• Arthur Hayes said on Friday that the world is entering a “Hunger Games of debt issuance,” in which every nation must print money while competing for a limited pool of investable capital.

• In the next leg, Hayes predicted Bitcoin could rally to $326,000, powered by a looming “policy panic” and accelerating global money printing.

• Bitmex co-founder said AI will replace 10-20% of white-collar knowledge workers, forcing governments to distribute UBI-style payments and increasing inflation.

Bitmex co-founder Arthur Hayes warned on Friday that the global economy is entering a “Hunger Games of debt issuance” with governments rushing to print money to pay for wars, AI-driven job displacement, and supply chain reconstruction, a situation he believes will spark Bitcoin’s (BTC) next big rally to $326,000.

On the What Bitcoin Did podcast, Hayes said the phrase originated with derivatives trader David Dredge and that all developed economies are facing the same issue now: they need to issue debt but are competing for a limited amount of investable capital. “At the end of the day, the aggregate amount of fiat will be higher than it is today, and that is what powers a fixed supply asset like Bitcoin,” Hayes said.

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Hayes predicted that the market would encounter a policy panic similar to the March 2023 banking crisis. Drawing on the data that the 10-year U.S. Treasury yield stands at 4.68%, its highest level in nearly a year, and the MOVE Index stays in the middle of the 80 range, he warned that once the 10-year U.S. Treasury yield breaks above 5%, Bitcoin will first drop from 75,000 to 70,000, then rise again after relevant policies are introduced.

The MOVE Index (Merrill Lynch Option Volatility Estimate) measures the expected volatility of the US Treasury bond market over the next 30 days, based on the pricing of options on Treasury futures. It is often used to gauge volatility in equity markets.

Hayes argued that Bitcoin is the purest beta asset tied to the expansion of global liquidity. All types of assets—including AI stocks, real estate, and crypto treasury companies—must take Bitcoin as their performance benchmark, said Hayes. Any investment target whose returns fail to outperform Bitcoin’s is not worth investing in.

He said the vast majority of altcoins suffer from structural flaws, including venture capital overhang and poor token-economy design. Only Hyperliquid (HYPE) has returned value to its token holders by repurchasing tokens with 97% of its operating revenue, said Hayes. At the time of writing, Bitcoin’s price was trading around $74,631, down over 3% in the past 24 hours. On Stocktwits, retail sentiment around BTC dropped to ‘extremely bearish’ from the ‘bearish’ zone, while chatter stayed at ‘normal’ levels over the past day.