historically elicits a rapid-fire response from the Federal Reserve—even if it arrives cloaked as a new alphabet facility rather than outright bond-buying. “Every time bond-market volatility spikes, the Fed does something,” He remarked. “It might not be QE in the traditional form, but it leads to the same outcome.”

Hayes repeatedly referred to the November 2022 template throughout the entire hour long conversation. The market was in turmoil at the time. aftermath of FTX Bitcoin was accelerating as Treasury began to tap the reverse-repo pool for new cash. Now, he is seeing an echo. “This feels like November 2022,” Felix Jauvin, the host of Felix Jauvin. “Shit’s going up.”

Hayes didn’t mention any price targets, but his implication was very clear. In 2022–25 the stealth-liquidity wave took Bitcoin from roughly $16,000 to above $100,000. Besson’s Buyback Machine “ready to go” Hayes claims that with the appetite of politicians for austerity now exhausted, it is time for another sequel.

BTC is currently trading for $92,559.

Featured Image created using DALL.E and chart from TradingView.com