Key points: Former BitMEX CEO Arthur Hayes says humanity is wasting trillions of dollars building AI data centers. A critical test may arrive in late 2027 to 2028, when a wave of new data center capacity comes online and customers must honor their computing procurement commitments. Hayes believes that once governments step in to rescue the market, the excess liquidity released will benefit Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.

Former BitMEX CEO Arthur Hayes is betting that the AI boom will ultimately replay a historical script: overheated investment, a market crash, and finally a government bailout that drives up cryptocurrency prices. Hayes is now co-founder and chief investment officer of crypto investment firm Maelstrom. Speaking in an interview at the Gamma Prime investment summit in Singapore, he said that humanity is pouring enormous sums into building AI data centers, which essentially amounts to wasting trillions of dollars.

Hayes believes the massive wave of data center construction will ultimately make computing power extremely cheap and abundantly supplied. Currently, tech companies are racing to hoard computing power to develop and run increasingly complex AI large models, with vast amounts of capital flooding into the AI infrastructure sector, and Hayes's view runs counter to this investment frenzy. He judges that this round of infrastructure expansion will eventually create overcapacity, planting the seeds of a downturn, and crypto assets will benefit from the crisis.

"If you study financial history and look closely at every major technology deployment wave, without exception there is overbuilding. There will definitely be a crash, and afterward there will definitely be a bailout," Hayes said. Hayes cited the 2008 financial crisis and multiple crises over the past two decades as examples, noting that investors who position early to bet on bailout-driven rallies will profit.

"Fortunately, we have Bitcoin and other crypto assets to absorb this excess liquidity. So we know clearly which assets perform best when bailout money enters the market. You just need to be patient," Hayes said.

Hayes noted that SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic are the end users driving computing demand, but none of these companies are currently profitable. Once the data centers now under construction are completed, infrastructure service providers will charge these companies for the computing power they have already committed to purchase. According to Hayes's judgment, the test will arrive in late 2027 to 2028, when a large volume of new data center capacity is delivered in a concentrated wave.

Hayes also offered an optimistic scenario: if over the next 12 months the practical value of AI rises substantially and demand continues to grow, AI companies could become profitable. He mentioned that some AI upstream suppliers are already profitable, such as memory chip makers and Nvidia. But investors need to consider the question: are the valuation multiples being paid for these companies' expected earnings reasonable?

Hayes also said he does not like shorting the AI sector or betting on price declines, considering it not a high-quality investment opportunity. But from a historical standpoint, nearly every major technology adoption phase has seen overbuilding. It is precisely based on the judgment that "AI infrastructure will bring a flood of computing power" that Hayes launched his latest crypto project Flop, a payment project aimed at AI agents, expected to launch in the first quarter of 2027.

Hayes said cheaper and more abundant computing power will drive the widespread adoption of AI agents. The new project Flop aims to create a spot market for computing power: participants who provide GPU resources and execute AI inference tasks can earn Flop tokens as rewards. Hayes said there is currently no payment network specifically serving AI agents, and Flop's goal is to build a spot market for computing power. "If agents can directly exchange tokens for computing power, and computing power is the resource they rely on to run and consume, they will use this token. That is our bet."