Arthur Hayes

Hayes graduated from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania in 2008 with a bachelor’s degree in economics; the Jackie Robinson Foundation lists him as a member of its class of 2008 alumni, and he later became a director of the foundation.⁠[1][1][2]

After graduating, he moved to Hong Kong, where he worked as an equity derivatives trader at Deutsche Bank and then Citigroup for about five years in total, serving as head ETF market maker at both banks.⁠[1][1]

In January 2014, Hayes co-founded BitMEX (Bitcoin Mercantile Exchange) with Ben Delo and Samuel Reed. Based in the Seychelles, the platform gave retail investors access to financial markets through cryptocurrency products, and its bitcoin/U.S. dollar contract XBTUSD offered up to 100x leverage.⁠[1][3][1][1]

BitMEX helped establish the perpetual swap, which is now the dominant instrument in cryptocurrency derivatives markets; Maelstrom credits Hayes as the inventor of the perpetual swap.⁠[2][4]

On October 1, 2020, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York announced the indictment of Hayes, Delo, Reed, and BitMEX’s first employee, Gregory Dwyer, charging the four with violating the U.S. Bank Secrecy Act and conspiring to violate it by willfully failing to establish, implement, and maintain an adequate anti-money laundering program at BitMEX. The indictment alleged that because BitMEX had long served U.S. traders, it was required to register with the CFTC and to establish an anti-money laundering program including a “know your customer” (KYC) component, that the defendants knew of this obligation by no later than around September 2015 but chose to flout it, and that around July 2019 Hayes said the Seychelles was a friendlier jurisdiction for BitMEX because bribing local officials cost just “a coconut.” These are all allegations. Each charge carried a maximum sentence of five years in prison.⁠[3][3][3][3][3][3][3][3]

On the same day, the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) filed a civil enforcement action in federal court in the Southern District of New York against five BitMEX operating entities and Hayes, Delo, and Reed, charging them with operating an unregistered trading platform and violating anti-money laundering rules. The CFTC said the platform had received more than $11 billion in bitcoin deposits and made more than $1 billion in fees while conducting significant aspects of its business from the United States and accepting orders and funds from U.S. customers.⁠[5][5]

On October 8, 2020, 100x Group, the holding group for BitMEX operator HDR Holdings, announced that Hayes and Reed had stepped back from all executive management responsibilities in their CEO and CTO roles with immediate effect, and that the group’s chief operating officer, Vivien Khoo, would become interim CEO.⁠[6][6][6][6]

On August 10, 2021, the federal court in the Southern District of New York entered a consent order against five BitMEX operating entities, requiring them to pay a $100 million civil monetary penalty, of which up to $50 million could be offset by payments to the U.S. Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN). This penalty applied to the corporate entities; the cases against the three founders individually were handled separately.⁠[7][7][8]

In 2022, Hayes co-founded Maelstrom with Akshat Vaidya, who had previously led BitMEX’s M&A team; managed by Hayes’s family office, Maelstrom invests in crypto infrastructure companies and assets across four businesses: venture, liquid, private equity, and public markets. Hayes serves as Chief Investment Officer and sets its strategic direction.⁠[2][2][9][9][2]

On February 24, 2022, Hayes and Delo each pleaded guilty before U.S. District Judge John G. Koeltl to one count of violating the Bank Secrecy Act, admitting to willfully failing to establish, implement, and maintain an anti-money laundering program at BitMEX; under their plea agreements, each agreed to pay a $10 million criminal fine. Prosecutors said that from September 2015 until the indictment in September 2020, BitMEX had no anti-money laundering or KYC program, that it filed no suspicious activity reports at all between 2014 and September 2020, and that both men knew BitMEX’s purported withdrawal from the U.S. market around September 2015 was a sham.⁠[10][10][10][10][10][10]

