- Grayscale has added new tokens to its top 20 list.
- He cited the potential impact of the US elections, AI and the growth of Solana as catalysts for change.
- The tokens include major DeFi players like Ethena and Hyperliquid.
Crypto won’t just be about Bitcoin and Ethereum in 2025.
This is one of the takeaways from digital asset manager Grayscale’s latest quarterly report on tokens with high upside potential. The list includes 20 digital assets that are expected to break out in the first quarter of next year.
Six of them – Ethena, Hyperliquid, Jupiter, Jito, Virtuals and Grass – are new to the list and expected to benefit from several factors considered bullish for the crypto industry, according to the currency asset management firm digital. .
Grayscale said it chose the new tokens because of the potential impact that Republican success in the US elections could have on decentralized finance and staking, as well as the growing use of artificial intelligence “agents” and the Solana blockchain.
AI agents are software with the ability to post to social media platforms and, in some cases, use crypto wallets.
Grayscale list
Grayscale is one of the largest issuers of crypto exchange-traded funds, managing more than $24 billion in Bitcoin and Ether, the two largest cryptocurrencies.
Its list of 20 tokens to watch includes Bitcoin and Ether as well as DeFi stalwarts Uniswap, Aave and Lido.
Some of the tokens added to the list could benefit from an outsized benefit from the red sweep in the US election that saw Republicans secure control of both houses of Congress and the presidency, Grayscale wrote.
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The party has overwhelmingly adopted a pro-crypto stance, which industry observers believe will lead to more industry-friendly regulations over the next four years.
The entire crypto market has surged more than 40% since the election to nearly $3.4 trillion today.
Solana has been one of the winners in the bull market return. Its value collapsed in the wake of the FTX scandal. Sam Bankman-Fried’s crypto empire propped up Solana’s value before its collapse.
Solana’s token plunged from its previous all-time high of $259 to below $10 after FTX’s 2022 implosion.
But a wave of new DeFi protocols, along with the boom in memecoins and AI agents, brought it to a new all-time high in November and helped it overtake Tron as the blockchain with the second-largest ecosystem DeFi this year.
Its two largest DeFi protocols – Jupiter, an aggregator of decentralized exchanges, and Jito, a liquid staking protocol – are two of six new additions to Grayscale’s roster.
Jupiter is well-positioned to capitalize on Solana’s status as a hotbed of AI agents and memecoin trading, according to Grayscale. Meanwhile, Jito is one of the most profitable protocols in DeFi, collecting over $500 million in fees in 2024.
AI revolution
The intersection of AI and crypto has created a lot of buzz in 2024, and for good reason.
Investors have poured hundreds of millions of dollars into crypto-AI projects, and researchers estimate that this combination will add another $20 trillion to the global economy by 2030.
Grayscale’s listing reflects the hype. Two of the new tokens on the list operate at the intersection of AI and crypto: Virtuals, which simplifies the creation of AI agents on the base blockchain, and Grass, which allows users to rent their tape unused Internet bandwidth to AI companies that need it to scrape. the web to obtain data to train AI models.
Grayscale also listed two protocols that have climbed to the top of DeFi: stablecoin issuer Ethena and Hyperliquid, a trading-focused blockchain.
Hyperliquid’s November airdrop created dozens of new millionaires and sparked speculation about a DeFi resurgence.
Ethena, meanwhile, launched earlier this year and its stablecoin, USDe, has already overtaken Sky’s DAI as the third largest, according to data from DefiLlama.
Grayscale removed six tokens from its top 20 list: TON, Near, Stacks, Sky, UMA Protocol, and Celo.
“Grayscale Research continues to see value in each of these projects,” he said. “However, we believe the revised Top 20 list could deliver more attractive risk-adjusted returns for the coming quarter.”
Aleks Gilbert is DL News” DeFi correspondent based in New York. Have a tip? Email aleks@dlnews.com.
