Arthur Hayes is taking a crypto risk ahead of Anthropic’s Nasdaq debut next week.

But he keeps his positions small to medium so he can get out quickly.

The BitMEX co-founder wrote on November 5 that his firm Maelstrom will sit out the AI listing wave.

BitMEX co-founder turns ‘mini-bulled up’ before next week’s listing

“The Anthropic IPO is going to rip. I’m loading up on crypto risk between now and next week’s listing date,” Hayes wrote in a post on X on Thursday.

“Keeping size small to medium in case I need to quickly close the positions. But I’m mini-bulled up,” he added. The bet is crypto, not Anthropic stock.

Arthur Hayes says he is adding crypto risk before the Anthropic listing in a post on X on November 12, 2026.

Hayes is co-founder of derivatives exchange BitMEX and chief investment officer of crypto investment firm Maelstrom.

The trade is a contradiction to his Nov. 5 essay, “D is for Dilution.” “Absent any dramatic change in the fiat liquidity picture, Maelstrom will chill on the sidelines and watch the implosion of AI mega IPOs under the weight of dilution,” Hayes wrote.

In the essay, he estimated from Anthropic’s S-1 that initial IPO investors will be diluted 83% by June 2027. Mathematically, it was “almost impossible” for the stock to climb from its listing until that date, he wrote.

Those buyers were like early Zcash traders, he said. Most stayed under water as new ZEC supply hit the market.

Hayes said on Nov. 2 that a weak bitcoin outlook is tied to bank and Federal Reserve balance sheets. But in an interview published October 2, he said he expects an AI bailout to boost crypto in about 12 to 18 months, with trillions of dollars.

Bitfinex maps three routes from the 825 million-share listing to bitcoin

Anthropic commenced its roadshow on Nov. 10 and plans to list on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the ticker ANT. The offering comprises 825 million Class A shares priced between $70 and $78 apiece, with the company selling 801.35 million and the remainder sold by existing stockholders.

The sale at the top of the range raises as much as $64.4 billion and values the company at around $1.4 trillion, Cryptopolitan reported. When Anthropic announced the roadshow, the registration statement hadn’t been effective yet.

Google, Nvidia, Advanced Micro Devices, Broadcom, Micron Technology, Microsoft and TSMC also agreed to a private placement of $26 billion. They buy nonvoting Class N shares at the IPO price in a deal that is to close immediately after the listing.

Revenue was $33.2 billion for the first nine months of the year, while operating loss was $1.3 billion, down from $5.2 billion. Purchase and lease obligations are approximately $900.9 billion, chiefly for computing, of which $70.7 billion is payable within 12 months of September 30.

Bitfinex analysts say the listing, scheduled for Nov. 19, will have three channels of impact on bitcoin. The first is sentiment, with Anthropic’s valuation well below the ~$2 trillion that was talked about in September and its reception read as a verdict on AI valuations.

About one fifth of the offering is earmarked for retail investors, drawing on money that overlaps with crypto’s retail base. There is also more than $260 million of open interest in pre-listing Anthropic contracts on crypto derivatives venues, trading around 23% above the top of the range.

Bitcoin has eaten up 91% of the Nasdaq 100’s losses on down days since the index’s Oct. 6 record high, but only 58% of its gains on up days, the analysts wrote. The gap, they said, was due to a lack of buying from ETFs and corporate treasuries.

At the time of writing, BTC was trading at $70,828, down 3.8% in the past 24 hours.

Hayes’s quick exit sizing comes after months of scrutiny over his sales. In June, observers of the blockchain said Maelstrom sent $1.92 million of CARDS tokens to market maker Flowdesk days after Hayes pushed the token.

ZachXBT queried the sales of HYPE, NEAR, ZEC and WLD weeks earlier. Hayes said he “sold to a willing seller at a price.”

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