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President Donald Trump‘s Venezuela gambit is bullish for Bitcoin, BitMEX founder and Maelstrom investment chief Arthur Hayes says.
“The price of Bitcoin and certain cryptos will skyrocket,” Hayes said in a Tuesday blog post addressing the potential impact of the U.S.’s recent move on Venezuela on the cryptocurrency market.
The U.S. over the weekend launched an attack in Venezuela’s capital, Caracas, and captured President Nicolas Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores.
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Trump justified the operation by citing Maduro’s indictment on drug-related charges in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. He also accused Maduro of unleashing “murderous gangs” on U.S. communities and seizing American oil assets worth billions of dollars. However, Hayes alleges that the real target of the attack was Venezuela’s crude oil.
Venezuela boasts vast crude oil reserves of over 300 billion barrels, the largest in the world. Trump reportedly spoke to U.S. oil companies before the raid on Venezuela. And following the weekend attack, Trump has talked about directing them to fix the country’s oil infrastructure. He has also said that the interim Venezuelan government would hand over up to 50 million barrels of oil to the U.S.
“This Oil will be sold at its Market Price, and that money will be controlled by me, as President of the United States of America, to ensure it is used to benefit the people of Venezuela and the United States!” Trump said.
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Hayes said the goal is to tap Venezuela’s reserves to lower energy prices. With lower energy prices, Trump would be able to run the economy hot through deficit spending and credit with reduced fear of inflation, Hayes said. Trump is under pressure to tackle rising costs and bolster the economy as the midterm elections draw near, Hayes said.
The odds of Democrats winning control of the House in the midterms were most recently at 79% on Polymarket. An average of traditional polls gives Democrats a 4% edge over Republicans in the Congressional race, according to RealClearPolitics.
Hayes said it is unclear whether Trump’s Venezuela move would do the trick, especially since it remains to be seen how easy it would be to extract the oil. However, Hayes said in the base case, the market is likely to price oil lower in the short term, setting the stage for a high-spending, credit-driven environment that Bitcoin has historically thrived in.
To be sure, crude oil has fallen as much as 3% from above $57 per barrel to just below $56 per barrel before paring most of its losses to most recently trade at $57.
Meanwhile, Bitcoin surged as much as 5% over the same period, from about $90,000 to near $95,000, before shedding some of those gains to most recently trade just below $92,000.
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Hayes said his family office, Maelstrom, is taking an “almost maximum risk” approach to the markets, defined by a low-dollar stablecoin position and almost all financing directed to Bitcoin.
Hayes said he would rotate out of Bitcoin and Ethereum to fund privacy and decentralized finance positions that he expects to outperform.
“Looking into the future, this year’s dominant narrative will surround privacy,” he said. “ZEC will become the privacy beta, and we are already long a f–k ton of that at excellent prices obtained in 3Q25.”
Hayes is not the only market watcher optimistic about the cryptocurrency industry’s privacy sector this year. Andreessen Horowitz Crypto General Partner Ali Yahya in a Tuesday post said privacy would be the most important differentiating factor in the cryptocurrency sector this year.
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This article Trump's Move To Seize Control of Venezuela Means 'Bitcoin And Certain Cryptos Will Skyrocket,' Arthur Hayes Says originally appeared on Benzinga.com
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