This article is brought to you by FBS.
Introduction
The 2025 crypto bull cycle won't just reward hype — it'll put a spotlight on the altcoins with real backbone. After years of regulatory uncertainty and brutal bear-market volatility, institutions and businesses aren't speculating — they're looking for infrastructure, utility, and real growth. In this new landscape, altcoins with serious technology innovation, sound tokenomics, and growing adoption won't just stand out — they'll lead the way. Hedge funds and macro desks have already begun positioning, following the ripple effects of major catalysts — Bitcoin's 2024 halving, the ETF arms race, and a market narrative that's finally flipping risk-on. And once the capital starts flowing, it flows fast — from BTC to ETH… and then into the sharpest names just beneath the surface.
AltSeason Is Coming
"Altseason" is a period when bitcoin capital is transferred into other cryptocurrencies, producing large multi-month price increases for most altcoins. Throughout history, altcoins have lagged the strong appreciation of Bitcoin. As the price of Bitcoin stabilizes or consolidates following a peak, investors look for higher returns in potential altcoins. According to the Tangem report, "the rise in the inter-seasonal index signals a shift of attention away from bitcoin and towards altcoins." In 2025, a combination of several factors – improved liquidity conditions and potential regulatory clarity – may lay the groundwork for such a cycle.
Signs of Bitcoin's dominance support this thesis. Bitcoin's dominance in May 2025 was ~65%. Despite continuing to rise, the dominance has reached a critical resistance area from which it had previously bounced! When bitcoin dominance increases (as it did in early 2025, to ~65%), it signals that alts are either not growing as fast, or are falling. Most analysts are now signalling that a continued drop in bitcoin dominance to around 50-54% has been a precursor in the past to an altcoin season. In short, the macroeconomic context of 2025 – increased liquidity, Fed policy easing, and the resumption of channeling funds into cryptocurrencies – combined with bitcoin consolidation, may finally lead to the next phase of altcoin-driven growth.
Legislative changes are another driver. Besides ETFs for Bitcoin and Ethereum (approved late in 2023), US regulators are now considering dozens of proposed ETFs for altcoins. Bloomberg Intelligence recently cited a 90% probability that the Solana spot ETF will be approved in 2025, with similarly high probabilities for XRP and Dogecoin funds. If altcoin ETFs (or other products like ETFs) get approved, it could have the power to channel institutional and retail funds right into altcoin land. Such moves – and corresponding global changes in stablecoin regulation and digital asset management systems – can considerably enhance investor confidence in altcoins.
Now, here are the five altcoins that FBS analysts are watching in 2025.
Hedera (HBAR)
Hedera Hashgraph is a strong contender for the distributed ledger technology crown, abandoning the traditional blockchain architecture in favor of its own hashgraph consensus protocol. As opposed to power-devouring proof-of-work or probabilistic proof-of-stake systems, Hedera's "gossip about gossip" method provides deterministic completeness, extremely high performance, and ultralow power consumption. In practice, Hedera typically processes more than 10,000 transactions per second for fractions of a cent, and with completion time less than one second. The biggest single reason to take Hedera seriously is the governance, which is widely recognized as likely to be one of the most institutionally robust to have been put forward by any major cryptocurrency.
The network is governed not only by anonymous validators or open-source development groups but also by Hedera's Governing Board of up to 39 prominent worldwide companies such as Google, IBM, Boeing, LG, and Deutsche Telekom. Each board member gets one vote on decisions for the network, and no organization can own the ledger. The Council serves for a period of three years (two terms maximum), and the founder of the hashgraph protocol, Swirlds, is a permanent member of the council. Hedera has been deeply involved in actual enterprise solutions since day one. Members like LG and Boeing were some of the earliest to explore uses for supply chain logistics and IoT networks.
