Arthur Hayes, the former BitMEX CEO who now runs the family office Maelstrom, said his bullish view on Ether is based on market positioning rather than Ethereum’s technology or developers. Speaking on the Unchained podcast hosted by crypto journalist Laura Shin, Hayes called the Ethereum Foundation "a bunch of jokers" and said Ethereum’s shift away from its Layer-2 roadmap toward the base layer had not changed his thesis. Ether was trading around $2,400, roughly 50% below its November 2021 record near $4,900. Hayes said Ether is Maelstrom’s largest holding outside Bitcoin and that a move above $3,000 could trigger reflexive buying, potentially pushing ETH past $5,000, a gain of more than 100% from current levels. He expects Ethereum to benefit disproportionately if Treasury and Federal Reserve policy brings renewed money printing and liquidity expansion. Hayes also discussed FLOP Labs, a payments network denominated in floating point operations, which he said will have no presale or venture capital funding and will distribute tokens through fourth-quarter testnet activity or "proof of useful inference." About 20% of supply is planned for airdrops over 10 years, with halvings every two years and a first-quarter 2027 mainnet target. For traditional investors seeking Bitcoin exposure, Hayes prefers spot ETFs such as BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF over shares of Strategy. Retail sentiment on Stocktwits remained "extremely bullish" for Ether, while Bitcoin traded above $79,000 and Ether held above $2,400.