Arthur Hayes argues that AI sector slowdown could force U.S. monetary expansion, indirectly benefiting Bitcoin through increased dollar liquidity.
Macro & Markets ·
Arthur Hayes, co-founder of BitMEX, contends in his latest essay that safety-focused slowdowns in AGI development by labs such as Anthropic and OpenAI may signal insufficient demand for AI services at prevailing prices rather than genuine technical caution. A pullback in training expenditure would reduce consumption of data centers and semiconductors, creating stress on more than $1 trillion in investment-grade debt and hundreds of billions in lower-rated debt instruments backed by AI infrastructure assets.
Hayes argues that such credit strain could compel U.S. policymakers to intervene as either a direct buyer of computing capacity or a backstop for insurers holding AI-related exposures. These interventions would expand dollar liquidity in the financial system, an outcome he expects would benefit Bitcoin and other digital assets.
The thesis rests on a chain of assumptions: that safety measures reflect weak demand, that spending cuts would materialize, and that resulting defaults would trigger government action. No timeline for these developments is specified, and the likelihood of each step remains open to debate.