Hedera has been actively expanding in recent years in areas such as tokenization, digital payments, and decentralized finance. As part of a significant strategic initiative, the Board of Governors voted to create a $408 million ecosystem development fund in January 2025, valued at 4.86 billion HBAR tokens, to support new projects, startups, and dApps. Hedera's embedded tokenization model and asset studio allow for the issuance of real assets — bonds, stocks, and stablecoins — with little coding. Real-world adoption has already begun. In the Philippines, several leading banks, including UnionBank and Rizal Commercial Banking Corporation, are launching a peso-backed stablecoin on the Hedera network. Institutional investors are also coming to the European market. In mid-2024, the German ETP for HBAR launched on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange, opening the opportunity to invest in HBAR to regulated funds and portfolio managers. Technically, Hedera is still superb. Its team is conducting deep research in quantum-resistance, which is something that is becoming increasingly vital as quantum computing keeps on developing. With green light to deploy a large ecosystem development fund, growing institutional initiatives such as the HBAR ETP, and the inclusion of stablecoins and payment infrastructure in the real world, Hedera's long-term fundamentals appear solid.
HBARUSDT, Weekly
If you look at the chart, HBAR has formed a bullish flag pattern, and %R has come out of the oversold zone, indicating a possible upside!
If the adoption of distributed ledger technology in tokenization, corporate finance, or central bank digital currencies continues, Hedera will benefit immensely.
Ripple (XRP)
After several years of court battles, XRP began 2025 with far greater regulatory clarity. In July 2023, an American judge ruled that XRP, when exchanged for sale to the general public on exchanges, was not a security, and in early 2025, the SEC abandoned its appeal of this ruling. This decision ended, in effect, a major controversy that had affected the XRP market.With its regulatory troubles behind it, this may place XRP more favorably with institutional traders and exchanges.
In the meantime, real-world practical applications and partnerships are on the horizon. Ripple's breakout product is RippleNet (and its on-demand liquidity product), using XRP as an in-between currency for cross-border payments. "XRP's value is that it speeds up cross-border payments, makes them simpler, cheaper, and more transparent." Through the almost immediate execution of transactions on XRP Ledger, RippleNet reduces dependence on slow, multi-day correspondent service (SWIFT) transfers. As an example, SBI Remit (a large Japanese money transfer company) uses RippleNet to send funds cheaply to several Asian markets. Mastercard actually issued a report in May 2025 referring to XRP as an "intermediate currency," noting that SBI Remit uses XRP for instant money transfers.
Other recent joint ventures highlight the versatility of XRP: in early 2025, Unicambio, a Portuguese fintech company, partnered with Ripple to provide near-instant payments from Portugal to Brazil. Latin American and Asian banking institutions are conducting ongoing pilot trials on Ripple's ODL rails for USD-MXN and USD-INR transfers. From a technical standpoint, advances in interoperability (e.g., new inter-network protocols) can make XRP a plug-and-play settlement system among different blockchains.
Interest is also building amongst institutions. XRP futures ETFs have gained approval to trade by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) (e.g., the Teucrium ETF began trading in April 2025), and larger ETF providers (ProShares, VanEck, and others) are gearing up their spot ETF products. Regulated vehicles such as these allow large participants to invest in XRP without having to hold the token outright. Credit Suisse and major custodians have started to offer limited XRP support. It is noteworthy that JPMorgan strategists expect possible inflows of funds to XRP-related ETFs for the value of up to $ 4-8 billion, considering past experiences with crypto ETFs. These types of indicators of institutional buying are bullish drivers independent of target prices.
Avalanche (AVAX)
Avalanche is a permissionless smart contract platform that boasts near-instant finality as well as modularity. Technically, Avalanche is three chains (X, P, and C) which are capable of running smart contracts, create assets, and allow any user to spin up subnets (parametrizable blockchains) designed to run specific applications. Avalanche's main chain can finalize transactions in less than one second and with thousands of validators operating concurrently. These validators are powered by Avalanche's Snowman consensus technology, which combines the security of cash machines with extremely high throughput. In practice, Avalanche can process thousands of transactions per second, a significant step up compared to traditional blockchain networks.
