Amid the rapidly evolving crypto landscape, Arthur Hayes, Chief Investment Officer at Maelstrom, shared his top altcoin picks for 2025 in a conversation with Co-Host of Altcoin Daily, Austin Arnold.

Discussing the future of decentralized finance, Hayes delved into the potential of the synthetic stablecoin Ethena and the dynamics of meme coins in the market.

Arthur Hayes expressed strong confidence in Ethena, stating, "I own obviously Ethena. The price has gotten beaten on a lot. It went up to what, $1.50, now it's about $0.35, 40 cents, whatever that is." He believes that as interest rates are repressed to fund massive credit issuance, assets like Ethena will become more attractive.

Ethena is a competitor to asset-backed stablecoins like Tether and Circle's USDC. Rather than being backed by dollars held in a bank, or U.S. treasuries, the Ethena synthetic dollar, USDe, is backed by hedged positions on crypto asset deposits. Hayes was an early backer of the project.

"If we're going into this situation where the rate of interest given to savers has to be repressed to fund the massive amount of credit issued to right-size the relevant economic blocks, then you're not going to earn the real rate of return of all the industrial production that's being built," Hayes explained.

Highlighting the advantages of Ethena in the coming economic climate, Hayes added, "Ethena is going to look a lot better. I think there's going to be more inflows in TVL and circulation, which will pump up the price." He also commended the Ethena team for "doing an excellent job of getting USDe used as primary source of collateral in a lot of centralized and decentralized exchanges."

When asked about meme coins, Arthur Hayes admitted to dabbling in them for fun. "It's a trade, it's fun, I f— around with these meme coins," he remarked. "As we get richer in Bitcoin, ETH, and Solana terms, we spend our money on cultural artifacts and funny jokes. If you can predict which one of those slaps, then you're going to do well."