Hayes liquidates Worldcoin position mere days following Maelstrom's AI IPO investment thesis
Arthur Hayes of Maelstrom has continued his recent pattern of liquidating cryptocurrency holdings, selling off HYPE, ZEC, NEAR and most recently WLD.
Arthur Hayes, who co-founded Maelstrom, announced he liquidated his entire Worldcoin (WLD) position merely days following his venture capital company's characterization of the token as among the most transparent ways to gain exposure to artificial intelligence investments.
"This chart is going in the wrong direction," Hayes posted on X this past Saturday, displaying a price chart for SpaceX pre-IPO perpetual futures contracts, which had experienced a significant decline.
"Dumped WLD. I'm out. See y'all at the clerb," he added.
The timing is notable given that just Wednesday, Maelstrom analyst Lukas Ruppert had characterized Worldcoin as an "overlooked" investment opportunity tied to "AI mega IPOs," with a forecast that WLD would reach $5 by August.
Following the investor memorandum, WLD experienced a brief price surge, reaching a peak of $0.60 on June 5, before declining back to $0.40 by June 7 as Hayes informed his 800,000 followers on X that he had completely exited his holdings.
Hayes had stated previously on X that his intention was to maintain his WLD position until the SpaceX IPO on Nasdaq, scheduled for June 12, leading some observers to question the reasoning behind his premature exit.
The 'Holy Trinity is dead' — or is it?
WLD represents another addition to the growing collection of cryptocurrency assets on which Hayes has reversed course despite making optimistic projections earlier.
During March, Hayes forecasted that Hyperliquid (HYPE) would climb to $150 by August and on June 1 declared it would "outperform any other current top ten crypto in USD terms from now until year-end," yet liquidated his complete holdings in the token just three days afterward, attributing the decision to elevated energy costs stemming from the Iran war, "inventory restocking," and approaching "mega AI IPOs."
On May 6, Hayes projected that Zcash would achieve 10% of Bitcoin's price. On June 5, he sold off his ZEC holdings after the revelation of a serious vulnerability in its privacy protocol, declaring that the "Holy Trinity" of HYPE, ZEC, and NEAR was "dead."
Nevertheless, Hayes seems to have partially reversed his stance. According to Arkham Intelligence data, a cryptocurrency wallet associated with Hayes repurchased approximately 33,978 HYPE valued at roughly $2 million on Monday, following a 26% price decline that occurred after his June 4 liquidation.
Cointelegraph reached out to Maelstrom for comments but did not receive an immediate response.