Bitcoin may be down sharply this year, but one of the cryptocurrency’s most influential figures sees a major buying opportunity ahead.
In an exclusive interview with CNBC at the iConnections Conference in Miami Beach, Blockstream co-founder and CEO Adam Back revealed that BSTR — the Bitcoin Standard Treasury Company — plans to soon climb the leaderboard of global companies buying Bitcoin.
In the interview, Back said his company would soon be a "top three" Bitcoin treasury company globally, inferring he aims to quickly top Jack Mallers' Twenty One Capital, which holds 43,000 BTC.
In a comment to BitcoinTreasuries.net, Back stated that his company plans to acquire up to 21,000 additional Bitcoin: "it's safe to say up to 21k BTC at the current BTC price (subject to regulator approval and depending on spac redemptions)."
The comments come as Bitcoin touched its lowest level in more than three weeks, sitting roughly 25 percent lower since the start of the year and more than 40 percent below its peak from last fall’s rally. Market observers have pointed to geopolitical tensions and tariff concerns as drivers of the broader sell-off, but Back urged a longer-term perspective.
“Markets generally have been off based on geopolitical uncertainty and news flow about tariffs and things like that,” Back explained. “Bitcoin has followed that. In the short term Bitcoin follows along. In the long term it’s decorrelated basically.”
Back’s own company is positioning itself to capitalize on the dip. BSTR, Blockstream’s dedicated Bitcoin treasury vehicle, is advancing toward SPAC approval, which the executive estimated could arrive around April. A lower Bitcoin price at launch would actually benefit the company, he said, because it would allow BSTR to enter the public markets with a reduced reference price and deploy capital to purchase significantly more Bitcoin.
“If it holds at this level, that’s actually to our advantage because we go out with a lower reference price and are able to buy more Bitcoin,” Back noted. The strategy is designed to propel BSTR rapidly up the rankings, targeting a position as the third-largest corporate Bitcoin holder globally by holdings.
Back argued these entities are overwhelmingly supportive of Bitcoin’s price. Following the model pioneered by MicroStrategy years ago, most treasury firms focus on buying and holding rather than trading, effectively removing coins from circulation.
“Even today they’re buying Bitcoin,” he observed. While retail investors often go “all in” and lack dry powder to average down during dips, institutional capital brings greater flexibility to reallocate across asset classes. That dynamic, Back suggested, could eventually provide a firmer floor under Bitcoin even as short-term correlation with traditional markets increases.
He also downplayed concerns about “paper Bitcoin” in futures and prediction markets such as Polymarket, where traders can bet on price moves every five minutes. Back said synthetic exposure is largely arbitraged away, with very few participants maintaining long-term short positions — unlike gold, where paper claims far exceed physical supply.
As BSTR moves closer to its public debut, Back’s message was clear: current weakness is temporary, and disciplined accumulation by well-capitalized treasury companies will continue to strengthen Bitcoin’s foundation.