BitMEX co-founder and Maelstrom Chief Investment Officer Arthur Hayes said he thinks Bitcoin (BTC) will hit $1 million and Ethereum (ETH) will reach between $100,000 and $200,000 at the top of the next market cycle.

Hayes linked the prediction to his belief that a collapse of an “AI bubble” will trigger a financial crisis bigger than the 2008 subprime crash. "I got to go back to $1 million Bitcoin," Hayes said when asked for his price predictions, in an interview on the Thinking Crypto podcast hosted by Tony Edward.

Bitcoin Won't Bottom Until AI Bubble Bursts

Bitcoin hasn’t hit its cycle bottom yet, he said, and won’t until there’s a broader unwind in AI-related assets, which he said could happen “this fall” or “years from now.”

He said there had been a heavy rotation of capital into AI trades since the commercialisation of ChatGPT in late 2022, draining liquidity away from Bitcoin and other risk assets. Hayes noted that Bitcoin's October high coincided with what he described as an acceleration of AI-related capital spending in 2025. "I think that essentially AI sucked all the capital out of the room," Hayes said. "It continues to suck all of the capital."

At some point when the AI trade unwinds, he said, all risk assets will likely fall in a correlated sell-off, and he expects this will mark Bitcoin’s real bottom before another rebound.

was trading $64,192, up over 0.3% in the last 24 hours. On Stocktwits, retail sentiment around BTC remained in the ‘bullish’ zone, while chatter stayed at ‘normal’ levels over the past day.

Compares AI Buildout To 19th-Century Railroad Bubbles

The AI capital expenditure, Hayes said, could be larger than the money spent building out railways as a share of global GDP in the 19th century. He cited two particular threats fueling the AI investment frenzy: loans used to finance GPU purchases that are amortised over five or six years, when GPUs are obsolete for AI workloads in about two years, and competition from Chinese AI models he said are priced at a fraction of the price of U.S. counterparts.

"If it's all about if we go to the China price, then all these assumptions in terms of the cash flows that these GPUs are based on become kind of spurious, and it becomes a credit event," Hayes said. "As a credit event, this will be bigger than subprime."

He foresees a future decline that will lead to a collective response from the government and the central bank, akin to, but more substantial than, the measures taken after the 2008 financial crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic, with capital eventually flowing into Bitcoin and gold as investors avoid banks and AI companies directly related to the crisis.

Arthur Hayes Dismisses CLARITY Act's Impact On Bitcoin

Asked whether the CLARITY Act could spark a relief rally in crypto if passed, Hayes said the legislation carries "no significance at all" for Bitcoin's price. He said that institutions looking for crypto exposure don’t need regulatory clarity to invest, adding that Bitcoin’s value proposition is based on its status “outside the system”, not on regulatory approval.

"If your entire crypto thesis is predicated on acceptance by a regulator for you to exist, then that's not crypto," Hayes said, "That's TradFi."