06/19 update below. This post was originally published on June 18
Bitcoin has struggled this year as the artificial intelligence investment boom piles pressure on crypto (even as BlackRock issues a massive $9 trillion prediction).
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The bitcoin price crash from $126,000 per bitcoin to just over $60,000 has spooked traders, though some traders are already cheering what they see as confirmation of recovery.
Now, as Wall Street giants reveal they are quietly plotting a “big” crypto move, closely watched trader Arthur Hayes has predicted an AI “credit event” is about to crash the market and blow up the bitcoin price.
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Federal Reserve chair Kevin Warsh has been warned of a coming AI “credit event” that could be “bigger than 2008″—something that could blow up the bitcoin price.
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“If we do get an AI credit event, it will be bigger than 2008 because the whole world is in this delusion that AI is the biggest technology ever … and the Fed can’t [out] print Moores Law,” said Hayes, speaking on the Bankless podcast, and referring to Intel cofounder Gordon Moore’s prediction that chips will continue to double in power every two years even as production costs fall.
Hayes, a cofounder of the bitcoin derivatives pioneer BitMex who now runs the Maelstrom family office, pointed to AI capital expenditure being compared to the pre-industrial revolution railroad build out.
06/19 update: The bitcoin price has dropped toward $60,000 per bitcoin as major bitcoin buyer Strategy’s controversial stretch stock teeters on the verge of collapse.
Fear has swept the bitcoin and crypto market over the last 24 hours as Strategy’s stretch preferred stock fell to a record low, piling pressure on the company as traders wait to see if it has continued to buy more bitcoin.
“The financial house of cards Saylor built is collapsing,” bitcoin and Strategy critic Peter Schiff posted to X.
“Strategy’s per-share discount to its bitcoin holdings is soaring, stretch is tanking, and bitcoin itself is breaking down, taking the rest of crypto down with it.”
Strategy’s stretch, designed to maintain a $100 value by paying a variable twice-monthly dividend that’s currently 11.5% and rises and falls with demand, has dropped to $88 per share.
“Markets are closed today. Volatility is never easy. Bitcoin keeps working. So do we. Thank you for your support,” Strategy founder Michael Saylor posted to X.
Strategy has leaned on stretch sales to fund most of its bitcoin buys since its introduction last summer, but has recently opted to issue its common MSTR stock instead, diluting existing shareholders and pushing the company’s market capitalization lower.
Technology companies have poured an eye-popping amount of cash into the development of artificial intelligence models and data centers in recent years, with the biggest so-called hyperscalers—Meta, Microsoft, Amazon, and Alphabet—projected to spend a combined $725 billion on AI infrastructure in 2026 alone.
“I don’t care how much money you throw at this thing, you can’t change the fact that chips get better every two years even if you pump $10 trillion into the economy, so what’s the response going to be by the financial authorities to save the banks? ‘We’ll just shovel fiat money in.’”
Hayes predicted that if investors decide AI investment no longer meets its “cost of capital,” that money will go “straight” into bitcoin and crypto.
“The implosion of the AI bubble and the money printing that’s going to happen, especially in the United States … is going to dwarf sub-prime and it’s going to take us to a $1 million bitcoin price.”
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The bitcoin price has fallen sharply since late 2025, though bullish bitcoin price predictions see it soaring to $1 million per bitcoin in coming years.
Forbes Digital Assets
Bitcoin, created in response to the government bail out of banks in 2008, has traded as both an inflation hedge and high-growth technology stock over the last 15 years.
“This is the ‘big print,’” Hayes said, adding: “If you time this well, you’ll never work again,” comparing it to Michael Burry’s famous bet against the U.S. housing market that became the basis of the movie, The Big Short.
Meanwhile, new Federal Reserve chair Kevin Warsh has left interest rates on hold at his first meeting as leader of the Fed, despite being appointed by president Donald Trump with explicit instructions to cut interest rates.
Trump, in a reversal from earlier comments that he would be disappointed if Warsh did not cut interest rates, said last month he would let Warsh “do what he wants to do.”
“The hold itself was never in question,” Iggy Ioppe, chief investment officer at Theo, formerly of Credit Suisse and Vinik Asset Management, said in emailed comments.
“What matters is Warsh using his first meeting to drop the easing bias, which lines up with what the data has been telling us for weeks. Inflation is still at a three-year high, and payrolls are coming in hot, with over 500,000 jobs created in the last three months. There is no version of the next few months where the Fed is cutting, but every day they don’t hike, they are effectively easing.”