Typical long-winded Hayes, but nonetheless fun to hear him explain this chart:

My theory of why the Nasdaq has not corrected in line with the decline in dollar liquidity in 2025 is that AI became nationalized by both China and America.

I think he makes a compelling case for this nationalization:

The AI tech bros sold the two leaders of the world’s largest nation states the idea that AI solves everything. AI reduces the cost of labor to zero, cures cancer, increases productivity, democratizes creativity, and, most importantly, allows for military domination of the planet. Therefore, whichever nation “wins” at AI, and there is no clear definition of winning, rules the world.

Through executive orders and government investment, Trump is blunting the free market signals so that capital, irrespective of the real return on equity, floods into everything related to AI. That is why the Nasdaq decoupled from Bitcoin and the decline of dollar liquidity in 2025.

And this leads Hayes to the explanation that stonks went up because everybody has realized the gov't thinks AI is too important to fail.

Nasdaq Number Go Up is US state-sponsored. As such, as an industry, even if overall dollar credit growth is anemic or contracting, AI will receive all the capital it needs to “win”. Therefore, the Nasdaq decoupled from my dollar liquidity index and outperformed Bitcoin in 2025.

So don't worry, the AI bubble will be with us for the next few years at least (even if it's lost a lot of its lustre).

I do not believe the AI bubble is ready to pop. This outperformance will be a feature of global capital markets until it ain’t, or most likely until the Team Blue Democrats take over the House of Representatives in 2026, as Polymarket predicts, and possibly the presidency in 2028. If the Republicans are the party of the Jetsons, the Democrats are the party of the Flintstones.

But what about gold? It's not like equities were the only thing outperforming Bitcoin last year.

Hayes has one simple answer to this: the US stole Russia's money in 2022, and now everybody knows not to keep their money with the yanks, and the main way they're getting out is gold.

So, does Hayes think bitcoin's fate will be the same this year?

No, he is a true blue believer in the money printer and he points to all sorts of fancy new programs Trump has unveiled for juicing the system.

And so if you are still measuring the length of your Bitcoin stack in dollars, Hayes has this for you:

As dollar liquidity rapidly increases for the reasons described above, Bitcoin will follow. Forget about 2025 and Bitcoin’s underperformance; the liquidity didn’t support our crypto portfolios. But let’s not draw the wrong conclusions from Bitcoin’s 2025 underperformance. It was as it always is, a liquidity story.

Even though Maelstrom is nearly fully invested, I want to add on MOAR risk because I am so bullish on the growth of dollar liquidity.

Apparently he has even moved long MSTR and Metaplanet...

I guess this means if you think degens like Hayes are good at sussing out when to throw caution to the wind and jump in, it's time to sell your chairs again?

I find this stuff a little bewildering but I always get a kick out of Hayes (and I'm still pondering how he called the spring dump last year so accurately).