Grayscale analysts have identified promising cryptocurrencies for the first quarter of 2025. Which cryptoprojects have the greatest potential
One of the oldest cryptocurrency companies - Grayscale - has published a quarterly report on the cryptocurrency market, in which it has revised its list of 20 promising cryptocurrency projects for the first three months of 2025.
Once a quarter, Grayscale Research analysts research hundreds of cryptoassets to evaluate and rebalance the company's proprietary funds, publishing a list of the top 20 cryptoassets among various market categories.
This quarter, the experts paid special attention to tokens that fall under at least one of the following three market narratives:
- The U.S. election and its potential implications for industry regulation.
- Artificial intelligence and the use of blockchain by AI agents.
- Solana ecosystems.
"Grayscale is the issuer of two U.S. exchange traded ETFs based on bitcoin and Ethereum, and also manages 19 private cryptocurrency trust funds. The total amount under management at the end of September exceeds $30 billion.
Grayscale launched the first such funds back in 2013, and it wasn't until 2024 that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) allowed the company to convert bitcoin and Ethereum-based funds into full-fledged spot exchange-traded funds (ETFs).
AI agents are a new sector in cryptocurrencies that includes two popular trends at once: memcoins and artificial intelligence (AI). Combining these categories has led to the creation of automated chatbots called AI agents that promote cryptocurrencies on social media."
Following updated analytics, Grayscale has removed TON, Near, Stacks, Sky, UMA Protocol and Celo from its previous Top 20 list of promising cryptocurrencies. In place of these cryptoassets, the following have been added:
Top 20 crypto projects with growth potential in the first quarter of 2025 according to Grayscale data
Let's take a closer look at the new tokens that got into this list:
Hyperliquid (HYPE) is a blockchain designed to create decentralized financial applications. The native token of the HYPE platform, launched at the end of 2024, has become the largest airdrop in the history of the crypto market.
Ethena (ENA) - The protocol was developed as a new USDe stablecoin that is backed by trading positions in bitcoin and Ethereum. Ethena's business model is built on creating delta-neutral positions with a small stream of returns for the protocol. For example, when opening a short on BTC, the project relies on the fact that historically, the funding rate in perpetual futures markets has been in positive values much more of the time than in negative values.
Virtuals Protocol (VIRTUAL) is a platform for creating AI agents on the Base blockchain network. These agents are designed to perform tasks autonomously, mimicking human decision-making. The platform allows the creation and co-ownership of tokenized shares of the created AI agents, which can interact with both real people and other agents.
Jupiter (JUP) is one of the largest decentralized exchange (DEX) aggregators on the Solana network. Grayscale said it sees JUP as promising because of the fact that retail traders are increasingly coming to the cryptocurrency market through Solana. This aggregator could also benefit from speculation around memcoins and AI agents.
Jito (JTO) is the largest liquid staking protocol on the Solana blockchain. Jito users receive JitoSOL tokens in exchange for deposited Solana coins in the steaking. This assumes dual rewards, not only from SOL steaking, but also from so-called maximum extractable value (MEV) technology, which allows validators to charge higher transaction processing fees. Grayscale wrote that Jito offers one of the best financial metrics among all cryptocurrencies, generating more than $550 million in fee revenue in 2024.
Grass (GRASS) is a project from the decentralized physical infrastructure network (DePIN) sector. The team is developing an application that gives users the ability to sell unused internet bandwidth and direct it to AI training. The anonymized user data is shared via network nodes or a Chrome browser extension.
