Arthur Hayes to ditch memecoins and laser focus on DeFi

American entrepreneur Arthur Hayes has said he’s leaving the memecoin space and putting his money into high-yield decentralized finance protocols that actually pay. The BitMEX co-founder has spent the better part of the past years investing in memecoins like PEPE and MOTHER.

In a recent interview with crypto investor Kyle Chasse, Hayes stated that digital assets are too risky for the kind of capital he wants to deploy. The entrepreneur revealed that he’s interested in projects that are going to pay investors as token holders for making them successful.

Hayes advocates for DeFi protocols

Hayes has previously advocated for DeFi protocols, including EtherFi, Ethena, and Hyperliquid, saying he believes they could soar as stablecoin adoption surges. He also believes they could rise as yield-seeking capital floods the sector.

The former CEO of BitMEX revealed that his 2028 target is to achieve returns of over 100x. He also said he’s projecting a 34x move for EtherFi, 51x for Ethena, and up to 130x for Hyperliquid. Hayes cited real revenue, product-market fit, and a model that returns value to token holders instead of just VCs and insiders.

“Investors have punished projects that either never made any money or made money and didn’t give it to tokenholders. We don’t want to touch it.”

–Arthur Hayes, Co-Founder of BitMEX.

The equity derivatives trader also maintained that he’s not abandoning Bitcoin, saying that the digital asset has been the single-best performing asset of the money-printing era. Hayes believes BTC could climb as high as $700,000 before the decade is out.

The crypto investor argued that the real asymmetric upside for Bitcoin currently lies further down the curve in DeFi protocols. He believes they can capture the tens of trillions of dollars he expects to flow into stablecoins and on-chain markets.

Hayes also urged Bitcoin holders to be more patient and stop worrying about stocks and gold hitting record highs. He argued that asking why Bitcoin isn’t higher misses the point of investing in cryptocurrencies.

Hayes told Chasse that traders who are buying Bitcoin, thinking they can buy a Lamborghini the next day, will probably get liquidated. He said it is not the right way to think about things, especially the digital asset market.

Hayes pushes back against narrative of Bitcoin lagging

Hayes pointed out frustrations from recent BTC buyers who are asking why the asset’s price isn’t rising to $150,000 yet. He called out those traders who bought Bitcoin six months ago, saying that anyone who bought it two, three, five, or 10 years ago is laughing at them.

He argued that investors need to adjust their perspective on Bitcoin. Curvo shows that Bitcoin has had an average annualized return of 82,4% over the past decade. 

At the time of publication, Bitcoin is up nearly 5% in the past seven days and is currently exchanging hands at $115,775. The digital asset is still down from its all-time high of $124,290.

Meanwhile, gold reached a new all-time high of $3,674 this week, and is currently exchanging hands at $3,643 per ounce. The S&P 500 also set a record closing high this week of 6,587.

The former BitMEX CEO dismissed the significance of these highs relative to Bitcoin after Chasse asked about when Bitcoin and the broader crypto market might start attracting more flows from the global M2 money supply after stocks and gold hit new all-time highs. Hayes argued that the premise of the question was flawed, adding that BTC is the best-performing asset in terms of currency debasement.

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