Crypto & Web3 · August 2026
Asked whether Ethereum's technical roadmap shaped his bullishness, Hayes waved the question away. For him the engineering is beside the point — what moves a token, he argues, is positioning and liquidity, not what the thing can actually do.
Transcript
So obviously ETH did very, very well. I think it's some of the most hated large cap shitcoin out there, right? Number two largest coin by market cap. It has not eclipsed its 2021 all-time high. And so I think from a risk reward perspective, at least in the way that I manage the portfolio at Maelstrom, this is our largest position outside of Bitcoin right now. Because again, I'm not particularly worried that if I wake up one morning that ETH's going to zero. Obviously, it could happen, but the risk of that versus another crypto is much lower. Therefore, I'm happy to put a lot of size on this trade. And because it hasn't moved that much over the in this past cycle, I think that has a lot of catching up to do. Once it starts moving, the reflexive train is going to get going. There's so many people who want to be long ETH for all sorts of various reasons. And there's really good reasons why they haven't been for the past few years. But let's say once we break through 3,000 level, I think you're really going to start seeing the trend moving on ETH and it could quickly eclipse 5,000. And I think my year-end target is within reach.
Oh, wow. And do you feel like the fact that they're kind of refocusing away from the layer two roadmap and kind of focusing a little bit more on the base layer? Like, is that part of your thesis for ETH?
I don't care about the technology. It has nothing to do with it. It's all positioning in my view. Like the Ethereum Foundation, you know, memes sound like they're a bunch of jokers. Who cares? Doesn't matter. Irrelevant. No one cares, right? It's all about here's a large cap asset. It works. Okay, maybe the economic between L2s and all these different like Robinhood chains and all that sort of stuff, the amount of money that the ETH chain is actually receiving in terms of gas fees. But markets don't care about that. This is all about positioning. This is a number two largest cryptocurrency that has not eclipsed its 2021 all-time high. If we really do have this soft yield curve admission that the debt is unsustainable and they must resort to outright money and printing once again, this is what we are here for. This is it. And so I think this is the beginning of a major move. And if I think a little, if I take a look at the largest tokens, ETH is the one that has the best technicals to wow.
Okay. Okay. So, yeah, I mean, it goes back to what you said at the beginning, like, and you've said this on the show so many times, like your main trade really has to do with how macro affects crypto, its liquidity in the system. And so, you know, things, because basically it was calling out the tokenomics of ETH, right? But you're saying that doesn't matter as much as, for instance, what the Fed does or treasury or things like that. Is that kind of the nuts? Correct.
They need to provide a substrate to grow. And then let's just pick the fastest horse, which is the one that has the most off-sides positioning in terms of narrative versus liquidity. And that's ETH, my opinion, especially when you talk about the second largest crypto. Like you can strap on massive size in ETH and feel comfortable in a crypto context that you're not going to get eviscerated by the volatility. I wouldn't say that for the same with pretty much any other token.
Right, right. All right. I did also want to ask you, because this is related. So you recently wrote this essay about Japan and what you called the upcoming yen quake, as you called it. So you talked about how this could likely turn the money printer back on as well. And then you, you know, talked about how, so again, you talked about like Bitcoin and ETH, especially with ETH being the security layer for RWAs. So I would love to hear you, you know, explain your thesis around that.