BlockBeats News, August 11th, Arthur Hayes stated in an article that the Japanese Yen is becoming a core variable in his current macro trading framework. He believes that over the past decade, the continuous depreciation of the Yen has made it an important funding currency for global corporations and speculators, but this phase is coming to an end. Hayes listed three ways to drive the Yen's appreciation: a significant interest rate hike by the Bank of Japan, Japanese institutions selling overseas assets and repatriating funds, and the most likely scenario he sees— the Japanese Ministry of Finance using the Fed's FIMA repo tool to pledge U.S. Treasury bonds held by Japan to obtain dollars, then selling the dollars to buy Yen.

Hayes believes that the first two scenarios face significant obstacles. A rapid interest rate hike by the Bank of Japan could push up Japanese government bond yields, expand the central bank's balance sheet losses, and force Yen carry trade unwinding, thereby impacting the global stock and bond markets. If institutions like GPIF sell U.S. stocks and bonds on a large scale and repatriate funds to Japan, it could also put pressure on the U.S. financial markets. Therefore, he is more favorable towards the third scenario of intervening in the exchange rate through the FIMA tool.

According to Hayes' proposal, the Japanese Ministry of Finance could pledge U.S. Treasury bonds to the Fed, obtain dollar loans through FIMA, sell the dollars to buy Yen, and reinvest the Yen into Japanese government bonds and stocks. He believes that this mechanism implies that the Fed would need to create dollar liquidity, and its balance sheet would expand with the FIMA repo scale. The current FIMA's outstanding loan limit to a single counterparty is $60 billion. Hayes assesses that if the relevant restrictions are lifted and extended to large Japanese institutions like GPIF, greater dollar liquidity could be unleashed.

Therefore, Hayes continues to be bullish on Bitcoin, physical gold, and gold mining companies, stating that if the Fed's balance sheet undergoes a large-scale expansion again, "the more they print, the higher Bitcoin rises." In the cryptocurrency space, he believes ETH presents a potential opportunity among large assets, citing reasons such as its failure to break its all-time high in 2025 and Ethereum's potential to become a safety layer for RWAs; he also has a positive outlook on ENA, stating that if increased dollar liquidity drives BTC's rise, the recovery of the Bitcoin basis spread may reattract funds to USDe, and he mentions that ENA may have the potential to surge fivefold in the coming months. However, Hayes mentioned that he has not significantly reduced his dollar position yet and is still waiting to see if there will be actual adjustments in the FIMA rules.