Grayscale Investments has has been published Our Quarterly Review, Unveiling Our Top 20 Crypto Assets for Q1 2025. Every quarter, Grayscale's research team evaluates “hundreds of digital assets” to guide the rebalancing of the FTSE/Grayscale Crypto Sectors index family.
According to the research note, “our approach incorporates a range of factors, including network growth/adoption, future catalysts, fundamentals stability, token valuation, token supply inflation, and potential tail risks.” The latest additions to the top 20 list are driven by three major market themes that Gary Scales believes will shape the coming months: the US election and potential regulatory implications, rapid developments in decentralized artificial intelligence and Solana's expanding ecosystem. .
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While Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, ChainLink, Uniswap, SushiSwap, Aave, Bittensor, Optimism, Lido DAO, Helium, Arweave, Aerodrome and Akash Network remain on the list, six new altcoins are added compared to the previous quarter. became. “We add the following six assets to our top 20 list for the first quarter of 2025,” the report said.
The best crypto assets (new) for the first quarter of 2025
Hyper liquid (HYPE): A layer 1 blockchain designed for on-chain financial applications. Hyperliquid flagship product A decentralized exchange (DEX) for permanent futures trading. Built on a fully on-chain order book, HYPE seeks to capture the growing demand for advanced derivatives trading in a decentralized environment. It's worth noting that HYPE has seen a significant rise over the past few weeks and is currently ranked 19th on the list of the largest cryptocurrencies by market capitalization.
Athena (ENA): Etna protocol It has introduced a new stablecoin called USDe, which is backed by hedged positions in Bitcoin and Ether. As Grayscale explains, “Specifically, the protocol has long positions in Bitcoin and Ether and short positions in perpetual futures contracts on similar assets.” The shareholder version of the token leverages the pricing differential between the cash and futures markets, potentially offering a unique return profile for participants.
Virtual protocol (VIRTUAL): Running on Base, an Ethereum layer 2 network, the virtual protocol enables the creation of artificial intelligence agents designed to function autonomously. “These AI agents are designed to perform tasks autonomously and mimic human decision-making,” Gary Skill notes. The platform further enables shared ownership of these agents through tokenization, bridging AI capabilities with blockchain infrastructure.
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Customer (JUP): The client has emerged as a leading DEX aggregator in Solana and has recorded the highest Total Value Locked (TVL) of all Solana programs. With Solana's user base expanding and speculation intensifying about potential AI-powered tokens, “we believe the client is well-positioned to invest in this growing market activity,” the report said.
JTO: Jito is a liquid staking protocol in Solana that was adopted last year. Notably, Grayscale highlights the project's significant revenue: “Jito has experienced significant growth in adoption over the past year and offers one of the best financial profiles of all cryptos, with more than $550 million in revenue by 2024. It has created a fee.
Grass: Grass rewards users for sharing unused Internet bandwidth through a Chrome extension According to Grayscale, “this bandwidth is used to scrape online data, which is then sold to AI companies and developers to train machine learning models.” The project monetizes web scraping by redistributing rewards to users who share their idle bandwidth.
In addition, Grayscale notes that it is still excited about topics related to previous periods such as Ethereum scaling solutions, tokenization, and Decentralized Physical Infrastructure (DePIN). Examples of these established themes include Optimism, Chainlink, and Helium, which remain in the top 20 due to their alignment with scaling, tokenization, and DePIN use cases, respectively.
Notably, six assets – NEAR, Stacks, Maker CELO, UMA and TON – dropped out of the top 20 this quarter. “Grayscale's research continues to add value to each of these projects, and they are important elements of the crypto ecosystem. However, we believe the revised top 20 list may provide more compelling returns for the coming quarter.
At press time, HYPE was trading at $29.45.
Featured image created with DALL.E, chart from TradingView.com
