Arthur Hayes Calls on Crypto Market to Prioritize Fundamentals Over Hype

BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes has taken aim at cryptocurrency projects lacking clients or revenue in a recent tweet. He declared the current market environment a “fundamental season” where actual financial performance matters.

Hayes made a bold statement and stressed the importance of fundamentals and dismissing tokens with no clients or revenue. He also called for tangible value in the form of buybacks and token burns.

The message highlights Hayes’s focus on cryptocurrency projects that generate real cash flow rather than those trading primarily on speculation. His call for token buybacks and burns, where projects purchase their own tokens from the market and permanently remove them from circulation, emphasizes his preference for deflationary tokenomics backed by actual revenue.

Hayes’ outlook reflects a growing emphasis on fundamentals over monetary policy speculation. In recent comments, he urged investors to shift their attention from Federal Reserve actions to Treasury Department operations.

“The real show is at the Treasury Department. Ignore the Fed. It doesn’t matter,” Hayes explained. “Powell didn’t matter in 2022 under a Democratic regime, and he doesn’t matter now under a Republican one.” According to Hayes, market participants are overly focused on interest rate decisions while overlooking the more critical factor of dollar liquidity. His investment thesis hinges on increasing the money supply rather than rate fluctuations.

This liquidation-driven strategy has influenced Hayes’s own investment plan. He disclosed that his portfolio now has 60-65% of , 20% of Ethereum, and the rest in what he calls “quality shitcoins”—a colloquialism used to differentiate between valueless tokens and those possessing real utility and revenue streams.

Even as he criticizes valueless tokens, Hayes has a very bullish view about . He prophesied that it would hit $1 million by 2028. Hayes ascribes this prediction to America’s continued spending habits and growing dollar liquidity. He also thinks it will propel capital towards hard assets such as Bitcoin.

Hayes’ observations are made in the wake of a phase of transformation for the cryptocurrency market as investors differentiate more and more between projects according to revenue generation, user adoption, and tokenomics. The focus on fundamentals implies a ripening market that may see financial performance increasingly replace pure speculation as a driver of value.