AI Overbuild Ends in a Bailout—Bitcoin Soaks the Cash
Arthur Hayes, the former BitMEX CEO and co-founder of crypto investment firm Maelstrom, told CNBC at the Gamma Prime Investing Conference in Singapore that humanity is “wasting multi-trillion dollars” on AI data centers. His bet: the buildout is overdone, a crash follows, a bailout arrives—and Bitcoin and other crypto “soak up” the liquidity after.
“Overbuilt, then bailed out”
“If you study financial history and you study every single major technological rollout, it always is overbuilt. There always is a crash, and there always is a bailout,” Hayes said, arguing the surge in data centers will leave computing power “extremely cheap and extremely plentiful.” He told investors “you just have to be patient.”
Who pays when the racks go live?
Hayes said end users behind the demand include SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic—and claimed none of them makes money. He argued that once the current wave of data centers is finished, infrastructure providers will want payment for the compute those AI firms committed to, which he expects to come due in late 2027 or 2028.
The Anthropic numbers he pointed to
As an example, the source text cites Anthropic’s recent prospectus ahead of a possible IPO, stating it showed $4.6 billion in 2025 revenue (up from $400 million), net losses near $42 billion including a $34 billion noncash charge, and $7.33 billion in compute and infrastructure—reported as over half of $12.65 billion in operating expenses. Those figures are presented here as described in the source and attributed to Anthropic’s prospectus.
The $1T debt risk he cited
According to a September report by CryptoPotato, Hayes said compute demand from major AI builders backs more than $1 trillion of investment-grade debt. He argued that a downgrade would leave insurers tied to that debt short of capital, pushing Washington either to buy compute as a last resort or print money to rescue them.
He left room for a different outcome
Hayes also allowed for a near-term bull case: AI could become “so useful” in the next 12 months that demand expands enough to make AI infrastructure companies profitable. He noted that some suppliers already earn money, mentioning Nvidia.
His earlier Bitcoin call
Before this, Hayes had predicted AI spending would slow next year, then contract, with bailouts bigger than 2008 that could possibly take Bitcoin near $1 million.