Former BitMEX CEO Arthur Hayes hinted he may rebalance his investments away from bitcoin (BTC) and in favor of Ethereum’s native ETH token, arguing “a massive wall of money” will enter ETH once it is seen as an ESG-friendly, yield-bearing asset to push its price north of USD 10,000.

Writing in a new essay titled Five Ducking Digits, Hayes said that he used to have a portfolio of “50% bitcoin and 50% ether.”

However, given his view that ETH is now relatively cheap compared to the rest of crypto, he said that a more appropriate target is “25% bitcoin and 75% ether.”

Hayes said this is his preferred allocation, despite admitting that “the macro is not there,” and that both stocks and the price of ETH could fall by 30% to 50% in a coming US recession.

For bitcoin to withstand such a crash, the narrative must change from it being just a risk asset to being seen as a store of value and an inflation hedge, he said, noting that it still is “the hardest form of money ever created.”

Ether, on the other hand, “is not money,” Hayes said, calling it instead the “a commodity that powers the world’s largest decentralized computer.”

“As global real rates are deeply negative, I want to own an asset that has a positive yield in its own currency — and at the moment, that is ETH,” Hayes said, adding that “Bitcoin yields nothing.”

“Therefore, from a pure interest rate differential perspective, I should own more ETH than Bitcoin. This will change when the price of ETH sufficiently rises to incorporate future ETH cash flows,” he said before arriving at his ETH price prediction for 2022:

“When the dust settles at year-end, I believe ETH will be trading north of USD 10,000.”

The investor also explained that, in his view, ETH is “perhaps the least