If Bessent Repeats Yellen’s 2023 Money Printing Playbook, BTC Math Points to $224K

Arthur Hayes argues Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is working the identical money-printing playbook former Secretary Janet Yellen utilized in 2023. If the sample holds, the maths factors to a six-figure Bitcoin goal.

Bessent’s Treasury has already doubled long-term bond buyback operations this month. Hayes says the coverage mirrors the liquidity mechanics that fueled Bitcoin’s 2023-2024 rally below Yellen.

Why Hayes Sees a Bessent-Yellen Repeat

Hayes, the BitMEX co-founder and Maelstrom chief funding officer, made an analogous case in a recent Hayes interview. He argues Bessent faces the identical downside Yellen did in 2023. Both face a authorities that retains spending. Historically, that has pressured a Treasury Secretary to defend the 10-year yield beneath 5%.

Yellen’s fix was shifting issuance towards short-term payments. The transfer drained the Fed’s reverse repo facility from $2.5 trillion to about $100 billion. That drawdown ran from mid-2023 to January 2025, when Bessent took over. That money flowed into financial institution reserves and, Hayes argues, into Bitcoin’s 2023-2024 rally.

Bessent’s model of the identical commerce is already underway. The Treasury doubled long-term bond buybacks from $2 billion to $4 billion per operation this month. Officials are additionally weighing whether or not to faucet the roughly $950 billion Treasury General Account (TGA) to fund even bigger purchases.

The transfer briefly pushed Bitcoin to $80,000 earlier than it slipped again close to $78,800. That mirrors how rapidly the bond market clawed again August’s earlier buyback rally.

The Bitcoin Math Behind the $224,000 Target

Applying Hayes’ 2023 comparability actually produces a selected goal. Bitcoin traded near $26,000 in mid-2023, when Yellen’s bill-heavy issuance started draining the reverse repo facility. It peaked close to $73,750 in March 2024, earlier than the halving and spot ETF approvals added their very own momentum. That’s a 2.84x transfer.

Applying the identical a number of to Bitcoin’s present value of roughly $78,800 produces a goal close to $224,000. That determine is an easy calculation based mostly on Hayes’ framework, not a quantity Hayes acknowledged himself.

But, the quantity does carry some caveats. The 2023-2024 rally wasn’t pushed by reverse repo drainage alone. Spot Bitcoin ETF approval in January 2024 and April 2024’s halving each landed in the identical window. Each moved value independently of Treasury issuance mechanics. However, implicit cash printing has all the time been an enormous catalyst for Bitcoin development

Citadel Securities has additionally pushed again on Bessent’s buyback technique. The agency warns the method resembles monetary repression that might weaken the greenback and stoke inflation.

Whether Bitcoin will get anyplace close to that math relies on one factor.

Can Bessent’s buybacks maintain up higher than August’s first try did? Or will they fade the best way the bond market rally already has twice this month?

The publish If Bessent Repeats Yellen’s 2023 Money Printing Playbook, BTC Math Points to $224K appeared first on BeInCrypto.