Elections, Oil Prices, and the Money Printer: Why Bitcoin Only Cares About Trump

Original Author: Arthur Hayes, Crypto Trader Digest

Original Compilation: Peggy, BlockBeats

Editor’s Note: Amidst the clamor surrounding geopolitics, electoral games, and macro narratives, the author of this article, Arthur Hayes (co-founder of the क्रिप्टो exchange BitMEX), deliberately avoids moral judgment and value alignment. Instead, from the cold perspective of a trader, he compresses complex issues into several core variables that can be validated by the market: nominal GDP, oil prices, credit expansion, and the resulting pricing of risk assets.

As one of the most controversial and quintessentially “trader-representative” voices in the crypto market, Hayes consistently deconstructs the trading implications behind political events from the perspectives of power, liquidity, and price. In this article, he converges the U.S. election, energy prices, and the logic of money printing into a stark question: will money printing continue, and will risk assets keep rising?

The following is the original text:

A “Overheard Conversation”

Scene: U.S. President Donald Trump joins via video link to a plane transporting Venezuelan President Pepe Maduro from Caracas to New York.

Trump: Pepe Maduro, you are one bad hombre. Your country’s oil is mine now. USA! USA! USA!

Pepe Maduro: ¡Coño! You crazy gringo.

I can imagine that right now, a certain segment of the Venezuelan diaspora is partying hard in the “drug finance capital” of the Western Hemisphere—Miami, USA—to the tune of bangers like Elvis Crespo’s “Suavemente.”

As a qualified “armchair” macro gambler, I, of course, must also offer my two cents on this historic, game-changing, authoritarian, militarized… feel free to insert any superlative adjective or pejorative here—”kidnapping/legal arrest” of a sovereign nation’s leader by the United States.

I’m sure countless AI-assisted writers will churn out millions of tokens worth of “word salad,” attempting to characterize, model, and predict the future trajectory of these events. They will judge these actions from moral high ground, telling you how other countries “should respond.”

I will do none of that.

I care about only one question: Will the colonization of Venezuela by the United States make the price of Bitcoin/cryptocurrencies go up or down?

I’m a ski bum and need the simplest possible analytical framework to understand this chaotic universe. Let me reiterate: The sole, overriding goal of any democratically elected politician, at all times, is re-election.

The glory of God, loyalty to country, or any other noble ideal comes second to winning votes. Because if you’re not in power, you can’t change anything. In that sense, this obsession with re-election is “rational.”

For U.S. President Trump, two elections truly matter: the midterms in November and the presidential election in 2028.

Even though he himself is not up for re-election in 2026 and cannot run for a third term in 2028, the loyalty and obedience of his political supporter bloc depend on their own successful re-elections. The recent stream of defections from the now-tattered MAGA tent is precisely because they fear their own future electoral prospects will dim if they continue to act as Trump demands.

So the question becomes: What can Trump do to ensure that those undecided voters—neither fully “Team Blue Democrat” nor fully “Team Red Republican”—walk into the voting booths in 2026 and 2028 and vote “the right way”?

As of now, Team Blue (Democrats) is poised to retake the House. If Trump still wants to be a winner, he needs to get his act together fast; there isn’t much time left for policy U-turns to shift voter allegiances.

Most importantly, I will use some statistics and charts to prove that the only thing the median voter truly cares about is the economy. The cultural issues that Trump’s opponents and supporters obsess over on social media (though the memes are good) pale in comparison to how voters feel—richer or poorer—when they step into the voting booth and pull the curtain.

Stimulating the economy is actually easy, I’m talking about nominal GDP. It’s essentially just one question: How much credit is Trump willing to create? Rising nominal GDP pushes up financial asset prices; the wealthy then “dutifully” hand over their “bribes”—ahem, I mean campaign donations to Team Red, as a thank you. But in the U.S., the rule is one person, one vote. If soaring inflation accompanies rising nominal GDP, the masses are fully capable of sinking an entire political party.

Trump and U.S. Treasury Secretary “Buffalo Bill” Bessent have indicated they will run the economy hot. I believe they will. But the question is: How do they plan to control inflation?

