The divergence between Bitcoin and tech stocks is a warning sign of a potential AI-driven credit crisis that will result in more central bank printing of money, says Arthur Hayes.
“Bitcoin is the global fire alarm for fiat liquidity. It is the most responsive free-traded asset to the supply of fiat credit,” the cryptocurrency trader said in his latest blog post on Wednesday.
Hayes then cautioned that the recent divergence between Bitcoin (BTC) and the technology-based Nasdaq 100 index is “raising alarms that mass credit destruction is imminent.”
As these two previously correlated asset classes diverge, “it justifies further examination of any factors that could cause fiat destruction” – mainly the dollar and credit, also known as deflation, he said.
Hayes believes that job losses from the adoption of AI will have a severe impact on consumer credit and mortgage debt “due to the inability of white-collar workers to make monthly payments.”
“This is a bold statement calling for a financial crisis due to job losses caused by the adoption of artificial intelligence.”
AI job losses could trigger another banking crisis
In 2025, companies cited AI as they announced 55,000 job cuts, more than 12 times the number of layoffs attributed to AI just two years earlier. reported CBS News in early February.
“The AI financial crisis will restart the money printing machine,” Hayes said.
His loose model suggests that a 20% reduction in the number of 72 million “knowledge workers” in the U.S. could result in losses of about $557 billion in consumer loans and mortgages, representing a 13% write-down on the equity of U.S. commercial banks.
Hayes speculates that weaker regional banks would buckle first, depositors would flee and credit markets would take over. The Federal Reserve would eventually panic and start printing money.
“While the Fed fights windmills, AI-related job losses will destroy the balance sheets of U.S. banks,” he said.
“Eventually, the monetary mandarins panic and press the Brrrr button harder than they would in the morning after a meter dump.”
Related: 1 in 4 CEOs expect to lay off employees this year due to AI
Hayes predicted that this enhance in fiat credit creation will “definitely push Bitcoin off its lows” and that the future expectation of increased fiat credit creation to bail out the banking system will “push Bitcoin to a new all-time high.”
In addition to Bitcoin, Hayes said the two altcoins that his company Maelstrom will “deploy excess stables into when the Fed blinks” are Zcash (ZEC) and Hyperliquid (HYPE).
There are more and more theories about money printing
However, this is not the first radical thesis about printing money put forward by Hayes.
In January, he said the Federal Reserve would print money to ease the Japanese bond crisis.
In December 2025, he predicted that BTC would rise to $200,000 by March as a result of money printing via the Fed’s fresh liquidity tool called Reserve Management Purchases, which is similar to quantitative easing.
Warehouse: Chinese New Year increases interest, TradFi buys cryptocurrency exchanges: Asia Express
