Arthur Hayes
Arthur Hayes is Chief Investment Officer of Maelstrom, a cryptocurrency-focused, early-stage investment fund. Hayes is a renowned figure in the cryptocurrency community. He was one of the original founders and former CEO of BitMEX, the world's largest derivatives exchange in Bitcoin and cryptocurrency. Under his leadership, BitMEX pioneered the crypto derivatives industry and led the invention of the perpetual swap — which is now the most widely traded crypto financial product of all time, with volume in the tens of trillions of dollars. Hayes has extensive experience trading equity index futures, forwards, and swaps, as well as non-deliverable FX forwards. He started his career as a market maker for Deutsche Bank and Citibank.
Arthur Hayes Professional Experience / Academic History
Professional Experience
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Chief Investment Officer
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Co-Founder and CEO
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Delta One Trader
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Synthetic Equity Trader
Academic History
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B.S., Economics and Finance
Hayes is a leader in cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP, blockchain, decentralized finance, digital assets, and Web3 analysis.
He is recognized as the youngest African American to attain billionaire status in the cryptocurrency industry.
With a reputation of being a Bitcoin bull, he caused much controversy by claiming that Ether is a shitcoin, drawing the backlash from the ETH community.
Under his leadership, BitMEX surged to become a leading player in the global digital currency derivatives exchange market, with a trading volume that surpassed $2 billion on average per day in 2021.
Today, BitMEX operates the most liquid Bitcoin / USD trading product, XBTUSD, which features 100x leverage, and volumes on average are over $3 billion per day.
His career took a dramatic turn when he and his BitMEX co-founders faced charges from the U.S. Department of Justice in October 2020.
He captured significant media attention after being accused of violating the U.S. Bank Secrecy Act by failing to implement adequate anti-money laundering measures.
He stepped down from his role at BitMEX, paving the way for Alexander Hoptner to assume the position of CEO.
Maelstrom is a founder-led, early-stage investment fund run by the family office of Arthur Hayes.
The fund is building a long-term portfolio of infrastructure companies that will serve as the foundation of the next wave of trustless decentralization.
The fund typically targets venture-stage investments between $100K – $250K and brings differentiated value to cap tables.
MEDIA & APPEARANCES
Hayes has been profiled or featured in various financial media outlets.
He has appeared in Bloomberg, Yahoo! Finance, CoinDesk, Cointelegraph, The Block, Binance, Bitcoin.com, CoinMarketCap, Real Vision, and more.