Bitcoin and the Macro Setup
Holding above $80,000 in a lasting way would put the average Bitcoin buyer back in profit, which could open a year-end rally. October, November, and December are historically strong months for crypto. Dips should be short. Expect some sideways action, retesting, and re-accumulation points over the next few weeks.
The main driver is money printing. Panta Capital's Dan Moorehead says the debasement trade and Treasury market support have set off a rally in Bitcoin. The Treasury faces a long-term problem: it is printing an extra $2 trillion now, and the Congressional Budget Office projects that rising to $3.6 trillion in 10 years. Buying a few billion in bonds here and there just papers over the cracks. This pushes people into Bitcoin and other hard assets like gold, because there is no clear way out for countries like the United States. The US is the world's largest net debtor. It cannot "make markets" in bonds while being forced to sell $2 trillion a year.
You cannot print more Bitcoin - there are 21 million, fixed. Inflation is 3 to 4%, which strips about 90% of your buying power over a lifetime. Given a choice between something hard like Bitcoin and US paper money, note that Bitcoin has historically risen about 70% a year while paper money loses value at 3.4% a year.
The economy is running about as hot as it can: unemployment is 4.1% (full employment) and wage inflation is 3.4%. The worry is what happens when something bad hits - the deficit spirals out of control. The US is only a year away from its deficit passing the level at the end of World War II, when all that spending defeated fascism. The government will never stop printing money, so Bitcoin should keep doing well long term.
I still hold my Bitcoin and Ethereum, and believe Ethereum will do well. But the question is what comes next with real potential. Here are five altcoins I believe can, short term, outperform Bitcoin or Ethereum. I am not a financial adviser - make your own decisions.
Hyperliquid (HYPE)
The biggest name in DeFi. Until now it is not legally accessible in the US without a VPN or other workaround. Last week the president announced fast-tracking Hyperliquid access. Payward, the parent company of Kraken (one of the largest crypto exchanges), is working to give US users, investors, and traders access.
Hyperliquid itself would not be regulated as a US entity. It would piggyback on Payward's CFTC license. Payward bought a company called Bitnomio for $550 million earlier this summer, which holds a CFTC license to operate legally in the US. This gives Hyperliquid US access through Payward. The knock-on effect: incumbent crypto exchanges holding a CFTC license suddenly gain value, because this becomes the route for foreign entities to reach the US market without getting their own license.
HYPE has some of the best tokenomics. It buys back its tokens, and buybacks have sped up as it grows more popular.
Chainlink (LINK)
The US Department of Commerce is putting official GDP, PCE, and economic data on chain through Chainlink across 10 blockchains. This lets blockchain applications read live US government economic figures as they are released. Clear sign of improving fundamentals.
Bittensor (TAO)
Billionaire Barry Silbert believes in Bittensor. It works like Bitcoin - fair launch, no VC funding round, fully decentralized. Instead of the roughly $10 billion a year that rewards Bitcoin miners, Bittensor uses about $1 billion a year (aiming toward $10 billion) to pay people to solve real-world problems.
Silbert says investors will connect the dots soon, driven by the rush to buy open-source AI. In traditional finance, Stripe is reported to be buying OpenRouter for about $7.5 billion. Nvidia (NVDA) struck a roughly $6 billion Poolside deal and is reported to have agreed to buy Hugging Face for $122.9 billion. Major firms buying open-source AI protocols is the proof of concept and use case for a decentralized, open-source project like Bittensor, which is why investors are starting to pay attention.
Uniswap (UNI)
Strong fundamentals and a name brand - few cryptocurrencies do this much revenue, which traditional finance understands. Across all chains, Uniswap does 82.2 swaps every second, and that is before retail and the masses arrive. It just had its two highest swap days ever; yesterday alone it recorded over 7 million swaps. It just upgraded. More volume means more token buybacks, so its tokenomics improved - partly copied from Hyperliquid.
The reason this is happening: traditional finance is choosing Ethereum. Much of the flow comes from Robinhood (HOOD), which launched its Layer 2 on Ethereum, and many of those swaps route through Uniswap.
Solana (SOL)
The metrics point up. There are now a record 1.9 million on-chain tokenized equity holders, up 134% month over month. Just 10 months ago fewer than 100,000 people held tokenized assets. You can now buy SpaceX, OpenAI, Anthropic, and many real-world assets (RWAs) on chain, because you can trade markets 24/7 (or 24/5). If you believe in tokenization, you believe in Solana.
