Arthur Hayes Biography
Arthur Hayes is an American entrepreneur who co-founded and formerly served as CEO of the cryptocurrency exchange BitMEX. He graduated from the Wharton School of Business in 2008.
Hayes pleaded guilty to violating the United States Bank Secrecy Act in 2022 and received a six-month home detention term, two years of probation, and a $10 million fine.
Arthur Hayes Age
Arthur is 39 years old as of 2024. He was born in 1985 in Detroit, Michigan, United States.
Arthur Hayes Parents
Hayes was born to middle-class parents who were employed at General Motors in Detroit, Michigan. After looking for a school where they believed he would flourish both academically and athletically, his family moved to Buffalo. “Nichols gave him the setting, the stimulation, and at one point, the scholarship to thrive,” according to a remark from his mother, Barbara Hayes.
Bitcoin
Together with Ben Delo and Samuel Reed, he co-founded the cryptocurrency exchange BitMEX in 2014 when he was 28 years old. It grew to become one of the biggest exchanges for virtual currency derivatives worldwide. Its average daily trading volume in 2021 exceeded $2 billion.
The highest gift ever given by a graduate of the Jackie Robinson Foundation’s (JRF) collegiate scholars program, Hayes donated $2.24 million to the JRF Scholars program in March 2019. He declared in April 2020 that the operator of BitMex was contributing $2.5 million to four groups fighting the coronavirus outbreak. According to reports, Hayes is the world’s youngest African American cryptocurrency billionaire.
Career
In 2008, Hayes relocated to Hong Kong to begin working in investment banking. He traded equity futures for Deutsche Bank from 2008 to 2011 and then Citigroup for two years. For both companies, he served as the lead ETF market maker. Hayes departed Deutsche Bank in 2011 and started working for Citibank in Hong Kong as a Delta One trader. He lost his job in 2013.
The U.S. Department of Justice indicted Hayes and his associates in October 2020. In the United States v. Hayes et al. case, the DOJ charged that Hayes and his partners had “thousands of US based consumers” and failed to register the business in the US. According to the Bank Secrecy Act, the CFTC said that the illicit activities made money laundering possible. The first cryptocurrency exchange to face charges under the Bank Secrecy Act was BitMEX. Transactions above $10,000 are required by law to be recorded. It is referred to as Know Your Customer (KYC) data. In October of 2020, Hayes left BitMex. Hayes was succeeded as BitMEX’s CEO by Alexander Hoptner.
Hayes turned himself in to US authorities in Hawaii in April 2021 and was freed on bond. A February 9, 2021, article in Financial Insight Zambia Limited stated that Hayes’ crime, in their judgment, was to deny the CFTC access to Bitmex’s consumers’ account information.
BitMex accounts were created by US residents using Virtual Private Networks (VPNs). It was forbidden for its nationals to use the BitMEX platform since it was not registered in either the United States or the Canadian province of Quebec. VPN networks allowed citizens to conceal their locations. On August 10, 2021, a Wall Street Journal article announced that BitMEX and the CFTC had achieved a settlement. Without acknowledging or disputing the accusations, BitMEX consented to pay a $100 million fine to fix the problem.
Hayes, co-founders Samuel Reed and Benjamin Delo, and Gregory Dwyer entered a guilty plea on February 24, 2022, for “willfully failing to establish, implement, and maintain an anti-money laundering (“AML”) program at BitMEX.”
The Probation Department suggested a two-year probationary period without jail time for Hayes since he was a first-time offender with a long history of philanthropic activity. Hayes consented to pay a $10 million fine, which represented his financial benefit from the offense, and was sentenced to six months of home confinement with two years of probation.
In the wake of Donald Trump’s inauguration as US president, Arthur Hayes has forecast that the cryptocurrency market may undergo a major decline. According to Hayes, the market may be disappointed if the strong hopes for pro-crypto policies under a Trump administration are not fulfilled. Trump has already promised that when he returns to the White House, he will implement regulations that are advantageous to cryptocurrency.
According to Hayes, the short amount of time before the midterm elections limits the capacity to make significant policy changes, raising the possibility of a financial meltdown.
Because of the discrepancy between investor expectations and the viability of quick policy implementations, he predicts a “harrowing dump” in the cryptocurrency market around the time of the inauguration. The idea of a Bitcoin Strategic Reserve has been debated in relation to Trump’s ideas, although Hayes voiced doubts about its viability. He expresses skepticism regarding the implementation of such a reserve and speculates that any newly minted dollars will probably be utilized for voter-friendly initiatives instead of buying Bitcoin.
Arthur Hayes Net Worth
He has an estimated net worth of $1 billion.