New network releases (Avalanche 9000 roadmap) are aimed at additional scaling and fee reductions. As an example, Avalanche's ACP-125 release will reduce base fees by more than 97%, further reducing the cost of on-chain transactions. Avalanche's approach, providing effectively unlimited scaling with subnets and high data transfer rates, is aimed at attracting projects that require customizable blockchain logic or high bandwidth (games, finance, private networks).
Avalanche has also been successful in courting large institutional investors. By the fourth quarter of 2024, major money managers and financial institutions were tokenizing real assets on Avalanche. For example, BlackRock, the world's largest asset manager, tokenized more than $500 million of its institutional digital liquidity fund (BUIDL) on Avalanche. Similarly, Franklin Templeton (a $1.5 trillion fund manager) tokenized $420 million from its U.S. government money market fund on Avalanche. Avalanche also supports tokenized treasury assets and bonds through integration with partners such as Securitize/Elixir, allowing further introduction of traditional finance products onto the network. tokenized funds on Avalanche collectively total several billion dollars in total value.
These corporate deals illustrate Avalanche's position as the "blockchain of blockchains" in finance. Its regulation-oriented architecture (finality/no forks, verified smart contracts) has attracted the attention of banks, payment companies, and even governments. In 2024, the Grayscale Avalanche Trust was launched, offering regulated exposure to AVAX for accredited investors, which is proof of interest from traditional institutions. The fact that well-established companies (BlackRock, Franklin, etc.) are working with Avalanche is a solid endorsement of its tech and belief in it.
The larger Avalanche ecosystem is also expanding. There is an active DeFi (Trader Joe, Benqi, etc.) sector, an NFT and gamer community (with partners such as Boss Fight Entertainment for crypto games), and new inter-network bridges (the Avalanche-Ethereum bridge has over $1 billion of transfers).
Algorand (ALGO)
Algorand is a pure proof-of-stake blockchain built specifically with scalability, velocity, and security in mind. Its consensus protocol completes block processing in less than 4.5 seconds and achieves a throughput of approximately 6,000 transactions per second, much higher than the current 15-30 tps for Ethereum. Transaction costs are always minimal and in fractions of a cent, and the cryptographic protocol design includes quantum-resistant components meant to render the network secure in the future. The result is a high-performance blockchain capable of supporting enterprise application scale, microtransactions, and high-frequency usage in an economical and sustainable way.
One of the main features of Algorand is the emphasis on formal verification, supply chain compliance software, and robust Tier 1 features. Atomic swaps and regular Algorand Assets (ASA) are natively supported on the network, allowing token issuance and exchange, NFTs, and other assets without extra wrappers or protocols. Algorand has also been a trailblazer for national digital currency initiatives. In 2023, the Marshall Islands used Algorand to release the first government sanctioned national cryptocurrency, SOV. The Algorand network is also collaborating with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and a number of central banks on pilot programs.
The Algorand ecosystem continues to expand with developer-focused projects, green finance, and DeFi. DeFi applications in themselves, such as Algofi (lending and borrowing) and Yieldly (rates and rewards), are the basic infrastructure for any network, though their deployment on Algorand is limited compared to Ethereum or Solana. The carbon-reducing energy-efficient Algorand network has also become a top choice for projects that focus on ESG initiatives, such as green NFTs and carbon lending platforms. The flexibility of the TEAL smart contract language and the Algorand Virtual Machine (AVM) allows developers to create complex dApps, although the developer community has historically lagged behind its big competitors. However, recent development programs and improvements in developer tools are closing this gap.
From a tokenomics perspective, the ALGO token has a fixed supply and an on-chain, predictable inflation model dependent on the staking reward. It has also become popular with stablecoin issuers: most prominently, Circle utilized Algorand as one of the first networks to handle USDC due to its speed, cost-effectiveness, and reliability for financial-grade transfers.
