Dialogue with Arthur Hayes & NEAR Co-founder: HYPE Target Price $150, Does NEAR Have 20x Potential?

Compiled & Edited by: Odaily TechFlow

Guests: Arthur Hayes, CIO of Maelstrom; Illia Polosukhin, Co-founder of NEAR

Hosts: Andy; Rob

Podcast Source: The Rollup

Original Title: Arthur Hayes & Illia Polosukhin: Privacy Is The Last 1000x (NEAR & ZEC)

Release Date: May 25, 2026

Key Takeaways

In this episode of The Rollup, Arthur Hayes and Illia Polosukhin discuss macro liquidity, privacy assets, NEAR Intents, AI and on-chain execution layers, and the investment theses for HYPE, NEAR, and ZEC. Arthur argues that war, the AI arms race, and supply chain restructuring are driving the US, China, and Europe to continue supporting their economies through debt and monetary expansion, with liquidity ultimately spilling over into Bitcoin and a select few crypto assets with genuine narratives and revenue. Illia emphasizes that for blockchain to enter everyday payments, payroll, invoices, and the AI agent economy, privacy is not an option but a prerequisite for mass adoption. Both believe the crypto market is transitioning from indiscriminate speculation to a phase of fundamental screening, where privacy, sovereignty, real revenue, and token value capture will be the main themes of the next cycle.

Key Insights

Macro Liquidity and the AI Arms Race

• "AI has become part of national defense. Drones, AI intelligence, and battlefield decisions are being integrated into warfare, and governments will print money to win wars."
• "Countries previously based their food and energy supplies on many assumptions, but when critical shipping lanes like the Strait of Hormuz become unstable, holding US Treasuries won't help them feed their populations."
• "These savings held in the form of US Treasuries ultimately need to be sold to purchase real goods and build redundant supply chains and energy corridors."
• "The beauty of Bitcoin is that if there are more fiat currency units tomorrow than today, its price will mathematically increase. It's pure math, but everything else is highly dependent on narrative."

L1 Public Chain Consolidation and Return to Fundamentals

• "Block space is a ubiquitous commodity now, and supply far exceeds demand. The only issue was that this commodity was highly non-fungible. NEAR's bet on chain abstraction and intents is to make them fungible. That means every chain, every asset, every user can truly connect without having to think about which block space they are using."
• "That old logic is fading: buying an asset because a bunch of retail investors will come along and buy it later. Retail risk appetite has dropped significantly. People are more concerned about whether they can afford oil and food next year than speculating on an asset."
• "The market is turning its focus to which assets are genuinely generating revenue, have products, and have users."
• "For a Layer 1 public chain, fully diluted valuation is very important. Many projects have huge institutional unlock pressures hanging over them, whereas NEAR has a relatively clear upside path."

Zcash and Privacy Assets are Undervalued

• "Nothing is more normal than having private money on the internet. Zcash and Monero represent precisely that need."
• "When Big Tech, governments, and AI can increasingly track everything in our lives, cryptographically proven monetary privacy will become extremely important."
• "If you hold Zcash but don't hold it in shielded form, then why are you even holding it?"
• "Zcash and NEAR form the core of my privacy investment thesis: In a world coexisting with AI, Big Tech, and Big Government, the market will reassess the value of privacy, and Maelstrom will profit from it."
• "I believe NEAR has 20x potential over the next year, while Zcash might be around 5x."

NEAR Intents, Privacy Transactions, and Mass Adoption

• "If we want blockchain to truly enter everyday life, it cannot happen without privacy. Privacy is actually a prerequisite for crypto mass adoption."
• "If I pay at a coffee shop, I don't want the shop to know how much money I have, nor do I want the whole world to know I just spent money there."
• "Privacy intents aim to solve not just holding a private asset, but enabling transfers, trades, payments, yields, and more operations confidentially across all assets."
• "Payroll, invoices, and many use cases once thought suitable for crypto are actually difficult to realize in a fully transparent on-chain environment."

AI Agents and the On-Chain Execution Layer

• "In the future, we will interact with computing through AI, and blockchain will become the way everything gets executed."
• "AI also needs privacy. You don't want a lab to harvest your data, train a better model, and then sell the service back to you via subscription."
• "AI is the new computing interface, and intents are the business layer behind it."
• "When we started in 2017, our core thesis was that AI would become how we build software and interact with computing."

Hyperliquid and the DeFi Dream

• "What is one of crypto's killer apps? The exchange. Who are the richest people in crypto? Exchange owners."
• "The most important thing about Hyperliquid isn't that perpetual swaps or decentralized exchanges are new, but that it got the tokenomics right."
• "No VC sales, just a team allocation, and almost all revenue flows back to token holders. This is very rare for a project of this scale."

AI Labor Substitution and Political Risk

• "The impact of AI on labor highly depends on where you live. High-income white-collar workers on the US coasts will be protected, while back-office processing workers overseas will lose their jobs immediately, with little concern shown."
• "I think the substitution has already started, but it's unevenly distributed. The only opportunity is to be at the forefront. We've always said you need to leverage these technologies to enhance your own abilities, to learn faster and apply faster."
• "What could really bring the music to a halt isn't necessarily a big IPO, but politics. People will ask: AI companies are becoming incredibly wealthy using all of humanity's knowledge and interactions, what do we get?"
• "If a massive 'progress tax' is imposed on AI profits, it's not that these companies can't make money, but would you still be willing to pay 100x revenue for a company that might face a 50% AI tax? Of course not."

Arthur's Macro Investment Thesis

Host Rob: Arthur, you were cautious for a while, warning people about risks, and then you turned fully bullish. What happened in between? What changed your mind?