On May 5, 2022, the CFTC announced that the federal court in the Southern District of New York had entered consent orders against BitMEX’s three co-founders, requiring Hayes, Delo, and Reed each to pay a $10 million civil monetary penalty and enjoining them from further violations of the Commodity Exchange Act and CFTC regulations. The consent orders found that the three controlled BitMEX from November 2014 through October 1, 2020, and were responsible for the platform’s violations because they failed to implement effective controls.⁠[8][8][8]

On May 20, 2022, Judge Koeltl sentenced Hayes to six months of home detention and two years of probation, and he separately agreed to pay a $10 million fine. Prosecutors noted that BitMEX had advertised that no real name or advanced verification was required to sign up, and that through at least August 2017, its registration page did not require a first or last name.⁠[11][11][11][11][11]

On October 5, 2023, Hayes appeared on When Shift Happens, the crypto interview podcast hosted by Kevin Follonier, discussing why he moved to Asia after university and the story of founding BitMEX; on October 9, 2025, he returned to the show to discuss why to buy bitcoin before 2028 and why he keeps most of his assets in bitcoin.⁠[12][12][12][12]

On July 10, 2024, HDR Global Trading Limited, the company that operates BitMEX, pleaded guilty to violating the Bank Secrecy Act; on January 15, 2025, the company was sentenced to a $100 million fine.⁠[13][14]

On March 27, 2025, U.S. President Donald Trump pardoned Hayes for his Bank Secrecy Act conviction; Delo, Reed, Dwyer, and HDR Global Trading Limited were pardoned on the same day.⁠[15][15][15][15][15][15]

In October 2025, Maelstrom sought to raise at least $250 million for its first private equity fund, Maelstrom Equity Fund I, planning to acquire four to six medium-sized companies in the crypto industry with investments of $40 million to $75 million each, focused on profitable “off-chain” businesses such as trading infrastructure providers and analytics platforms, and targeting a first close by March 2026; co-founder Vaidya confirmed the plan. As of October 2026, Maelstrom’s team included a person responsible for launching and managing Maelstrom Equity.⁠[16][16][17][17][17][2]

BitMEX announced in July 2026 that it was closing following a strategic review by its parent company, HDR Global Trading, and in September 2026 it stopped trading, deposits, and the opening of new positions, leaving only withdrawals available and ending an 11-year run.⁠[4][4][4]

Hayes runs the newsletter Crypto Trader Digest on Substack. In his September 21, 2026, essay “Safety First,” he argued that the claims by AnthropicAnthropicAnthropic is an artificial intelligence research and product company founded in 2021 that develops the Claude models, assistant, and tools such as Claude Code, and operates as a public benefit corporation. Dario Amodei and Daniela Amodei are its co-founders, and its research covers model safety, interpretability, and steerability.Open the full entry, OpenAI, and SpaceX that a “safety first” approach was slowing their development of artificial general intelligence were driven not by concern for human wellbeing but by insufficient market demand for the AI they sell at its current price.⁠[18][19][19][19]

Maelstrom runs a bitcoin developer grant program that funds full-time developers working on Bitcoin Core, Payjoin, Silent Payments, and protecting bitcoin from a break in elliptic curve cryptography; grants range from $50,000 to $150,000 per developer per year and are paid monthly in BTC, USDC, or USDT. Hayes sits on the review committee.⁠[20][20][20][20][20]

Maelstrom: Official website: https://maelstrom.fund/ (opens in a new window).⁠[2]

Crypto Trader Digest (his Substack newsletter): https://cryptohayes.substack.com/ (opens in a new window)⁠[18]

X: Public account: https://x.com/cryptohayes (opens in a new window)⁠[19]

LinkedInLinkedInLinkedIn is a social networking platform for professionals. It was founded in 2002 by Reid Hoffman and others, launched in 2003, and listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2011; after Microsoft acquired it for approximately $26.2 billion in 2016, it became a wholly owned Microsoft subsidiary. Its revenue comes from membership subscriptions, advertising, and recruitment solutions.Open the full entry: Public profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/arthur-hayes-b493b42/ (opens in a new window)⁠[19]

Instagram: Public account: https://www.instagram.com/cryptohayes/ (opens in a new window)⁠[19]