Arthur Hayes, co-founder of BitMEX and Chief Investment Officer of Maelstrom, stated in his August 24, 2026, essay "The Same, But Different": Bitcoin has already entered a new bull market, and the main reason is the increase in dollar liquidity within the US financial system.
According to Hayes's logic, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent's actions to buy back government bonds are effectively injecting additional dollars into the market. And when there are more dollars in the system, a portion of this money traditionally flows into risk assets—and Bitcoin, based on past cycle experience, is one of the first to react to this.
Why Hayes Draws Parallels with 2023
The analyst compares the current situation to the end of 2023, when Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen increased the issuance of short-term Treasury bills. At that time, money began flowing out of the Fed's reverse repo program—a special mechanism where banks and funds temporarily "park" excess funds instead of investing them in the economy. The outflow amounted to about $2.4 trillion. The released liquidity flowed into the markets, and subsequently, Bitcoin and other risk assets rose.
Now, in Hayes's opinion, Bessent is initiating a similar process—only through a different instrument: buying back long-term bonds.
What the Treasury Specifically Did
On August 19, 2026, the US Department of the Treasury announced an increase in buybacks of government bonds maturing in 10–30 years—at least doubling from $2 billion to $4 billion per operation. The measure will take effect on September 9 and last until November 4, 2026. Following this announcement, long-term bond yields noticeably decreased, the dollar weakened, and Bitcoin and gold rose.
Hayes acknowledges: within the scale of the total US national debt (approximately $40 trillion), an addition of roughly $20 billion per quarter appears modest. However, in his estimation, events may unfold according to one of two scenarios:
- The Treasury gradually increases buyback volumes and activates additional support programs—Hayes considers this option the most likely.
- If the yield on 10-year bonds rises above 5%, the US could transition to strict yield curve control modeled after the Bank of Japan—with virtually unlimited buybacks of long-term securities.
Reserve Source—The Treasury's General Account
There is also a third potential source of liquidity, which Hayes calls a likely supplement—the US Treasury's General Account (TGA) at the Fed, from which the government finances its expenditures. At the time of writing the essay, this account held about $1 trillion. Already on August 24, CNBC reported, citing two Treasury sources, that the department was considering the possibility of directing approximately $950 billion from this account to buy back older, higher-yielding bonds.
What This Means for Bitcoin
Hayes's main conclusion is simple: however long the process takes, the direction is set—liquidity in the system is increasing, meaning Bitcoin's bull market will continue. However, he notes that the path upward itself will be uneven: volatility will increase, and sharp short-term corrections are quite possible. He advises those who are not professional traders to stay away from leverage.
The Maelstrom fund itself is already acting based on this thesis—Hayes describes the fund's position as "maximum risk" with a primary bet on Bitcoin, Ethereum, and tokens from the Ethena ecosystem—ENA and ETHFI.
Hayes's idea boils down to simple logic: historically, an increase in dollar liquidity through bond buybacks and the potential activation of TGA reserves has coincided with the rise of Bitcoin and other risk assets. How quickly and on what scale the Treasury will act—the coming weeks will show, up until the quarterly refunding on November 4.
AI Opinion
From a macroeconomic analysis perspective, Hayes describes only one facet of a broader pattern. The Federal Reserve has already undergone a similar pivot at the turn of 2025-2026: balance sheet reduction gave way to resumed purchases of short-term Treasury bills after bank reserves fell to a critical level. That shift from "tightening" to "injecting" liquidity coincided with a local Bitcoin peak around $94,000.
A technical nuance that remains outside the article's scope: Treasury buybacks of long-term bonds and Fed purchases of bills affect different segments of the yield curve and translate into bank reserves at different speeds. The risk, which is the inverse of Hayes's thesis: if inflation expectations rise faster than the market anticipates, additional liquidity could trigger not a rise in risk assets, but a rise in yields at the long end of the curve. Will the effect of the long-term bond buybacks be lasting, or will it prove to be a temporary spike, as at the end of 2025?
end-content
