BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes delivered a blunt assessment of two of crypto’s most established projects, arguing that Cardano and XRP have built their lasting community loyalty on early wealth creation rather than actual utility.
“Lie to Your People” and Still Win
Asked why Cardano remains so popular despite dropping out of the top ten and sitting at rank 19, Hayes did not mince words. He argued that holders who got in early made significant money as Cardano climbed from nothing to a top-20 asset, and that kind of wealth creation buys permanent loyalty regardless of what the project actually delivers.
“You could be like Cardano or Ripple and do absolutely nothing,” Hayes said. “Lie to your people that you’re going to do something about it. However, people got this thing really, really cheap. You allowed them to get rich with you.”
His broader point was directed at founders generally. Hayes argued that building genuinely useful technology with strong developer talent is not enough on its own. What actually matters, in his view, is whether early holders got wealthy alongside the founders. If they did, that loyalty becomes permanent and detached from fundamentals.
“This is why the price is so important,” he said. “It’s more important than the fundamentals of what you actually build. If you give the majority of the community away to participate in what you are building and they get wealthy alongside the founders, then they will be with you forever regardless of what you do.”
He predicted Cardano would likely still be sitting in the top 50 coins fifteen years from now, continuing to do nothing, simply because people made money along the way.
Why Hayes Isn’t Buying Altcoins Right Now
When asked what would bring him back into buying these tokens, Hayes pointed to a structural shift in the market. With tokenized stocks now trading 24 hours a day on various exchanges, he said investors increasingly question why they need altcoin exposure at all when they can trade something like TSMC around the clock instead.
He believes crypto will find renewed momentum once the AI bubble collapses, an event he expects to be larger than past financial crises, driven by what he sees as massive capital misallocation and underwriting assumptions in AI infrastructure financing that will not hold.