The inflation that truly sinks re-election prospects is food and energy inflation. For Americans, the most crucial metric is gasoline prices because, for most, usable and affordable public transportation is virtually non-existent. In the U.S., if you’re a working-class person without a car, you can barely function—it’s unfortunate, but it’s reality. This is precisely why Trump and his advisors are “colonizing” Venezuela for oil.

When it comes to Venezuelan oil, many immediately point out: the country has the world’s largest proven oil reserves. But who cares how much oil is buried underground? The key is: Can this oil be profitably extracted?

I don’t know the answer, but Trump clearly believes that if he turns the spigot, Venezuelan oil will flow freely to Gulf Coast refineries, and cheap gasoline will placate the masses by suppressing energy inflation. I can’t say if Trump is right, but the WTI and Brent crude markets will be the ultimate “truth serum.”

The question is: When nominal GDP and U.S. dollar credit supply rise, do oil prices go up or down?

If GDP and oil prices rise together, Team Blue Democrats win. If GDP rises but oil prices flatline or fall, Team Red Republicans win.

The beauty of this framework is that oil prices will reflect the reactions of all other oil-producing nations and military powers—especially Saudi Arabia, Russia, and China—to the U.S. “colonization” of Venezuela.

Another advantage: बाज़ारs are reflexive. We all know Trump adjusts policy based on the stock market, U.S. Treasuries, and oil prices. As long as stocks keep rising and oil stays low, he will keep printing, keep expanding, and keep taking action around oil.

As investors, we can react on almost the same timescale as Trump—that’s the best we can hope for. This method reduces the need for us to predict the ultimate outcome of an extremely complex geopolitical system. Read the charts, adjust with the trend, gamblers.

Here are some charts and statistics that clearly show: For Trump to win elections, he must boost nominal GDP and crush oil prices.

Team Red and Team Blue are neck and neck.

Only a small segment of Americans decides which party controls the government.

The economy and inflation are the top two issues for voters. Nothing else matters.

The “10% Rule”: If the national average gasoline price rises 10% or more three months before an election compared to the average for January of the same calendar year, one or more branches of government often change party hands.

Bitcoin Mooning

Because Proof-of-Work (PoW) mining consumes massive amounts of energy, Bitcoin is the purest monetary abstraction. Therefore, energy prices themselves have no direct relationship with Bitcoin’s price—because whether energy prices rise or fall, all miners face the same directional change in costs simultaneously.

The real importance of oil prices lies in whether they force politicians to stop printing money. If oil prices rise too fast and too high due to economic activity expansion (which is itself a derivative of energy), then politicians must find ways to suppress oil prices—such as by “taking oil from other countries” or slowing credit creation—or face the risk of being voted out.

The 10-year U.S. Treasury yield and the MOVE Index, which measures U.S. bond market volatility, will tell us if oil prices have become intolerably high.

Investors face a difficult choice: invest in financial assets or invest in real assets.

When energy costs are low and stable, investing in financial assets like government bonds makes sense. But when energy costs are high and volatile, storing wealth in energy commodities is more prudent.

Therefore, when oil prices reach a certain level, investors will demand higher returns from government bonds, especially the 10-year U.S. Treasury. U.S. politicians cannot stop deficit spending because “free money” is always a winning strategy in elections.

When oil prices rise and the 10-year yield approaches 5%, politicians are forced to change behavior. The reason: as the 10-year yield nears 5%, the massive leverage embedded in this dirty fiat financial system begins to unravel, and bond market volatility (measured by the MOVE Index) spikes dramatically.

The entire fiat system is essentially a highly leveraged carry trade. When volatility rises, investors must sell assets, or they won’t even keep their bespoke Savile Row suits.

A recent example: “Liberation Day” on April 2nd last year and the “Trump TACO” event seven days later on April 9th.

If you recall, Trump threatened tariffs so high they would actually cut global trade and financial flow imbalances—highly deflationary on a macro scale. Markets tanked, and the MOVE Index spiked intraday to a high of 172.

And the very next day after the volatility spike, Trump “folded” (TACO), announcing a “pause” on the tariff measures. The market bottomed and rallied hard.

MOVE Index (white line) vs. Nasdaq 100 Index (yellow line)

It’s pointless to try and use historical data to determine at what level of oil prices and 10-year yields Trump will tighten the Fed’s printing press. We’ll know when it happens. If oil prices and yields start rising sharply, it means—time to get cautious on risk assets.

