Altcoin season on the brink? Experts flag Cardano’s $100M BTC treasury shift

• Market experts believe there will be more challenges for the altcoin sector if Cardano and other protocols opt for a BTC treasury
• HYPE, TAO, and PEPE outperformed Bitcoin in the last 90 days

Traders waiting for a broader and stronger altcoin season rally could be in for a massive disappointment. 

According to Bitwise’s Head of Alpha Strategies, Jeff Park, and Blockstream founder, Adam Back, the sector could be affected by protocols jumping on the Bitcoin [BTC] treasury craze. In an X post, Park stated, 

“Subpar altcoins ditching their own assets to build a BTC treasury was not on my 2025 bingo card. World is healing.”

In stating so, he was reacting to Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson’s proposal to swap $100M ADA to Bitcoin as part of treasury diversification. 

Altcoins vs Bitcoin

For Blockstream’s Adam Back, Cardano’s move would strengthen BTC and drive the altcoin market crash. 

“Not only ALT-SZN cancelled, ALT-capitulation is here, the insider self-dumping to buy #bitcoin to have a slush fund for themselves.”

On average, the larger altcoin market has dropped by 50% against BTC since last November’s brief altcoin season.

For example – The attached chart, tracking crypto total market excluding top 10 assets (others) against BTC or alts/BTC ratio, has been in decline since 2021. 

Source: Alts/BTC ratio, TradingView 

Despite the remarkable rally in late 2023 and late 2024, the sector found it challenging to outperform Bitcoin. 

After the relief altcoin pump late 2024, Bitcoin’s dominance only climbed higher –  A sign that most investors preferred BTC over altcoins. 

Source: Bitcoin dominance

Notably, BTC’s dominance dropped to 55%, but later surged to 65%. Put differently, more than half of the market was focused on Bitcoin, than the rest of the crypto market. 

Worth pointing out, however, that some select altcoins did see remarkable performances, despite elevated BTC dominance. In fact, the altcoin season index has remained below 30 since Q1, underscoring BTC’s season in the first half of 2025. 

Also, about 10 assets surpassed BTC in investor returns in the past 90 days of trading. At the top of the list is Hyperliquid [HYPE], up +200% against BTC’s 22%. Aave [AAVE], Monero [XMR], Bittensor [TAO], and Pepe [PEPE], among others, also registered relative strength against BTC. 

Source: Blockchain Centre 

To put it simply, Bitcoin has strengthened against most altcoins, with the same evidenced by the elevated BTC dominance. However, there are some outliers that have outperformed BTC about 2-10x in the last 90 days.

So, despite the sluggish altcoin sector, there may be some gems that could outpace BTC in returns.