Arthur Hayes, co-founder and former CEO of the crypto exchange BitMEX and currently the chief investment officer at his family office, Maelstrom, has joined Covalent, a blockchain data infrastructure startup, as its strategic advisor.

Hayes seeks to help Covalent become the leading data infrastructure startup, particularly within the Ethereum ecosystem, and to serve the artificial intelligence (AI) industry, Covalent said Tuesday.

"Covalent's Ethereum Wayback Machine (EWM) ensures persistent, long-term access to historical blockchain data, which will power the next generation of use cases — including for AI models in particular," Hayes told The Block.

When asked what motivated him to join Covalent as its advisor, Hayes said that Covalent's CQT token has been "undervalued relative to …