The base case is: oil prices remain low or even fall, and Trump and “Buffalo Bill” Bessent will print money like crazy, just like in 2020. The reason is that the market will initially believe U.S. control of Venezuelan oil will lead to a massive increase in daily crude production. Whether these optimistic forecasts of a supply surge will materialize after engineers actually bring millions of barrels per day of capacity online is anyone’s guess.

But that doesn’t matter. You just need to remember one thing: Trump will run the printing press faster than Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin “Bedouin Butcher” Netanyahu changes his justifications for “why Iran deserves another military strike.”

If this logic isn’t enough to convince you that now is the time to go long on all risk assets because of aggressive U.S. money printing, then remember—Trump is the most “socialist” U.S. president since Roosevelt.

He printed trillions, and unlike any president before, in 2020 he sent money directly to everyone. You better believe he won’t lose an election because he “didn’t print enough.”

Mamdani and Trump are both New Yorkers, you know—birds of a feather.

Real traders must stop projecting emotions onto words like “socialism, communism, capitalism.” No government operates in the pure form of these “isms”; everyone just bastardizes and cobbles them together for their own political purposes.

Don’t be a sucker. Just buy.

If we take Trump and his advisors at their word, then it’s certain: credit will expand.

Team Red Republican legislators will continue deficit spending; the Treasury under “Buffalo Bill” Bessent will issue bonds to finance it; and the “beta cuck, towel boy” Jerome Powell and his successor at the Fed will print money to buy those bonds.

This “circle jerk” truly went into full gear in 2008. As Lyn Alden says: “Nothing stops this train.”

As the number of dollars keeps expanding, the price of Bitcoin and some cryptocurrencies will go straight to the moon.

Bitcoin’s (digital gold) rise is directly due to money printing. This is clearly visible in my constructed U.S. Dollar Liquidity Conditions Index (Bloomberg ticker: .USDLIQ U Index).

Trading Tactics

Before discussing Maelstrom’s current positions, I want to do a quick review of my trading performance last year.

I say “my performance” because I made all trading decisions myself. Last year, my liquidity steering wheel was overall profitable. My goal was to cover living expenses with trading profits, which I achieved multiple times. While I ended up profitable, I also wasted a fair amount of PnL on a few bad trades.

My single biggest loss came from trading the PUMP token immediately after launch. Also, I must stay away from meme coins—the only meme coin I made money on was TRUMP.

The good side: my most profitable trades came from HYPE, BTC, PENDLE, and ETHFI.

Only 33% of my trades were profitable last year, but my position sizing was correct: the average winning trade was 8.5 times the size of the average losing trade.

This year I will improve by focusing on what I’m truly good at: building medium-term, large positions based on clear macro liquidity logic that can support a “plausible-sounding” altcoin narrative. As for the trash or meme coins I gamble on purely for fun, I will significantly reduce position sizes.

Looking ahead, the core market narrative this year will revolve around privacy. ZEC will be the beta for the privacy sector, and we have already established a very large ZEC long position at an excellent price in Q3 2025.

The Maelstrom team’s current focus is to find at least one true breakout altcoin leader within the privacy narrative that can deliver outsized returns to the portfolio over the coming years.

Maelstrom is entering 2026 with risk exposure almost maxed out. We will continue deploying idle cash from various financing deals into Bitcoin, so our USD stablecoin holdings are very low.

To generate alpha relative to BTC and ETH: I will sell BTC to increase exposure to privacy-related assets; I will sell ETH to increase exposure to DeFi. In both cases, if I choose correctly, these altcoins I hold should outperform the majors as fiat credit continues to expand.

If/when oil prices rise and cause credit creation to slow, I hope to take profits then, stack more sats, and buy some mETH.

What a fulfilling day.

I wrote this article on a rest day from skiing in the backcountry. Time to hit the gym hard now, lift some heavy iron, and make sure I’m still jacked when I “come out of hibernation” in March.

Original Link

यह लेख इंटरनेट से लिया गया है: Elections, Oil Prices, and the Money Printer: Why Bitcoin Only Cares About Trump

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