Maelstrom Chief Investment Officer Arthur Hayes said in a Sept. 8, 2026 interview with The Rollup that Japan’s gradual unwinding of its yen carry trade, rising risks in France’s bond market and possible U.S. dollar-liquidity creation could drive a major crypto-market advance. He identified the euro-yen exchange rate as a key leading indicator of whether those pressures are accelerating. Hayes argued that Japan’s government is encouraging domestic institutions, including the Government Pension Investment Fund, to reduce foreign-asset exposure and buy Japanese assets. He said the shift could involve dollar-yen intervention, greater use of the Federal Reserve’s FIMA Repo Facility (a dollar-lending program against foreign-held U.S. Treasuries) and U.S. balance-sheet expansion. Hayes also said the AI sector’s weak unit economics could prompt government support, creating another justification for expanding money supply. He expects Bitcoin could break its all-time high before year-end, although he warned that the market may rise sharply, consolidate or fall before resuming its advance. Ethereum is among Maelstrom’s larger positions because Hayes considers it an unpopular large-cap token with attractive risk-reward characteristics. He also said AI assets may continue rising but could underperform scarce assets such as Bitcoin and gold, while describing Hyperliquid’s HYPE token as unattractive on a risk-adjusted basis and saying Zcash’s outlook depends partly on formal-verification progress.