Arthur Hayes: VCs Dump Tokens While Projects Pocket…

BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes told the What Bitcoin Did podcast on May 23 that the structural reason most tokens bleed out is simple: projects capture the economic value generated at the protocol level and never route it back to token holders. Without a genuine claim on cash flows, the token is little more than a speculative stub.

Hayes pointed to early venture capitalists as a persistent source of sell pressure. Their fiduciary duty forces them to exit positions at profit, and because most tokens lack a mechanism that would make holding more attractive than selling, the dump is rational and inevitable.

Hyperliquid's revenue buyback model was his counterexample — a protocol that actually returns value to token holders rather than accumulating it at the foundation or team level.