Hayes Goes All-In on HYPE, Quietly Ditches ETHFI and AUKI Like a Bad Crypto Trade

Arthur Hayes, CIO of family office Maelstrom, is putting his money where his mouth is—straight into Hyperliquid's HYPE token.

In an X post on April 8, Hayes made his stance crystal clear: "The only thing we're buying right now is $HYPE." This isn't new territory for the BitMEX co-founder, who previously highlighted Hyperliquid as the dominant perpetuals DEX with massive trading volume.

Hayes has set a bold $150 price target for HYPE by August 2026, implying roughly 4x upside from current $35-$40 levels.

The bullish thesis centers on Hyperliquid's revenue dominance. The platform generates serious dough and has been deploying 97% of it to buy back HYPE tokens from the market. Not bad for a decentralized project.

Oh, and they're dabbling in real-world assets too. Tokenized oil futures (XYZ:CL-USD and XYZ:BRENTOIL-USD) are recording billions in trading volume.

Meanwhile, Hayes is trimming positions in ETHFI and AUKI. According to on-chain data from Lookonchain and Arkham Intelligence, he purchased 265,461 ETHFI tokens worth around $135.4K at $0.51 back in February and March, then sold at $0.44—bagging a tidy 13% loss of $17.6K. Classic.

He also moved 3.55 million AUKI tokens (worth $19.61K) to FlowDesk for selling. AUKI is up 5% over the past 24 hours, trading between $0.00547 and $0.00651, with volume surging 91%—likely riding the broader crypto market rebound tied to the US-Iran ceasefire.