Maelstrom, the investment fund founded by Arthur Hayes, is starting 2026 with what Hayes calls “near maximum risk” exposure, extending an aggressive stance taken in the second half of last year and pointing to minimal exposure to the stablecoin.
Hayes said Maelstrom remains deep in risk assets, but with a refined focus on privacy coins like zcash and emerging decentralized finance (DeFi) tokens now lead the portfolio, in an essay published Tuesday.
“Maelstrom entered 2026 at near maximum risk,” Hayes wrote. “While we will continue to invest additional cash generated from various financing deals in Bitcoin, our dollar stability is very low.”
The stance marks a sharp reversal from Maelstrom’s public positioning early last year, when Hayes predicted the price of bitcoin would fall as low as $70,000 in a “mini financial crisis” before quantitative easing would resume.
In May 2025, Hayes confirmed that Maelstrom “reduced risk, raised fiat” in late January. However, the fund began aggressively adding risk, going “maximum long in terms of direct crypto exposure” in April when bitcoin briefly dipped below $85,000 over Trump’s so-called Liberation Day tariffs.
In the summer, the fund “backed the truck” for what he framed as a new altcoin cycle. That high-conviction stance didn’t go away as the year progressed, and Hayes expanded into private coin positions, which he said were at bargain prices.
In December, Hayes said it was “time to go shopping” as interest rate cuts and Fed reserve expansion began, saying the Maelstrom had been “busy stocking up.”
Hayes, considered one of the crypto industry’s most influential macro commentators, is now betting that the same macro playbook will continue to push crypto prices higher: Rising nominal GDP, US deficit spending and what he sees as inevitable Federal Reserve money printing.
He argues that this wave of liquidity, fueled in part by geopolitical moves like the US intervention in Venezuela, will support crypto broadly, but particularly reward higher-risk plays in lesser-known tokens.
The thesis is based on the US pumping the economy with credit in an attempt to keep oil prices in check.
Hayes says Maelstrom’s performance in 2025 was profitable but uneven, with strong returns from tokens such as BTC, HYPE and PENDLE and costly missteps in others such as PUMP. He now plans to lean into “credible” narratives supported by the broader liquidity environment.
The move comes as chain abstraction stablecoin startup River revealed that it secured a strategic investment from Maelstrom, although it did not disclose specific numbers.
