Arthur Hayes: Altcoins Are Only Needed for Accumulating Bitcoin

Arthur Hayes, founder and Chief Investment Officer of Maelstrom Fund, confirmed at the TOKEN2049 conference in Singapore the strategy of aggressively accumulating Bitcoin through profits from trading alternative assets. He explained that all other investments serve solely as a tool to increase the share of the most liquid cryptocurrency in the portfolio. The fund's position in Bitcoin is so dominant that any other assets appear insignificant in comparison. Even with substantial investments in Ethereum or other tokens, the team prefers to lock in profits and immediately direct the proceeds to purchase additional Bitcoin. Trading volatile instruments is viewed not as an end in itself, but as a mechanism for generating capital for further accumulation of the base asset.

The choice between rare assets like Bitcoin and on-chain businesses depends on several factors: entry price, project market capitalization, and the level of risks associated with protocols and smart contracts that the investor is willing to take on. Hayes noted that a token with a market capitalization of less than $1 billion can outperform Bitcoin if demand from artificial intelligence agents leads to its revaluation. The strategy pays special attention to projects whose price charts show a strong decline. This refers to tokens that have lost 75-80 percent of their value from local highs. Such assets are of interest provided there is fundamental value and growth prospects in demand.

Hayes believes that the key driver of the revaluation of old DeFi protocols, which have survived since the DeFi summer of 2020, is the development of artificial intelligence. AI agents need reliable infrastructure for conducting financial operations, creating a new layer of demand for time-tested blockchain solutions. Preference is given to projects with real cash flows and paying clients that can return value to token holders. The publication also includes AI analysis: the strategy of converting altcoin volatility into Bitcoin resembles arbitrage between risk and safety, and such capital rotations often coincide with phases of macroeconomic uncertainty when investors seek to lock in profits in an asset with the least counterparty risk.