Arthur Hayes: 

Earlier this year, I wrote an article arguing that Bitcoin was pricing in a credit event triggered by AI-driven deflation. My thesis was that monetary authorities wouldn't print enough money until they saw a financial crisis. Back then, my whole argument was that the Nasdaq had basically moved sideways since Bitcoin's all-time high, but Bitcoin had followed the US investment-grade bond ETF IGB down, dropping from $126,000 to just over $60,000. I thought that was a credit event.

Then on February 28th, the US fired on Iran, igniting the war situation and making the market realize this would become a liquidity-positive event. First, AI is now part of national defense. Drones, AI-driven drones, and AI intelligence systems are already involved in war operations for all sides. Governments will print money to win wars, and AI is part of war, so both the US and Chinese governments will backstop AI capital expenditure.

We are already seeing bank loans and equity investments flowing to chip manufacturers. In the US at least, companies like Intel have received support, and similar announcements have been made in quantum computing, like a $1 billion investment in an IBM-related project. These are all part of the same theme.

On the other hand, many countries made a lot of assumptions about their food and energy supplies, assuming they could get them through contested waterways like the Strait of Hormuz. Now that things are getting difficult, they will start thinking: why am I holding these US Treasuries? If I need to feed my population, or if I'm on an isolated island without jet fuel, holding US Treasuries doesn't help me, especially if my ships can't get through the strait.

So, they need to build redundant supplies for all critical goods, especially food and energy; they need to invest in new trade relationships; they need to build new pipelines so oil can bypass the Persian Gulf and flow from places like the UAE. All this means that savings held in the form of US Treasuries need to be sold and converted into real goods.

And the US won't allow this selling to crash the market. It will print money to fill the hole and ensure the market doesn't get out of control. So I think February 28th was the catalytic event for the market. The US, China, and Europe will all print money to finance the wartime economy and AI capital expenditure, and this money will eventually flow into Bitcoin, which is why Bitcoin has performed so well.

Heavy Bets on NEAR, ZEC, and HYPE

Arthur Hayes: 

Now we are also seeing a small group of coins starting to rise. Among them, a few I hold, like NEAR, HYPE, and Zcash, have performed very well since February 28th. That's my general logic.

In the first quarter, I didn't trade much. I did some trading after the war started, but essentially, we had already acquired these assets at very good prices much earlier. Now the market is beginning to validate why we were buying them 6 to 12 months ago.

Host Andy: The whole of Crypto Twitter is discussing whether this trade has become consensus, while we here have already placed heavy bets on it. We've been following the macro, and we watched your show and articles on CoinDesk. The market was still hesitant at first, and then suddenly assets like NEAR, HYPE, and ZEC started to rally, so it's all coming together in this consolidation phase.

Layer 1 Consolidation Has Begun

Host Andy: Illia, I'd like to hear your thoughts on market consolidation. This isn't the first so-called bear market you've been through, but this time feels particularly real because the market itself is evolving. Institutional allocators have entered, the macro environment is very unstable, forcing people to view the industry in an 'adapt for the institutional era or be left behind' way. On top of that, the industry is becoming more mature and complex; you need products, revenue, real users, and a truly sustainable, strong tokenomic pathway. From a founder's perspective, what has actually happened in the market over the last 6 to 8 months? Why has it changed so fast? And how has NEAR navigated this phase?

Illia Polosukhin: 

I think several threads are converging. Let's start with the L1 and L2 logic. I remember giving a talk in 2019 saying we would first go through a big explosion, then enter a consolidation phase, and eventually only a few projects would survive. We are now approaching that phase.

Block space is a ubiquitous commodity now, and supply far exceeds demand. The only issue was that this commodity was highly non-fungible. NEAR's bet on chain abstraction and intents is to make them fungible. That means every chain, every asset, every user can truly connect without having to think about which block space they are using.

The second thread is the return to fundamentals. You've been talking about this direction for over a year, maybe even a few years. Now it's actually happening. Both the market and the institutional investors who really analyze the market – I'm not talking about BlackRock and Fidelity here, but funds and professional investors – are shifting.

That old logic is fading: buying an asset because a bunch of retail investors will come along and buy it later. Retail risk appetite has dropped significantly. Like Arthur said, people are more concerned about whether they can afford oil and food next year than speculating on an asset.

So the market starts asking: which assets are genuinely generating revenue? Which assets are providing products we use? If I stake it, do I gain new capabilities? For example, staking HYPE gets you lower fees and access to more markets. ZEC's logic is different, but it provides privacy capabilities. NEAR is similar; it offers cross-chain, intent, and computation-related capabilities.

These are the new capabilities that market participants want. So these assets become the focus, unlike tokens that you can hold but whose value is hard to define until the fee switch is turned on. I think these two threads are converging and shaping the broader environment in the crypto market right now.

Why Arthur Likes Zcash

Host Rob: This industry seems to be going into a reshuffle. The guys at Bankless seem to have gone their separate ways. David Hoffman sold all his ETH, and Merch is no longer supporting Solana and is going all-in on Zcash. Arthur, why is Zcash and privacy so important to you? Is this the core spirit of the crypto industry? And what role do NEAR Intents play here?

Arthur Hayes: 

Zcash's current heat is new, but I remember in 2016, before the Zcash mainnet launch, it was the hottest thing in the market. I was at BitMEX then, and we listed the first Zcash price derivative. That market was crazy back then; the price surged to about $3,000 on Poloniex. If you remember that exchange, there was even a time when it was 7 Bitcoin for 1 Zcash.

It was a very crazy day. Then the supply inflated rapidly due to block rewards, and the price crashed. But Zcash did have some issues back then. For instance, the trusted setup – you had to trust Zooko, Eli, and other participants that they didn't act maliciously during the ceremony for generating the keys. There was also the 20% block reward going to the team, which was controversial with the market.

But