Arthur Hayes says AI buildout may end in a bust and bailout, with Bitcoin positioned to benefit
BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes said at the Gamma Prime investment conference in Singapore that humanity is "wasting trillions of dollars" on AI data center construction, arguing the current boom could follow a familiar pattern of overbuilding, collapse and eventual bailout. In his view, any excess liquidity released through rescue measures could lift Bitcoin and other crypto assets. Hayes said the race among tech companies to build data centers and secure compute capacity may leave the market with too much infrastructure, making computing power extremely cheap and abundant. He pointed to financial history, including the 2008 crisis and other episodes over the past two decades, as evidence that major technology rollouts are often overbuilt before a downturn and policy response arrive. He said the real test may come in late 2027 or 2028, when a large wave of new data center capacity is delivered and customers are asked to pay for previously committed compute. Hayes also outlined a more bullish case in which AI becomes useful enough within the next 12 months to drive demand and profitability. He added that his new project, Flop, is built around the idea of cheap and abundant compute and is expected to launch in the first quarter of 2027.
