BitMEX co-founder and Maelstrom CIO Arthur Hayes is a veteran crypto trader who keeps sharing his analysis of the digital assets market with his followers on social media. Referring to the Wo
BitMEX co-founder and Maelstrom CIO Arthur Hayes is a veteran crypto trader who keeps sharing his analysis of the digital assets market with his followers on social media.
Referring to the World token, he recently predicted that this "sh*tcoin is going to moon" because of the hype around artificial intelligence (AI). In a post shared on June 3, he remarked that those bearish on this token will "weep."
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World (WLD) is a cryptocurrency powering billionaire AI entrepreneur and OpenAI founder Sam Altman's World blockchain project that uses iris scanning for identity verification and crypto ecosystem access. However, the feature has been heavily criticized for alleged privacy violations.
Hayes' family office Maelstrom's research analyst Lukas Ruppert shared a detailed price prediction for World in an X post.
When Elon Musk's SpaceX filed to go public in April, Rocket Lab (Nasdaq: RKLB) rallied 165% because the investors were looking to immediately trade a rocket maker, and Rocket Lab, as a publicly listed company, offered exactly that opportunity.
"The AI mega IPOs are coming - and it appears the market has overlooked one of the cleanest proxies."
Maelstrom looks at World (WLD) as another proxy for AI as companies like Anthropic and OpenAI prepare for their initial public offerings (IPOs).
World raised $65 million in an over-the-counter (OTC) sale in March, locking $25 million for six months. Though WLD is lying in a bear zone and traders have been bearish on it since then,
the investment firm sees a few catalysts for a potential price recovery.
For instance, Eightco Holdings (Nasdaq: ORBS) is a digital asset treasury that holds 283 million WLD tokens on its balance sheet as of June 3. As it also holds approximately $144 million in cash and equivalents, it could also accumulate more WLD tokens. Moreover, WLD’s daily token unlock rate is anticipated to drop by 43% on July 24.
Eightco also disclosed that it holds a $90 million investment (indirectly, through SPVs) in OpenAI.
As investors chase exposure to upcoming Anthropic and OpenAI IPOs, layered SPVs are charging "egregious" fees and valuations lie in the range of hundreds of billions, Maelstrom underlined.
WLD, on the other hand, trades at an unlocked market capitalization of $2 billion, the firm added.
"A small cap, when it comes to AI valuations. Asymmetric upside."
Maelstrom predicted a price target of $5 for WLD by August 2026.
WLD was trading at $0.5246 at press time, so Maelstrom's target indicates a surge of 10 times.
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