ZachXBT Says Arthur Hayes Used Followers as Exit Liquidity

On-chain investigator ZachXBT accused BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes of creating exit liquidity for his followers on June 6, after Hayes sold four publicly endorsed altcoin positions in roughly 15 days. The four tokens (Hyperliquid’s HYPE, Zcash’s ZEC, Near Protocol’s NEAR, and Worldcoin’s WLD) each declined after Hayes disclosed his sales, with on-chain analytics service Lookonchain tracking all four back to near their pre-call price levels.

All four trades shared a structure before Hayes moved out: public price targets set significantly above the market price at the time of endorsement, and a following large enough to shift crypto prices within minutes of a post on X.

Four Tokens, Fifteen Days

On May 22, Hayes publicly named HYPE, ZEC, and NEAR the “Holy Trinity” and announced bullish positions in all three. By June 4, every one was sold, with Hayes citing macro concerns: rising energy costs from the Iran conflict, three forthcoming AI IPOs he expected to absorb market capital, and a conviction that the Trump administration would pivot against artificial intelligence before midterm elections. He posted that an essay titled “Reality Test” would explain the full reasoning. It has not been published.

ZEC lasted one more day. On June 5, the Zcash network publicly disclosed a critical soundness vulnerability in its Orchard shielded pool. Independent security researcher Taylor Hornby had found the flaw on May 29 while conducting a protocol audit for Shielded Labs, aided by an AI model. The Zcash Foundation confirmed the bug was patched via an emergency NU6.2 hard fork completed by June 3, with no exploitation confirmed on mainnet and no unauthorized ZEC created. Hayes’s read was different. He wrote that “the privacy from AI, govt, big tech narrative demands perfection” and that a flaw which could not be cryptographically proved unexploited was enough to break his thesis. ZEC dropped more than 30% on June 5 before a partial recovery.

WLD, the token for Worldcoin (the iris-scanning digital identity project co-founded by OpenAI chief Sam Altman), came last. Days before his exit, Hayes had framed it as a liquid bet on the AI boom and tied his holding to an anticipated SpaceX Nasdaq listing, writing the IPO would “melt people’s faces off.” On June 6, he posted: “This chart is going in the wrong direction. Dumped $WLD. I’m out.”

ZachXBT, whose on-chain investigations have previously surfaced fraud and theft across the crypto ecosystem, assembled all four exits into a single question to Hayes: “How much exit liquidity was created from your followers over the past couple days? First NEAR HYPE ZEC. Now WLD.”

The Calls and Their Aftermath

Each endorsement came with a target. In each case, Hayes sold far short of it.

WLD’s trajectory is the sharpest. The token was trading at $0.42 on June 6, per CoinMarketCap data, down from a recent peak near $0.59. Its all-time high stands at $11.82, set in March 2024, and the current price sits more than 96% below that. The pre-endorsement price and the post-exit price landed at nearly the same point: the rally Hayes’s thesis generated reversed in full within days of his departure.

ZEC’s setup was different in kind. Hayes had set a target equivalent to 10% of Bitcoin’s value, which according to a May Cryptopolitan report implied a price above $8,000, roughly 14 times where ZEC was actually trading at the time. His exit came not because ZEC failed to reach that target on its own merits but because the Orchard Pool disclosure changed the risk calculus for a trade premised entirely on Zcash’s privacy narrative.

HYPE came with its own context. At the time Hayes sold, the token had gained 167% year-to-date, per 10xResearch data, meaning the exit at record highs was at least consistent with taking profits at a stretched valuation. His $150 target was never reached; the position had still compounded substantially from his spring entry.

When Hayes Posts, Retail Follows

Hayes’s HYPE and NEAR exit post on June 4 collected more than 3,300 likes and 536 quote tweets before the trading day closed. Market intelligence work published by KuCoin notes that when Hayes releases a conviction essay, on-chain spot and derivatives activity shifts within minutes across global exchanges, driven partly by traders who publicly track Maelstrom’s known wallet addresses through on-chain analytics platforms.

• WLD ran from roughly $0.24 to $0.59 over three weeks while the broader crypto market fell approximately 10%, per crypto analyst Stacy Muur’s data on X
• 3,300+ likes on Hayes’s HYPE and NEAR exit announcement on June 4; 536 quote tweets
• 30%+ ZEC’s intraday decline on June 5 following the Orchard Pool disclosure and Hayes’s exit
• 96%+ WLD’s decline from its March 2024 all-time high of $11.82 to its June 6 price of $0.42

Part of WLD’s pre-exit run came from the investment thesis Maelstrom itself had published, arguing Worldcoin offered retail investors a liquid proxy for the AI boom. Hayes amplified that research call to his X audience. The combination lifted WLD through a period when the broader market was moving in the opposite direction.

Arthur Cheong, founder of crypto investment firm DeFiance Capital, called the June 4 exits “the epitome of a guy that over-trades his position” in a post on X.

