Arthur Hayes, co-founder and chief investment officer of crypto investment firm Maelstrom, said humanity is "wasting multi-trillion dollars" on building AI data centers, warning that the infrastructure buildout will make computing power "extremely cheap and extremely plentiful."
Hayes draws on financial history, arguing that every major technological rollout is overbuilt, leads to a crash, and is followed by a bailout. He pointed to the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis as an example. "Thankfully, we have bitcoin and other crypto to soak up that excess liquidity, and so we know the asset that's going to perform the best when the bailout comes," Hayes said, adding that "you just have to be patient."
He identified SpaceX, OpenAI and Anthropic as end users driving demand for computing power, noting that none of them currently makes money. Once data centers under construction are completed, infrastructure providers will seek payment for committed compute, which Hayes said could come in late 2027 or 2028.
Hayes acknowledged the bull case: if AI becomes "so useful" over the next 12 months, demand could grow enough for AI companies to become profitable. He also noted that some suppliers, such as memory chipmakers and Nvidia, are already making money, but questioned whether investors are paying the right multiple for those companies' forward earnings.
Hayes' latest project, Flop, is an AI-agent payments network expected to launch in the first quarter of 2027. It aims to create a spot market for compute, where participants earn Flop tokens for providing GPUs and performing AI inference. "If agents can convert a currency directly into compute, which is what they eat and consume, then they will use this currency," Hayes said.