US policymakers could push cryptocurrency prices higher by printing money to fund artificial intelligence development and service government debt, according to Arthur Hayes, chief investment officer at the Maelstrom fund.

Hayes made the remarks during a fireside chat at CONNECT by Cointelegraph: Seoul Edition, held on Tuesday as part of Korea Blockchain Week, the annual industry conference in Seoul. He argued that AI companies require trillions of dollars to finance data centers even as the prices of their services fall, leaving Washington with few alternatives.

“They’ve not really given themselves a lot of options other than print money and make it less bad,” he said.

Hayes also pointed to a possible shift in China away from what he called an “austerity lite” policy toward substantial monetary stimulus — a move he said could revive demand for scarce assets. In prior coverage, he argued that an AI credit bubble could fuel a Bitcoin “crack-up boom” past $1 million.

In Europe, Hayes said he is tracking signs of financial stress in France, including credit-default swaps tied to BNP Paribas and spreads on French government bonds.

“I think the money printing will essentially happen at some point, but that’s sort of a slow motion train wreck happening underneath the surface,” he said.

Those indicators — Chinese policy signals, French bond spreads and bank credit-default swaps — form the checklist Hayes is monitoring as he weighs the liquidity backdrop he describes for crypto.

Cointelegraph’s CONNECT event in Seoul featured panels on topics ranging from traditional finance’s shift onchain to stablecoins and corporate crypto treasuries.

Wall Street’s move onchain leaves room for middlemen

Banks and asset managers bring an existing customer base to blockchain markets, them an advantage over firms that must attract investors from scratch, according to Catrina Wang, general partner at Portal Ventures. Their entry is part of a broader effort by traditional financial institutions to move funds, bonds and settlement onto public blockchains.

“Whoever owns the customer relationship owns the economics,” Wang said, drawing on tech analyst Ben Thompson’s aggregation theory, which holds that firms controlling demand and the customer relationship capture the most value online.

Serving existing clients is only part of the opportunity for financial firms. Todd McDonald, co-founder of R3, said public blockchains also provide access to customers outside institutions’ own networks. R3 built its business around private financial networks using its Corda platform before announcing a collaboration in May 2025 to connect institutions and their assets to Solana’s public chain.

“You need to really go to where the customers are and where they will be in the future,” McDonald said.

Once investors reach those markets, they still have to decide where to put their money and how much risk to take. Justin Kugel, executive vice president of growth at World Liberty Financial, said those decisions are creating work for intermediaries, despite crypto’s original promise of eliminating middlemen.

“Maybe there’s a reason why there are so many middlemen in TradFi,” Kugel said.

Many users, he added, do not want to manage their assets themselves or assess every investment, and instead prefer the sense of protection offered by centralized exchanges.

Stablecoins move money, but who supplies the yield?

Franklin Templeton, the global asset manager, has no plans to issue its own stablecoin, and instead wants its tokenized money market funds to provide investment income alongside payment tokens, according to Chetan Karkhanis, senior vice president of digital asset client engagement at the firm. Stablecoins — blockchain tokens pegged to fiat currencies such as the US dollar — are built primarily for payments and price stability rather than investment income, making the two products complements in the firm’s view.

“Let us be the yield layer,” Karkhanis said.

The firm’s fund subscriptions and redemptions generally still require fiat currency, Karkhanis said. Some conversions involving stablecoins are already available, but he said those options need to become more widely available across the industry. In June, Franklin Templeton announced a partnership with MoonPay that allows eligible institutional investors to move between supported stablecoins and its tokenized money market funds through onchain transactions. The SEC has also allowed Franklin Templeton funds to invest in an onchain money fund.

Haonan Li, co-founder and CEO of stablecoin foreign-exchange platform Codex, said demand for stablecoin payments is growing along trade routes connecting Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa with Asia, where buyers send money to pay for manufactured goods moving in the opposite direction.

“The manufactured goods flow from east to west and funds flow from west to east,” Li said.

Crypto treasuries face a liquidity test

Corporate crypto treasuries — companies holding Bitcoin or Ether on their balance sheets — have become a visible part of the market, and panelists stressed the discipline the approach requires. Companies considering crypto treasury strategies need cash they can commit over a longer period without disrupting day-to-day operations, said Ilya Podoynitsyn, co-founder and CEO of FinHarbor, a partner of CONNECT.

“If you don’t have that excess liquidity for doing that, you need to think very carefully before entering the market,” Podoynitsyn said.

He warned against copying another company’s strategy without accounting for differences in balance sheets, liquidity requirements and risk tolerance. Even experienced finance teams, he said, may lack expertise in onchain liquidity and transaction approvals.

The panel also weighed whether a listed treasury company with spare cash should buy more crypto or repurchase shares trading below net asset value. Michael Camarda, chief development officer at Ethereum treasury company SharpLink, said buying back shares and purchasing additional Ether are two ways to increase ETH holdings per share. Using cash to repurchase shares spreads existing Ether holdings across fewer shares, while buying more Ether increases the company’s holdings.

SharpLink’s institutional investors focus on ETH holdings per share, making buybacks better suited to them, while retail investors are drawn to announcements of large Ether purchases, Camarda said.

“They love headlines. They love numbers,” Camarda said of retail investors.

The company has bought both Ether and its own shares to appeal to the two groups of investors, he said. Related coverage: Bitcoin treasury firms can outperform BTC, but is the risk worth taking?