Arthur Hayes Sells Worldcoin, Completing His Five-Day Altcoin Exit

Arthur Hayes sold his entire Worldcoin (WLD) position on June 6 after posting a chart of SpaceX’s pre-IPO perpetual futures and noting the trajectory was “going in a strange direction,” completing in five days the full liquidation of the four altcoin bets he had publicly championed for months. Hayes, co-founder of crypto derivatives exchange BitMEX and chief investment officer at Maelstrom, his family office, had been holding WLD as his one remaining position while selling Hyperliquid (HYPE), Near Protocol (NEAR), and Zcash (ZEC) in the prior two sessions.

The exit closes a thesis the BitMEX co-founder built around the coming SpaceX Nasdaq listing as its primary catalyst. WLD had surged roughly 60% in the week ending June 4, driven by his public endorsement and the argument that the token was the cleanest liquid proxy for the coming AI initial public offering (IPO) wave. When the SPCX pre-IPO chart turned strange, the WLD trade came apart with it.

Four Tokens, Five Days

The sequence unfolded over three sessions. On June 4, Hayes posted on X that he had cleared his entire HYPE and NEAR positions, citing four reasons in the same post: higher energy prices tied to the Iran conflict, three large AI IPOs expected before early Q3, a prediction that President Donald Trump would turn against artificial intelligence ahead of midterm elections, and a broader call that financial markets would top before September. On-chain data from Arkham Intelligence’s blockchain wallet tracking showed 247,334 HYPE tokens worth about $18.02 million moving to OKX, Bybit, and Flowdesk in that session.

The ZEC exit followed June 5. A security engineer at Shielded Labs had found a flaw in Zcash’s Orchard shielded pool, an insufficient constraint in elliptic-curve multiplication inside the halo2_gadgets cryptographic library, identified using AI-assisted formal methods. The bug had existed since the NU5 protocol upgrade activated in May 2022, surviving multiple external audits across nearly four years. An emergency hard fork on June 3 patched it, but the Orchard pool’s privacy architecture made it cryptographically impossible to verify no counterfeit ZEC had been minted during that window. ZEC had drawn notable institutional attention through May, when Multicoin Capital co-founder Tushar Jain disclosed his firm’s position as a privacy-coin hedge against government wealth taxation, sending the token up 30% in 24 hours. The Orchard bug landed in a different climate. Hayes announced the exit the day after the public disclosure, writing: “The Holy Trinity is dead. Sadly due to the Orchard Pool exploit, I had to dump our entire $ZEC bag. The privacy from AI, govt, big tech narrative demands perfection.”

WLD was the final item. He posted the SpaceX pre-IPO derivatives chart on June 6, noted it was going strangely, and confirmed the sale.

The Last Position Standing

Hayes made clear on June 4 that WLD was the exception. When he cleared the other positions that same day, he simultaneously published one of the more aggressive bullish calls he had made on any token this year. He amplified a Maelstrom research note authored by Lukas Ruppert, an analyst at his family office, titled “WLD Hated Rally.” The post was direct: “Read it and weep WLD bears. This shitcoin is going to moon…cause AI duh. Don’t mid-curve this shit.” Hours later he added: “The SpaceX IPO is going to melt people’s faces off. Holding the $WLD through the listing next week.”

The thesis rested on a specific analogy. When SpaceX confidentially filed its S-1 with the SEC in April, high-beta space equities moved sharply. Rocket Lab (RKLB) rallied 165% in the weeks that followed, per the Maelstrom note. With both Anthropic and OpenAI filing confidentially for their own public listings, the research argued the AI IPO wave was early and that WLD, sitting at the intersection of Sam Altman’s identity network and the AI sector narrative, was positioned to catch a similar draft. He put a $10 long-term price target on the token; Maelstrom’s published note set $5 by August.

WLD had traded near $0.24 in early April, its all-time low, while AI-linked equities and larger crypto assets ran. Maelstrom framed that gap as the setup: a token near its floor with the right narrative and a cluster of specific supply mechanics working in its favor.

What Maelstrom Calculated

The research note ran on three concrete mechanics, not just narrative proximity to AI:

• $65 million raised in a March OTC round, including $25 million locked for six months. OTC participants began hedging exposure immediately, pushing perpetual futures funding deeply negative. Maelstrom described it as “textbook short overhang.”
• $156 million WLD position disclosed by Eightco Holdings (ORBS), which held roughly 283 million WLD at the time, equal to about 8.3% of circulating supply, with the company signaling it was “just getting started.”
• 43% reduction in daily WLD token unlocks scheduled for July 24, cutting daily emissions from roughly 5.1 million to 2.9 million tokens, a supply-side shift the note argued would ease selling pressure exactly when institutional demand from Eightco could press in harder.

