Speaking at Bitcoin Vegas 2026, BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes put a $125,000 year-end target on BTC, anchoring the call to two macro forces: wartime defense spending and U.S. banking deregulation. His core argument is that the dominant market narrative has rotated away from AI-driven credit deflation and firmly into wartime inflation — a regime historically friendly to hard assets.
The structural catalyst Hayes highlighted is the recent adjustment to the Enhanced Supplemental Leverage Ratio. He estimates the ESLR change could unlock $1.3 trillion in new loans, which through fractional-reserve multiplier effects could generate up to $4 trillion in total credit creation — a liquidity wave large enough, in his view, to reprice risk assets materially higher.
If Hayes is right about the credit impulse, BTC would need to gain roughly 25–30% from current levels by December — aggressive, but…
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