Why Bitcoin’s Biggest Risk Isn’t Iran — It’s AI, Says Arthur Hayes

Bitcoin has survived wars, rate hikes, and regulatory crackdowns. But the next threat may be far less visible.

No matter which way you slice it, it's fairly evident neither the market, nor workers are feeling adequately equipped to react with enough time to the rising effects of AI.

In a new interview with Coinage, Maelstrom CIO Arthur Hayes argues that an AI reckoning is coming, and considering Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent called an emergency meeting with Fed Chair Jerome Powell and banking leaders this week to address Anthropic's newest model, it does seem like the need to prepare is growing.

“I still think that the biggest problem for Bitcoin is not the war,” Hayes said. “This AI disruption… is a bigger problem for Bitcoin because that is a credit deflationary event.”

It’s a striking shift in framing. For years, Hayes has been one of crypto’s most consistent voices tying Bitcoin’s price trajectory to liquidity — how much money is flowing through the system, and how aggressively central banks are printing it. That thesis hasn’t necessarily changed, but what he now sees is something new: A structural shock that could delay the next wave of euphoria altogether.

“The result is that knowledge workers are getting fired,” Hayes said, describing how companies are rapidly adopting AI tools that replace human labor. "I'm not saying that everyone's going to lose their job, all I'm saying is, in a highly levered economy like the United States, if you get 10 to 20% of the highest cohort of people who earn money ... when they lose their job ... you can't consume in the way that you were."

And while that can quickly spiral into a macro problem, it could also hit Bitcoin in a unique way. Bitcoin, he argues, is best understood not as a hedge against geopolitical chaos, but as a real-time signal of global liquidity.

“Bitcoin to me is the liquidity smoke alarm of the world,” he said. “Bitcoin rises and falls with the amount of fiat credit liquidity.”

And right now, that liquidity isn’t expanding fast enough to offset what AI is doing beneath the surface.

Less income means less spending. Less spending pressures corporate revenues. Falling revenues stress credit markets. And tightening credit ultimately feeds back into asset prices — including Bitcoin.

It’s a dynamic Hayes believes the market has only briefly acknowledged so far. Early cracks, he notes, have already appeared in private credit markets tied to software and SaaS businesses — sectors more directly exposed to AI disruption. But the broader implications haven’t yet been fully priced in. And until they are, he doesn’t see Bitcoin breaking higher.

“Maybe Bitcoin rallies to $80,000 or $90,000 on this move,” he said. “But I don’t see how Bitcoin can retake $100,000 … until we solve this problem.”

The resolution, in his view, follows a familiar script, but with a painful prelude. “It’s solved by a massive financial collapse followed by printing money,” he said.

That sequence — deflation, crisis, then liquidity injection — is the same pattern that has defined prior cycles. The difference now is the catalyst. Instead of a banking crisis or policy mistake triggering the next round of stimulus, Hayes sees AI itself forcing the issue.

Only when the economic damage becomes undeniable — when unemployment rises, credit deteriorates, and growth stalls — will central banks be pushed back into aggressive easing. And only then does the environment for a true Bitcoin breakout return.

Until that moment, Hayes believes the market is stuck in an uncomfortable middle ground: Aware of disruption, but not yet reacting to it.

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