Bitcoin looks like it is turning from a down market into an up market, so now is the time to put next-cycle coins on your radar. What follows is a higher-risk list. Many of these are new coins from this cycle. Most investors would do better just holding the blue chips, Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana, all of which sit well above a dollar and so are not on this list. None of this is financial advice.
Wall Street and real-world assets
Canton Network launched at the end of last year. If you believe in tokenization and bringing trillions of dollars of real-world assets on chain, this is the fresh pick. It stands out with privacy tech built for Wall Street, a focus close to Chainlink's aim at capital markets. It competes with Ethereum, Sui, and Aptos, and has been picked by big finance players: DTCC, JP Morgan, and Citadel.
Ondo trades at 35 cents. Backed by BlackRock, it is a bet on Wall Street tokenization and real-world assets.
Memecoins and creator coins
Black Bull (ticker Ansom) is a creator memecoin launched this summer, run by the Twitter trader Anom. It had an early pump, then cooled off. It could run harder as money flows back into the market, since its community is still active. It is a low-quality memecoin at best, not something to hold forever, but it could see another leg up this cycle.
Pump (pump.fun) is the platform that blew up in 2024 as an easy way to launch a memecoin and stream about it. Is Pump a one-cycle flop or does it have staying power? I think it still has legs, helped by its bold marketing.
Dogecoin sits at 7 cents. It is nothing more than a popular meme that many crypto people like.
Pepe trades well below a cent. Everyone bought it at the top and nobody wants it now, which is exactly why it makes the list. It could last one more cycle.
Layer 1 blockchains
Kaspa has been around a couple of years, trading near two-hundredths of a cent. It is a decentralized proof-of-work layer 1 that uses a block DAG structure instead of a straight-line blockchain, which sets it apart. It should still be here a year or two from now, worth grabbing at a good price.
Sui trades at 69 cents. It is a high-performance blockchain offering the full stack for a new global economy and is moving into AI.
Aptos trades at 60 cents. It is similar to Sui but has more Meta connections. Both are full-stack platforms for markets and machines, and Aptos should be part of crypto's next 15 years.
Monad is new this cycle at 2 cents. It is a high-performance layer 1 that brings parallel execution to the Ethereum Virtual Machine, built for scale. A main draw is that it carries no baggage from past cycles and is building toward where the industry is heading.
Tron has been around a long time and is consolidating at all-time highs of 32 cents. Today's Tron is very different from the one first bought in 2017-2018. If you are bullish on stablecoins, be bullish on Tron: over 398 million accounts, 15.1 billion transactions, and the fastest-growing public blockchain in the world.
Identity, prediction markets, and trading
Worldcoin is a couple of years old and down in price. Backed by Sam Altman, it is building a real human network to connect people's identities on the blockchain for an AI-and-crypto world. You may disagree with its mission, but this could be its best cycle yet.
Rain is new this cycle at 1 cent. It sits in the prediction-markets narrative for the AI era. Kalshi is the leader in that space and Rain is a derivative of it, but derivatives pump alongside the main story, and I am bullish on prediction markets.
Aster trades at 60 cents. The hype has faded, but the utility holds up. It is a decentralized exchange focused on perpetuals and spot trading, backed by big players. If trading on crypto rails keeps growing, Aster will be a contender.
Europe and Cardano
Swissborg is the exchange coin for the Swissborg platform, at 14 cents. Europe is regulating crypto while America struggles to, so European crypto firms should do well, especially ones ready for this moment. It could possibly do what Binance Coin did.
Cardano trades at 19 cents. It has been around a long time, and I am torn on whether it belongs on this list or whether its bull case still holds.
Midnight is 1 cent and has been around less than a full cycle. Built by the same people behind Cardano, it is a new blockchain for apps that protect sensitive business and personal data, billed as the world's first fourth-generation blockchain.
