BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes is ramping up his DeFi bet. The analyst on Friday acquired about 1.9 million Lido DAO (LDO) tokens for over $1 million, according to data tracked by Lookonchain.

Arthur Hayes(@CryptoHayes) just bought 1.855M $LDO($1.03M).https://t.co/loeYKUb9rNhttps://t.co/NISCOnoO3T pic.twitter.com/773lJ85IgO

— Lookonchain (@lookonchain) December 26, 2025

LDO is the governance token for Lido DAO, the organization behind Lido Finance, one of the largest liquid staking protocols in crypto. The token is trading at around $0.56 at the time of reporting, up nearly 2% in the last 24 hours, per CoinGecko.

Hayes also increased its Pendle exposure, acquiring $973,000 worth of PENDLE tokens.

The new purchases come after Hayes sold part of his Ethereum stash and scooped up more DeFi tokens, including PENDLE, Ethena (ENA), and Ether.fi (ETHFI), for $609,000 earlier this week.

In a recent statement, he said that high-quality DeFi tokens could be the main beneficiaries of improved liquidity conditions.