Bitcoin 2026 has published a 400-name speaker roster for its upcoming megaconference this month. But despite a history of promoting the industry’s largest annual gathering as exclusively about bitcoin (BTC), many of these speakers have promoted a dubious variety of digital assets.
Protos reviewed the list and found dozens of speakers with documented promotions of non-BTC digital assets, many of which have, unsurprisingly, declined in value disastrously.
Last year, Protos documented a similar pattern at Bitcoin 2025 where attendees learned not only about BTC but also QI, ZEUS, YU, SUI, CORE, FXS, QBTC, TRX, BTT, SUN, JST, USDJ, MAG7, MEME, DEFI, USSI, WBTC, HUSD, USDD, IQ, and others.
This year, altcoin promoters will migrate from expo floor booths to speaking stages where they’ll probably spend most of their time talking about BTC.
Below are some details of the aforementioned altcoin promotions. Note that this list excludes stocks of so-called digital asset treasury companies, including their BTC-only variants, which have also mostly declined in value.
For example, the stock price of Bitcoin 2026 speaker Adam Back’s H100 Group is down 69% over the past 12 months. Over the same time period, Jack Mallers’ Twenty One Capital is down 31%, David Bailey’s Nakamoto is down 85%, Simon Gerovich’s Metaplanet is down 10%, and Michael Saylor and Phong Le’s Strategy is down 55%.
Eric Trump among Bitcoin 2026 altcoin shills
Donald Trump’s son Eric, who has repeatedly urged his X followers to buy ether (ETH), will be speaking on the Bitcoin 2026 main stage this month. Trump also promotes World Liberty Financial’s WLFI token, its USD1 stablecoin, and his father’s Solana-based TRUMP memecoin.
WLFI is down 75% from its high last year, and TRUMP is down 96%.
Paolo Ardoino, Tether’s chief executive, told Fortune that his flagship stablecoin USDT represents “the last stronghold for US dollar hegemony out there.”
He’s promoted XAUT, MXNT, XAUT, and his company’s new USAT stablecoin. None of those tokens use Bitcoin as their primary blockchain.
Last year, Arthur Hayes predicted ETH would reach “$10,000 to $20,000 before the end of the cycle,” which certainly never happened. He’s also repeatedly endorsed Ethena’s ENA token, including a call for it to reach $10.
In reality, ENA’s all-time high was $1.52, and it’s trading 93% lower today.
Read more: Bitcoin treasury Nakamoto down 98% — still pays David Bailey lavishly
Also on the list are:
- Aaron and Austin Arnold who co-run the crypto podcast Altcoin Daily
- SethForPrivacy, Cake Wallet’s COO, who has written extensively about XMR
- Milan de Reede of NanoGPT who wrote that NANO is “a form of money that cannot be debased” and promoted a 5% discount for NANO payments
- Fred Thiel of Marathon Digital who’s company held millions of KAS tokens on its balance sheet at one point
- Sam Kazemian, the founder of Frax and its FXS token
- Bruce Fenton, co-founder of Ravencoin
- Afroman, who launched his own Pump.fun memecoin
Exchange and fund executives will also take the stage
Bitcoin 2026 speaker Paul Grewal, Coinbase’s chief legal officer, proudly broadcasted that his company spent “millions of dollars” defending Solana, claiming that he woke up “every day” in January 2025 to defend Solana “because we believe in SOL.”
Matt Hougan, Bitwise’s chief investment officer and scheduled Bitcoin 2026 speaker, told CoinDesk, “I own a lot of ETH, and I’m very bullish on where it’s going.”
He also called SOL “one of the best setups” he had seen in eight years.
Another Bitcoin 2026 speaker, Tim Draper, is a prolific altcoin investor, including XTZ, ANT, among many others. He’s told investors from a Wall Street stage that he owns those tokens plus BCH and XRP.
Also on stage this year will be Amy Oldenburg of Morgan Stanley, who said in April 2026 that the bank is definitely “not going to stop at just bitcoin.”
Meanwhile, Matthew Sigel filed for a Solana ETF at VanEck.
Matt Luongo of Thesis scored his spot at the conference after using over $7 million in KEEP tokens to assist Ethereum-based, Bitcoin-branded TBTC, and Eric Balchunas of Bloomberg declared the odds of SEC Solana ETF approval at “100%.”
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Source: https://protos.com/bitcoin-2026-speaker-list-packed-with-altcoin-promoters/