The note described the interplay as potentially reflexive: a falling unlock rate hitting a token that was already heavily shorted, with one institutional holder growing its position. The market responded. Trading volume hit $1.7 billion in the session after the note circulated on June 4, per CoinMarketCap’s WLD trading volume data, and the token touched $0.55, an 80% gain from its April floor.

SpaceX at $135, WLD at $0.42

None of those supply mechanics changed between June 4 and June 6. What changed was the SpaceX chart.

SpaceX set a fixed IPO price of $135 per share. Targeting a June 12 Nasdaq debut under the ticker SPCX, the company aimed to raise approximately $75 billion at a $1.75 trillion valuation, which would make it the largest IPO in stock market history, surpassing Saudi Aramco’s 2019 record. The roadshow launched June 4, the same day the WLD bull calls were circulating. According to the company’s S-1 prospectus filed with the SEC, SpaceX posted a $4.28 billion operating loss in Q1 2026 and $4.94 billion in full-year 2025 net losses. At the $1.75 trillion target valuation, the company was being priced at roughly 109 times its 2025 trailing revenue, a multiple normally attached to early-stage software, applied to a capital-intensive launch business. Morningstar calculated fundamental fair value at $780 billion, less than half the IPO ask.

Pre-IPO perpetual futures for SPCX had been trading on crypto derivatives platforms including Binance and Coinbase since May, and their price action was the chart posted on June 6. Whatever the data showed (demand softening, a positioning reversal, or something in the order-flow) the SPCX derivatives were the thread the WLD thesis ran on. Pulling it ended the position.

WLD dropped 13.8% on June 6 and now trades around $0.42, per CoinGecko, roughly 96% below its all-time high of $11.74.

Worldcoin’s Persistent Headwinds

Worldcoin, co-founded by Sam Altman, uses iris-scanning spherical orbs to build what it describes on its official World website as a global proof-of-personhood network, the premise being that verifying real human identity becomes essential as AI systems multiply. The concept attracted institutional capital worth hundreds of millions. It also attracted regulatory action in at least seven major jurisdictions:

• Kenya: Suspended operations August 2023, citing national security and privacy risks from biometric data collection
• Spain: GDPR investigation found violations; Spain’s High Court upheld a temporary iris-scanning ban; data deletion ordered December 2024
• Hong Kong: Privacy Commissioner executed warrants on six offices and halted operations May 2024
• Germany: Bavarian data protection authority issued corrective-measures order December 2024
• Brazil: National Data Protection Authority ordered operations halted January 2025
• Indonesia: Ministry of Communication suspended operating permit May 2025 for regulatory violations
• South Korea: Approximately $829,000 fine issued September 2024 for data-protection breaches

The token supply structure adds a second layer of pressure. WLD has a total maximum supply of 10 billion tokens; about 3.4 billion currently circulate, per CoinGecko’s WLD market data. That puts the circulating market cap at roughly $1.4 billion and the fully diluted valuation (FDV, the theoretical market cap if all 10 billion tokens circulated today) at about $4.1 billion. The July 24 unlock reduction cuts the rate of new supply, not the total supply ceiling. The token is still about 70% away from its full float, a ceiling that keeps coming regardless of near-term mechanics.

Eightco’s disclosed position, the short overhang, and the identity network’s real-world reach in over 100 countries all survive this exit. What left the trade today is the specific market catalyst that was drawing speculative attention toward those facts.

The Halo That Cuts Both Ways

When he announced his June 4 exits, the perpetuals exchange token fell roughly 7%, pulling back from all-time highs it had reached earlier that week. The announcement landed hard because he had been among its most vocal public supporters for months, publishing a $150 price target in a March essay and repeating the call at Consensus Miami 2026. Three days before the sale, he publicly challenged Multicoin Capital co-founder Kyle Samani to a $100,000 charity bet on the token’s performance through year-end. Arthur Cheong, founder of crypto investment firm DeFiance Capital, responded on X that same day:

The epitome of a guy that over-trades his position.

Arthur Cheong, DeFiance Capital, on X, June 4.

The privacy coin exit showed a more divided market. On-chain data from Nansen showed the smart-money cohort fell about 4% in the 24 hours after the sale, moving in step with him. But top-100 whale addresses grew by more than 24% in the same window, suggesting larger holders were buying what he was clearing. He left the door open himself, writing that he would reconsider if the Orchard exploit risk proved less serious than feared.

WLD had no such split going into this week. As of June 5, every major cohort tracked on Hyperliquid held net long positions in the token, per Nansen data, and whale-held supply off exchanges was ticking higher. He exits a setup where the on-chain positioning still points one direction.

The July 24 unlock reduction arrives on schedule, with or without him in the trade.

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial or investment advice. Cryptocurrency markets are highly volatile and speculative. Figures cited are accurate as of publication date. Consult a qualified financial professional before making any investment decisions based on information contained in this article.