Adam Back’s Brutal Altcoin Ultimatum: ’Dump Your Bags for Bitcoin Treasuries Now!’

Blockchain pioneer Adam Back just dropped a grenade in the altcoin markets—and traders are scrambling for cover. The Hashcash inventor's message cuts through the noise: abandon speculative altcoins or risk getting wrecked in Bitcoin's dominance surge.

Why the bloodbath warning? Back sees institutional FOMO accelerating as corporate treasuries pile into BTC. Meanwhile, altcoins keep hemorrhaging against the king crypto—no mercy for the 'diversification' crowd.

One cynical truth remains: Wall Street still can't tell the difference between a shitcoin and a security, but they'll happily trade both. The coming months will separate the Bitcoin maxis from the bagholders.

Bitcoin’s dominance tops new cycle high of 66%

This is the second clarion call Back has made to altcoin investors. Last week, he cautioned that Cardano’s MOVE to diversify $100M ADA reserves into BTC was a warning shot to those with heavy investments in the altcoin space. 

His argument was solid though. For example – On a year-to-date (YTD) basis, an aggressive solana [SOL] treasury firm DeFi Development Corporation’s stock, DFDV, soared by 2,800%.

It outperformed all other top crypto assets and treasury firms in H1 2025. 

Over the same period, Metaplanet (MTPLF) offered 452% in investor returns. The first top altcoin on the post with some meaningful returns was Hyperliquid with 34%.  

Strategy (MSTR) posted 23% gains on a YTD basis, while BTC was up 8% over the same period. On the other hand, Solana [SOL] and ethereum [ETH] were down 23% and 32%, respectively. 

Source: Crypto assets vs crypto treasury performance, TradingView

On this limited timescale alone, only HYPE showed remarkable gains. However, it still underperformed DFDV and Metaplanet, with three to four figure returns. 

Adam’s position was further cemented after BTC topped a new cycle high of 66% over the weekend. During the Sunday sell-off, BTC’s dominance jumped to 65.95%, up 6% from its May low of 61%. 

Put differently, Bitcoin’s market strengthened relative to altcoins from mid-May, leading to a new wave of weakening across most altcoins. 

Source: bitcoin dominance (TradingView)

Meanwhile, the Altcoin Season Index’s reading dropped to 12, marking a two year low, noted market analyst Michael van de Poppe.

This further underscored the fact that the altcoin market has underperformed BTC, despite select outliers like HYPE. 

Ergo, crypto treasuries have offered outsized returns, outperforming even underlying assets like BTC and SOL. So, they may be worth tracking alongside resilient outliers like HYPE.