Samson Mow, a well-known Bitcoin entrepreneur and founder/CEO of JAN3, has thrown a bucket of cold water on Ethereum’s relative-strength burst versus Bitcoin, arguing the ETHBTC move is being engineered by BTC-rich Ethereum insiders rotating capital to manufacture an upside narrative around “treasury” adoption—and then unwinding it back into BTC. “Let me explain what’s happening with ETHBTC,” he wrote on X, setting up a critique of both flows and psychology.
Bitcoin Maxis Laugh At ETH Pump-And-Dump
He alleges a familiar rotation loop is in play: “Most ETH holders have a lot of BTC (ICO/insiders) and they are rotating that BTC into ETH to pump it on new narratives (Ethereum Treasury co’s).” Once price is where they want it, he continues, “Once they’ve gotten it high enough, they’ll dump their ETH, creating new generational bagholders, and then rotate the gains back into BTC.” The sting in the tail—“No one wants ETH in the long run. Plan accordingly.”—has ricocheted across crypto circles because it turns today’s bullish ETH tape into a distribution thesis.
Price action provides the canvas for that claim. Ether is trading in the low-$4,200s intraday, having tagged ~$4,337 earlier, while the ETHBTC cross hovers around the mid-0.03s. In dollar terms, the immediate battleground is whether ETH can hold above $4,000–$4,100 and press through the $4,300–$4,430 supply pocket; in the cross, many technicians still mark ~0.04 as the first meaningful resistance that would signal durable ETH leadership if accepted on a weekly basis. With ETH’s all-time high at ~$4,878 from 2021, the market is close enough to invite the classic seller’s ambush that has capped prior runs.
The psychology is precisely where Mow plants his flag. “It will be challenging for ETH to break ATHs because the closer you reach that psychological level, the stronger the drive to sell. It’s the Bagholder’s Dilemma (like the Prisoner’s Dilemma except with Sell/HODL),” he wrote in a follow-on post, arguing that proximity to landmarks like the prior high amplifies game-theory-driven profit-taking.
He also waves off chart-based worries among Bitcoiners: “Bitcoiners shouldn’t be worried about ETHBTC breaking the downward trendline. Ethereum has always been a vehicle for those people to get more Bitcoin. It was true for the ICO and it’s true now.” Read in sequence with his rotation thesis, the message is that even a trendline breach on the ratio does not negate the BTC→ETH→BTC loop he believes is being run.
Part of the backdrop is the fresh narrative around “ETH treasuries.” Vitalik Buterin’s stance gives that theme a conditional tailwind. “ETH just being an asset that companies can have as part of their treasury is good and valuable… giving people more options is good,” he said—but he coupled that with an explicit caution: “If you woke me up 3 years from now and told me that treasuries led to the downfall of ETH… my guess would be that they turned into an overleveraged game.” Notably, Buterin criticized BTC treasury companies in previous comments, but is fine with ETH equivalents.
Speculative heat also intensified after ConsenSys founder Joe Lubin fanned “flippening” chatter in broadcast appearance on CNBC, where he pushed the idea that treasury strategies could change ETH’s standing—“I think we may see astonishing things next year”—suggesting Ethereum could eclipse Bitcoin in market value within about a year.
That mix drew a sharp retort from Mow: “Apparently they think the flippening is going to happen again. 😂” One X commenter captured the contrarian read with gallows humor: “You cannot make up a better ETH top signal than this. This is unobtainium in terms of top signals. Top signal dark matter.”
At press time, Bitcoin traded at $119,486.
Featured image created with DALL.E, chart from TradingView.com
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