Bitcoin bros at 'the club' may stop US gov’t from buying BTC — Arthur Hayes

BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes says the United States is unlikely to add more Bitcoin to its reserves beyond what it has already seized due to the country’s high debt levels and the stereotype behind “Bitcoin bros.”

“I’m not really into the whole Strategic Reserve situation,” Hayes said in a May 1 interview.

“The United States is a deficit country; the only way they can do a Strategic Reserve is not sell the Bitcoin they took from people, fine, that’s 200,000 Bitcoin,” he said.

Hayes said it’s hard to imagine any “properly elected” politician openly announcing that the government plans to print money to buy Bitcoin (BTC).

“Is that really what you want people to think about your policy?” he asked.

On March 6, US President Donald Trump signed an executive order to create a Bitcoin strategic reserve and digital asset stockpile in the US. The US holds 198,012 Bitcoin worth over $18 billion, as per recent data. The reserve is primarily formed of Bitcoin seized in criminal and civil cases, including significant amounts from the Silk Road and Bitfinex hack cases.

However, many crypto industry leaders believe that if the US government starts buying Bitcoin, it could set off an aggressive domino effect.

Sergej Kunz, co-founder of exchange aggregator 1inch, said during Cointelegraph’s LONGITUDE event in Dubai that if the US were to start buying Bitcoin for a strategic reserve, even smaller countries may soon struggle to acquire the cryptocurrency.

He added. “I’m pretty sure we’ll soon see countries battling over who owns more Bitcoin. The US will start.”

Hayes remains confident that the Bitcoin cycle leading into altcoin season will follow the same pattern as it did in 2021, despite differing views from other analysts.

“I personally think Bitcoin dominance is going back to where it was before the 2021 altcoin season, which is about 70%,” Hayes said.

Hayes isn’t convinced the pattern will change. “Then people just start rotating,” he said. “It’s back at all-time highs; bull markets are back, and altcoins should outperform. Should is a keyword there,” Hayes said. “Depends on what you buy,” he added.

Related: Bitcoin price about to ‘blast’ higher as Fed rate cut odds jump to 60%

Bitcoin dominance — the ratio of Bitcoin’s market capitalization to the entire crypto market — is 64.78% at the time of publication, according to TradingView data. 

This represents an 11.68% increase since Jan. 1, when Bitcoin dominance was hovering just below 60%, a level where some analysts said would be its peak before altcoin season began.

Several analysts doubted that Bitcoin dominance would ever return to 70%.

One of those skeptics was Into The Cryptoverse founder Benjamin Cowen, who explained in August that he doesn’t “think it is going back up to 70%,” and his target for Bitcoin dominance is 60%.

Meanwhile, in December CryptoQuant CEO Ki Young Ju said “altseason is no longer defined by asset rotation from Bitcoin.”

He said the traditional signal marking the beginning of an altcoin season when capital rotates from Bitcoin to altcoins is outdated. Instead, altcoin trading volume has become more prevalent against stablecoin and fiat currency pairs. 

Magazine: Crypto wanted to overthrow banks, and now it’s becoming them in stablecoin fight