As the Monad mainnet just launched, a fierce verbal duel erupted on X between BitMEX's founder, Arthur Hayes, and Monad creator, Keone Hon. The debate revolves around Hayes' bearish forecast of a 99% drop in the MON token against a vigorous technical defense by the founding team.
Arthur Hayes didn’t mince words. In a series of scathing tweets, the former BitMEX CEO questioned the economic viability of the project, despite expressing respect for the team’s technical quality. According to him, regardless of the technology, the tokenomics structure dooms MON’s price to a downward trajectory.
Hayes points to a classic structural problem facing new venture capital-backed L1 blockchains: Token absorption by the market. He challenges the team to explain how the chain will absorb the 90% of supply still locked without triggering a price collapse when early investors and the team begin selling. For the veteran trader, MON is currently just a “hot potato,” an asset fun for short-term scalping, but with disastrous supply and demand fundamentals.
He emphasizes the concept of “flows” (financial flows), arguing that monthly inflation from staking rewards, coupled with future unlocks, will create an unsustainable selling pressure that organic demand cannot offset.
Facing this institutional FUD, Keone Hon chose to respond point by point, first correcting the figures put forward by Hayes. He clarifies that annual inflation is set at 2%, a rate much lower than most other Layer 1s, and highlights a key feature: vested tokens are not eligible for staking, which limits immediate dilution.
Substantively, Monad’s founder attempts to shift the debate from speculation to technology. He reminds that Monad is not a simple fork, but an architecture rebuilt from scratch (C++ and Rust) to enable asynchronous execution and pipelined consensus (MonadBFT). Hon’s central argument is that technical performance (1-second finality) will create real demand and usage that will justify the network’s value, far from centralized blockchains with single sequencers.
He also highlights the “fill from the bottom” approach during the Coinbase sale, designed to favor retail investors rather than whales, thus attempting to prove a more equitable distribution than that criticized by Hayes.
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The discussion crystallized around a challenge issued by Arthur Hayes: “Unlock all tokens now and let the market find the real price.” A provocation that highlights the eternal tension between VC funding models (with long lock-up periods) and pure price discovery cherished by traders.
For Hayes, it’s a question of liquidity and flows: as long as the market is artificially constrained by lock-ups, valuation is theoretical. Keone Hon counters that the current model is necessary to build infrastructure capable of competing with traditional finance over the long term, refusing to yield to the short-term vision of pure trading.
This public exchange underscores the market’s current nervousness regarding launches of new high-valuation infrastructure (FDV). While Monad’s technology appears to be unanimously appreciated—even among its detractors—the market’s ability to absorb future token emissions remains the real test. Traders will need to closely monitor on-chain volumes and upcoming unlock dates to validate or invalidate Hayes’ thesis of a massive retracement.
For now, MON is down 40% since Wednesday and 13% on the day. It will need to regain $0.038 to avoid a deeper crash.
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Charles Ledoux is a Bitcoin and blockchain technology specialist. A graduate of the Crypto Academy, he has been a Bitcoin miner for over a year. He has written numerous masterclasses to educate newcomers to the industry and has authored over 2,000 articles on cryptocurrency. Now, he aims to share his passion for crypto through his articles for InvestX.
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