Is the US Federal Reserve quietly restarting the printing press? Its new program, called “Reserve Management Purchases (RMP)”, triggers concern among some analysts. Among them, Arthur Hayes, former CEO of BitMEX, sees disguised money creation, masked under technical terms. In a sharp essay published on Substack, he warns of the consequences of this policy: hidden inflation, wealth transfer, and a potential rise in rare assets like Bitcoin.
On December 10, following the FOMC meeting, the US Federal Reserve announced a 25 basis point reduction in its key rates, accompanied by the launch of a new program: Reserve Management Purchases.
This system, according to Fed Chairman Jerome Powell, aims to “maintain an adequate level of bank reserves” and supposedly has “no connection with the orientation of monetary policy”.
However, the operation involves the Fed directly purchasing short-term Treasury bills, with an initial amount of $40 billion from the first month. Officially, these purchases aim to relieve tensions in money markets, especially around the year-end fiscal deadlines.
In his essay “RIP Money Printing” published on Substack, Arthur Hayes openly challenges this presentation. He believes that “the RMP is a barely disguised way for the Fed to cash government checks”. Behind the apparent technicality of the operation, the former BitMEX CEO sees an inflationary maneuver that amounts to indirectly financing government spending.
The operational mechanism of the RMP presents, according to Hayes, all the characteristics of a disguised money creation program, particularly through the following effects :
According to this reading, the Fed no longer just sets rates: it returns to a form of financial interventionism with lasting consequences, without openly admitting it.
Beyond the operational mechanism, Hayes focuses on the potential beneficiaries of this monetary liquidity resurgence. “I love quantitative easing because it amounts to money creation, and fortunately, I hold financial assets like gold, shares of gold/silver mining companies and bitcoin, which appreciate faster than fiat money depreciates”, he writes plainly.
For him, the main effect of the RMP is to favor the revaluation of rare assets, capable of preserving or even strengthening their value during monetary expansion. In this view, bitcoin positions itself as a natural refuge against the depreciation of the dollar, just like physical gold or stocks linked to mining extraction.
But Hayes does not stop at listing the potential winners. He also denounces the systemic injustice caused by this type of policy: “unfortunately, in today’s world, for the majority of humanity, money creation destroys their dignity as productive human beings”.
According to him, those who do not hold assets are the first victims of money creation. Their purchasing power erodes, their wages stagnate against inflation, and the link between economic effort and produced wealth is broken. This structural imbalance fuels a wealth transfer to capital holders, exacerbating economic divides.
In this uncertain context, where Trump announces a historic shift for the Fed, Arthur Hayes’s interpretation takes on particular significance. If money creation intensifies in other forms, crypto investors might see it as a strong signal: that of a new bullish cycle fueled by distrust of traditional monetary policies.
