Bitcoin bottom in, now headed for a ‘slow grind higher’ — Arthur Hayes

This week’s 12% Bitcoin retreat was a “well-needed market cleansing,” said the former BitMEX boss.

Former BitMEX chief executive Arthur Hayes believes Bitcoin (BTC) has hit a local bottom and will slowly grind back up over the next few months. 

In a blog post on May 3, Hayes commented on the recent market slump claiming that “The price action played out as I expected.”

Bitcoin hit a local low of around $58,600 earlier this week but will rally to above $60,000 and then remain rangebound between $60,000 and $70,000 until August, he said.

Hayes added that the 12% Bitcoin retreat this week was a “well-needed market cleansing.”

He blamed it on the tax season in the United States, worry over Federal Reserve decisions, the Bitcoin halving “sell the news event,” and a slowdown of spot Bitcoin ETF asset under management growth.

The 23% correction was the fourth such retrace of similar magnitude over the past 12 months.

Hayes expects crypto markets to slowly grind higher after the recent sell-off, driven by increased dollar liquidity from the Federal Reserve’s quantitative tightening (QT) taper and the U.S. Treasury’s debt issuance plans.

By tapering QT, the central bank is effectively injecting more liquidity into markets which could theoretically make its way into riskier assets such as cryptocurrencies, providing buying pressure.

Hayes views this as “stealth money printing” which is positive for high-risk assets.

“Are the recent Fed and Treasury policy announcements stealth forms of money printing? Yes.”

“The slow addition of billions of dollars of liquidity each month will dampen negative price movement from here on out,” he added before predicting that prices will “bottom, chop, and begin a slow grind higher.”

Related: 3 signs hint that Bitcoin price is nearing a bottom

The former BitMEX boss isn’t the only one predicting a sideways market for the next few months.

Founder and CEO of Vailshire Capital Management, Dr. Jeff Ross, said he was “still respecting the ongoing bullcrab market,” despite the doom and gloom in a post to X on May 2.

The Fed’s “rhetoric pivot” was the official transition from “bad-to-less-bad liquidity conditions,” he opined.

Analysts and traders calling for the end of the Bitcoin bull market “may be dismayed to learn that the actual bull market hasn’t even started yet,” he said before concluding that the coming weeks will be an accumulation opportunity.

In a note shared with Cointelegraph, institutional crypto brokerage MatrixPort reiterated its outlook that post-halving, “Bitcoin tends to move sideways afterward for four to five months based on previous instances.”

Bitcoin prices had recovered 4.2% on the day to trade at $59,804 at the time of writing, however, the asset was still down 19% from the mid-March all-time high, according to CoinGecko.