ALGOUSD, Weekly
ALGOUSD is in long-term decline, and the price has fallen hard after historical highs. However, the CCI has come out of the oversold zone, and if the global trendline is broken, the price may soar to 2,000 or even 2,400.
Chainlink (LINK)
Unlike the other coins here, Chainlink isn’t a smart-contract platform – it’s the hidden engine powering them. As a decentralized oracle network, Chainlink is the most important link between the blockchain world and the real world. Chainlink supplies smart contracts with essential off-chain data: market data, weather events, sporting scores, and even random numbers courtesy of verifiable random functions (VRFs). The effect is humongous. Chainlink has become the oracle of choice for the entire DeFi ecosystem – its data powers lending platforms, decentralized exchanges, derivatives protocols, and more. Without Chainlink, most of DeFi wouldn't be possible.
Chainlink's popularity has grown due to continuous integration. Almost all of the top blockchains that enable DeFi – Ethereum, BNB Chain, Polygon, Avalanche – use Chainlink to provide accurate data to their protocols. Apart from cryptocurrencies, Chainlink has also attracted the attention of corporate giants. Google Cloud, Oracle and Societe Generale have studied their infrastructure.
But Chainlink doesn't stand still. A major breakthrough was the launch of the Chainlink Interconnection Protocol (CCIP) in early 2024. Chainlink no longer just passed on information – it became a bridge. With CCIP, developers can securely send tokens and messages between chains. Circle USDC can now travel across networks on CCIP rails. Since its introduction, the popularity of CCIP has increased: the number of cross-network trades in CCIP has experienced a volume increase of 900% in just one quarter. The implications of this are immense – Chainlink is now at the center of multi-chain liquidity. As more and more protocols adopt CCIP, Chainlink is quickly becoming the de facto building block of an interoperable blockchain economy.
Meanwhile, Chainlink is still expanding its toolkit. Its Proof-of-Reserve oracles guarantee that stablecoins or wrapped tokens are safely stored by centralized entities and exchanges, a critical component of DeFi trust. VRFs provide verifiable randomness for Web3 games, lotteries, and NFT drops. Also, Chainlink’s serverless computing feature allows smart contracts to communicate with external APIs in real time.
Institutions are also paying attention. Chainlink's participation in pilot projects with SWIFT, Citi, and large banks shows that it is being seen as a "reliable pair of hands" for corporate blockchain adoption. Although LINK is still better known in cryptocurrency circles, its standing amongst tradfi institutions is growing.
As most traders are unaware of the noise, Chainlink is a valuable asset. If the adoption of blockchain into real-world systems – tokenization, payments, settlements – continues, then Chainlink will likely be a project that will continue to grow with this trend.
Conclusion
In this cycle, these five altcoins don’t just survive the noise – they cut through it. Hedera is reshaping enterprise DLT with blazing speed and boardroom-level trust. XRP just beat the SEC at its own game and is back in the global payments spotlight. Avalanche? It’s already hosting billions in tokenized funds from finance giants who don’t experiment – they commit. Algorand is quietly powering sovereign digital currencies with infrastructure that’s fast, clean, and battle-tested. And Chainlink isn’t just feeding data to DeFi – it’s building the rails for a truly multichain world. These aren’t hype coins.
They each solve something real – latency, liquidity, interoperability, trust. No memes. No gimmicks. Just tech that works and partners that matter. With catalysts like regulatory green lights, major upgrades, and heavyweight deals, the setup is serious. Smart traders won’t just watch price charts – they’ll follow TVL, cross-chain volumes, and where the institutional money flows. Nothing in crypto is guaranteed – but if 2025 delivers the breakout everyone’s waiting for, don’t be surprised when these five aren’t chasing the rally. They’re leading it.
This article is contributed by FBS and does not reflect the opinions of CoinGecko or its team, and is not intended to serve as investment or financial advice. Always do your own research before investing in any cryptocurrency.
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