Arthur Hayes believes Bitcoin bottomed near $60,000 earlier this year and that a return to its all-time high near $126,000 is now almost certain, with the pace of appreciation likely to accelerate once price clears the $90,000 level and forces short sellers to cover their positions. The mechanism Hayes describes is the same one that has driven every Bitcoin bull cycle: an expansion of fiat money supply — in this case driven by AI infrastructure credit rather than pandemic stimulus or quantitative easing — that increases the pool of capital seeking hard assets with fixed supply. Bitcoin's 21 million coin ceiling makes it the most direct beneficiary of monetary expansion in Hayes's framework, functioning as the release valve for credit that cannot find productive returns in traditional financial assets when real interest rates are suppressed to fund strategic national infrastructure.

The trading setup Hayes describes around the $90,000 level is worth understanding mechanically. When Bitcoin approaches a level where a significant number of short positions are clustered — either from traders betting against a recovery or from hedged positions established at lower prices — a move through that level forces those short sellers to buy to cover losses, adding buying pressure on top of whatever organic demand is driving the initial move. That dynamic can produce the kind of rapid, sustained price acceleration that characterized Bitcoin's moves through key resistance levels in previous cycles. Hayes is not predicting a specific timeline, but his framework suggests the path of least resistance remains upward as long as AI capex spending continues expanding credit supply and no major circuit breaker — an oversized AI IPO failure, anti-AI political rhetoric, or a meaningful Fed policy reversal — interrupts the cycle.