Arthur Hayes Calls Ethereum Foundation 'A Bunch Of Jokers' In A Blunt Take But Is Bullish On ETH

Hayes believes a move above $3,000 could trigger reflexive buying and potentially send Ethereum toward the $5,000 level.

• Arthur Hayes called the Ethereum Foundation “a bunch of jokers” on Saturday.
• He said Ethereum’s investment was driven by market positioning, and that it was still below its 2021 highs despite it being the second-largest cryptocurrency.
• Hayes said ETH was still Maelstrom’s largest crypto holding outside Bitcoin.

Maelstrom Chief Investment Officer (CIO) Arthur Hayes dismissed the Ethereum Foundation, calling it "a bunch of jokers" while explaining why he was bullish on Ethereum (ETH), saying the network's technology and its stewards have nothing to do with his investment case.

When Hayes was asked on the Unchained podcast published on Saturday whether Ethereum's shift in focus away from its Layer-2 roadmap and back toward the base layer affected his bullish thesis, to which he said he wasn't. "I don't care about the technology. Has nothing to do. It's all positioning in my view," Hayes added.

He went further on the Foundation itself, the nonprofit that helps Ethereum's protocol development and research, by saying that "Ethereum Foundation, you know, memes sound like they're a bunch of jokers.” 

Positioning Drives Trade

According to Hayes, his case for ETH depended on market structure rather than fundamentals. He pointed to Ethereum being the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization that had still not “eclipsed its 2021 record high,” and said the economics between the base chain and its Layer-2 networks, including gas fee revenue, were not what markets price. He said the position would benefit if the Treasury and Federal Reserve policy forced a return to money printing.

Largest Position Outside Bitcoin

Hayes said ETH was Maelstrom's largest holding outside Bitcoin (BTC), adding that he was comfortable putting size on the trade because the risk of the asset going to zero was lower than for other cryptocurrencies.

A break above $3,000 would set off reflexive buying, according to the Maelstrom CIO, after which ETH could quickly clear $5,000. 

Latest ‘FLOP’ Venture

Hayes described a separate venture building FLOP Labs, a payments network denominated in floating point operations. FLOP’s thesis was that AI agents would transact in whatever currency converts most directly into compute. 

He said there would be no presale and no venture capital investment, with tokens distributed through testnet activity in the fourth quarter or mined via a mechanism he called proof of useful inference. Roughly 20% of supply was earmarked for airdrops over 10 years, with halvings every two years and mainnet targeted for the first quarter of 2027.

Retail Traders Are Bullish On Ethereum Exposure

Ethereum’s price was trading above $2,400 over the past 24 hours. On Stocktwits, the retail sentiment around ETH remained in the ‘extremely bullish’ zone, while chatter around it stayed at ‘high’ levels over the past day.

View this Stocktwits post

One Stocktwits user said that if Ethereum can keep the momentum and have stronger inflows in ETFs, stocks of Ethereum treasury companies could “accelerate as well.”

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