Markus Thielen at research firm 10xResearch had flagged HYPE as overheated before Hayes sold, noting in a published report that at recent highs the token was trading at roughly 25 times projected fee revenue, near its richest valuation in a year, with a large token unlock scheduled for June adding further pressure. HYPE’s fundamentals hadn’t broken; the valuation had stretched. Hayes sold into that stretch.

Hayes Defends the Trades

Hayes replied to ZachXBT’s accusation directly on June 6:

I sold to a willing seller at a price. Prices could be higher and then I would be called a dumb ass. I just happened to call it right this time as it regards to my trading goals.

Hayes on X, June 6, 2026.

The defense has a logic to it. Hayes disclosed his positions publicly while holding them, not only after exiting. His long-form essays, including “HYPE Man” and earlier ZEC coverage, laid out full macroeconomic frameworks, supply mechanics, and specific price logic rather than bare buy calls. Supporters argue that post-trade disclosure, even where it stops short of pre-trade disclosure, represents more transparency than most large market participants provide, and that followers have enough publicly available context to assess his track record before acting on any call.

The WLD timeline complicates that framing. On June 4, Hayes was still describing Worldcoin as a hold through SpaceX’s anticipated listing. Two days later, he was entirely out. The time between his last bullish WLD post and his exit announcement was measured in hours, not the weeks a macro thesis would typically need to play out.

Retail traders who bought WLD in the days before Hayes’s exit absorbed the drop. His longer-term followers tended to read the moves as aggressive but consistent with how he has always traded. The community response on X split roughly along those lines, with some calling the sequence transparent risk management and others substantially less charitable.

A Script Running Since September 2025

Hayes and HYPE have been through this cycle before. In September 2025, Hayes was publicly bullish on Hyperliquid, floating a potential 126x rally for HYPE. He sold millions of dollars worth of the token during that period and, by his own subsequent admission, put part of the proceeds toward a Ferrari. He then bought back into the token at higher prices than his exit.

The re-entry had a basis. Between the September 2025 sale and the March 2026 re-commitment, Hayes credited Hyperliquid’s organic user retention and the structural growth of its on-chain perpetual futures exchange as reasons for a changed outlook. He called Maelstrom’s HYPE position its single largest liquid holding outside Bitcoin in the “HYPE Man” essay, published March 2026, and set the $150 target. HYPE climbed to successive record highs through the spring. In May 2026, Hayes moved $6.33 million to the exchange Bybit as the token peaked. By June 4, the full position was liquidated again.

Two complete cycles in nine months on the same token: published conviction, retail following, exit, re-entry at higher prices, fresh targets, another exit. The specifics of each rationale differ. The shape of each cycle doesn’t.

ZachXBT’s June 6 post was the first time the full four-token, 15-day sequence had been assembled as a single critique rather than a string of separate trade announcements. The coverage and community response it generated drew more engagement than any of Hayes’s individual exit posts, suggesting the pattern held more news value than any single trade inside it.

On-Chain Evidence and the Question of Intent

Promoting a cryptocurrency you personally own is legal. Neither ZachXBT’s posts nor the on-chain data they cite constitutes proof of market manipulation; the accountability here runs through reputation and community response, not regulatory enforcement.

The cases regulators have actually pursued concern undisclosed paid promotion. The SEC has collected significant fines from public figures who promoted crypto tokens without disclosing paid arrangements: Kim Kardashian paid $1.26 million and Paul Pierce paid $1.4 million for such violations. Hayes’s positions in HYPE, ZEC, NEAR, and WLD were his own fund’s capital. He was expressing investment conviction from positions he already held, not executing a paid placement.

The SEC’s fiscal year 2025 enforcement results, published in April 2026, show the agency reserving its crypto enforcement focus for misappropriation, fraud, and undisclosed paid promotion. Organic position-holding with public commentary sits outside that pattern. The gap ZachXBT’s accusation points at, a trader who sets a target that attracts buyers and then exits into the resulting demand, has not been defined as a specific violation under U.S. securities law or commodity regulation.

Hayes received a full presidential pardon from Donald Trump in March 2025, resolving his prior regulatory history with U.S. authorities. No disclosed enforcement action is pending against him for the current trades.

A large holder who publishes a bullish thesis will attract retail buyers quickly. When that holder then exits, those buyers absorb the selling pressure created by the departure. ZachXBT’s accusation is about the pattern’s mechanical effect. On-chain data can pin down the timing of each trade. It can’t establish what was planned before the thesis was written, and that boundary is what the “Reality Test” essay Hayes promised on June 4 still hasn’t crossed, as of June 8, with ZEC and WLD now added to the exits it would need to address.

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment, legal, or financial advice. Information reflects publicly reported events and on-chain data as of the publication date. Cryptocurrency markets are highly volatile; past trading patterns are not indicative of future price movements. Readers should conduct their own research and consult a qualified financial professional before making any investment decisions.