October 20, 2025
Arthur Hayes, a prominent Black cryptocurrency influencer, has remained bullish on the prospects of Bitcoin despite an earlier crash.
Arthur Hayes, the Black crypto influencer held by many in the speculative investment community as an authoritative voice on Bitcoin and other forms of digital currencies, has remained bullish on the prospects of Bitcoin, following its latest crash, he and his Maelstrom family office are seeking a $250 million investment from private equity to acquire medium-sized cryptocurrency firms.
According to Bloomberg, the Maelstrom fund plans to utilize between $40 million and $75 million to purchase four to six medium-sized crypto firms specializing in trading infrastructure, analytics platforms, and non-token equity. This comes on the heels of his prediction that Bitcoin’s four-year cycle of booms and busts will come to an end, spurred in part by the Trump administration’s investment in the technology as well as various banking crises around the world.
“As the four-year anniversary of this fourth cycle is upon us, traders wish to apply the historical pattern and forecast an end to this bull run,” Hayes noted in an Oct. 9 essay, arguing that the market’s bull, or boom, market would continue.
He continued, “In the U.S., newly elected President Trump wants to run the economy hot. He routinely speaks about America growing in order to reduce its debt load. Trump also speaks about lowering the cost of housing to release trillions of dollars of trapped home equity because of the rapid rise in housing prices post-2008.”
Of note, according to CNBC, Hayes was pardoned by Trump in March 2025 after he, Benjamin Delo and Samuel Reed formerly pled guilty to violating the Bank Secrecy Act. In that case, the BitMEX cryptocurrency exchange, which the three men founded, failed to maintain anti-money laundering and know-your-customer programs. Prosecutors in the case noted in their arguments that BitMEX was principally operated as a “money laundering platform.”
As it relates to the Maelstrom deals, Maelstrom co-founder and managing partner Akshat Vaidya, told the outlet that this strategy avoids the pitfalls of artificially inflated valuations that are sometimes associated with speculative tokens by focusing on actual cash flow and not tokens.
“These kinds of businesses are a lot easier to acquire. You can’t artificially inflate valuations with an unused token,” Vaidya noted.
As Coindesk reports, Vaidya and Maelstrom are targeting a close on the first round of investment by the end of March 2026, with the full funding of the firm to occur by September 2026. Currently, Hayes and the third partner, Adam Schlegel, are leading this effort and plan to build out a full management team at a later date.
However, in contrast to Hayes’ rosy outlook on the future prospects of Bitcoin, noted Bitcoin skeptic Peter Schiff recently warned on X that a “brutal” bear market for Bitcoin is approaching and he also indicated that he believes that Bitcoin has, thus far, been a failure as both a replacement for the dollar and a form of digital gold, warning Bitcoin holders not to ignore reality in hopes of sustained profitability. It is no wonder then, that Maelstrom’s leaders seek to avoid tying their venture to the whims of speculative tokens.
As BLACK ENTERPRISE previously reported, unlike what many first believed, Bitcoin and other speculative cryptocurrencies have left many Black investors in worse shape than traditional financial spaces. This is due in part to the way that Black Americans engage with speculative currencies, according to a 2022 report from the Federal Reserve of Kansas City.
As they note, “Surveys show that Black consumers are more likely than white consumers to own cryptocurrencies…Unlike white consumers, Black consumers are in fact more likely to own cryptocurrencies than assets such as stocks and mutual funds.”
This, they assert, is worrying for a number of reasons, chief among them, volatility and the lack of an equivalent to an FDIC backing. Despite the backing of crypto assets by Black celebrities, “Cryptocurrencies are highly speculative, volatile, unregulated, and not backed by a government. As a result, they are vulnerable to scams and wide fluctuations in price with little to no recourse for crypto owners.”
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