Top 3 Altcoins You MUST HAVE Before Next Crypto Cycle

Added: 2026-05-23

[00:00:00]In the last crypto bull run, we held 47 meme coins, a basket of AI, basket of gaming, basket of per and DeFi, basket of this, basket of that. And wouldn't you know, 99.9% of coins simply rubbed, went to zero, absolutely screwed us. And right now, while it's not confirmed that we're in a new bull cycle yet, a new cycle is certainly brewing. And in this new cycle, it's not clear whether a huge basket of coins will ever pump again. In fact, it doesn't really matter. What matters in each and every cycle is catching the IT coin of the cycle. Last cycle was Salana. We caught that starting at $13 here on this channel. We also got Bitcoin at 19,000. Wrote it all the way up along with many others. Now, did we perform perfectly? Of course not.

[00:00:43]But this next run, we're going to be focusing on what I'm calling the big three because it's become overwhelmingly apparent that crypto is circling its wagons against fewer but potentially bigger winners. That's right. We know that there's going to be some benefits of the Clarity Act, the Genius Act, the incredible embrace of institutional Wall Street to cryptocurrency, the tokenization of potentially trillions of dollars of assets. Well, it's going to have an effect on our coins. And it's going to be positive, at least for some coins. And so today, we're going to be talking about three coins. And while they're not the only three coins in the market that matter, to me, they are the big three. And they are where attention and capital should be focused for this next bull run. So, without further ado, let's get into one of my favorite types of videos. and one of the few times in 2026 I've actually felt inspired enough to make a video about altcoins. So whether or not you're gung-ho still about crypto or if you're a never again altcoiner that's been scarred or potentially somewhere in the middle, this video is for you as we're going to be discussing three absolute mega trend altcoins and why I think that they have a durable narrative into the next cycle and why I think they are worth at least paying attention to. If not doing what I'm going to be doing, which is allocating capital. So if you guys are excited, you know what to do. Smash that like button. really helps this channel in the bearish times get out there, get the word out, and get more people into this crypto industry. And of course, if you're not subscribed or already subscribed, make sure to unsub and resub and put that bell notification on because I will be dropping a ton of knowledge and supposedly the old subscribe button is not working as well.

[00:02:10]So, make sure you refresh it if you're already a subscriber. Anyway, let's start with the big papa. Something we've been talking about on this channel for almost 2 years now. Hyperlid. Now, hype started off as a play thing for those who like to gamble in per or the hardcore traders in the crypto ecosystem. But it has evolved into something much, much more as it's become the destination for trading all sorts of assets from stocks to commodities to even preipo stocks in the small window before they actually go live trading.

[00:02:35]Hyperl is starting to fill all kinds of use cases far beyond the crypto ecosystem. And isn't that the dream to have a crypto product that's used way beyond crypto that value becomes so undeniable because of the revenue of the buybacks of its own token that it simply forces its way despite public opinion not really being in favor of crypto right now it forces its way into the mainstream lexicon of finance that is hyperlquid and right now we are seeing history be made which is the world's largest IPO SpaceX getting pre-trading and effectively the sharps pricing the SpaceX IPO with preo trading here on Hyperlid starting with an implied valuation of $2.4 trillion at $28 a share. This is of course following the Cerebras IPO which happened just a few weeks ago and happened to nail almost exactly the opening price for Cerebra.

[00:03:24]Though turns out that the people trading here on Hyperlquid, the sharps are actually doing a very very good job of using this tool not just to speculate on a lowflat side product which is some preipo version of SpaceX but they're actually getting it pretty accurate which is to say that the price on Hyperlid preo very well might be close if not accurate to the real trading price of SpaceX once it hits the market.

[00:03:47]And all this on a backdrop of the SEC actually expecting to release its innovation exemption for tokenized stocks. Now, this was an absolutely monster deal because there's been whispers that the New York Stock Exchange and other big banks are actually worried about these unregulated crypto exchanges. But this SEC ruling effectively would put that to bed.

[00:04:05]Needless to say, there will be some lawsuits. There will be some lawfare.

[00:04:08]But without that legal dark cloud hanging above Hyperlid's head, I think we'd start seeing a very different conversation around Hyperlid, around the price being a bit more reflective of some other companies that allow for trading. For example, what would Hype's price be if it was comparable to these other trading venues? At the smallest, IBKR, International Brokers, that would be $151 hype or a 3x from here. Robin Hood 277 or nearly a 6x from here.

[00:04:32]NASDAQ 205 or a little bit less than a 5x from here. CME435 and IC 349. This is the New York Stock Exchange or CME.

[00:04:40]Again, these are the biggest trading venues in the world. But what people are trying to say here, what old B16Z here is trying to say is that maybe, just maybe, Hype has the stuff to become a true player on the global stage of finance with its permissionless, real-time, and 24/7 trading of the most important assets in the world. And just to summarize the hype narrative, it's stable coin revenue bump. They just did this massive partnership with Coinbase.

[00:05:02]Gives them about a 25% bump on current revenues. There's a US regulatory push, which we just talked about. There's these preIPO stocks, which we just talked about. There's a new hyperlquid ETF that launched last week. Anyway, he's saying that his target is $88.

[00:05:14]Here's Anson with his hype thesis saying essentially he believes that people are scarred by crypto and bare markets and generally underestimating Hyperlid. He believes the bottom was put in and Hyperlid stayed over $20 while Bitcoin went from 60K to 80K and that they've onboarded a lot of Trady capital the last few months through of course the trading of oil, the Iran conflict and now these preo stocks. It's just been a trad fiesta. Honestly, the chart for Hype looks fantastic with almost nothing above but all-time highs at $57, which to be honest don't look that far away.

[00:05:42]And here is PER, the Hyperliquid Strategies, essentially digital asset treasury, which is trading on the NASDAQ. Check this out. PER has gone from 298 up to 795, which is a 167% increase. And this is while Hyperlid has only gone up 130%. Personally, like I've been saying, I like exposure to PER as a slightly levered bet here on Hype. And I have some calls on purr, some longer dated calls on purr as well as some hyperlquid allowing for me to express the upside in this trade. Like I said, everyone's super bullish about hype.

[00:06:10]It's not a new idea, but hype being the center of per globally is really interesting as they are superior vehicles in a lot of ways. And to think hype could potentially take on someone like Robin Hood in the future. It's not as crazy as it sounds. So, there you have it. The first of the big three is Hyperlid. I hope you enjoyed yet another hype segment, but this next one will be a new one because for the longest time, you know that I've been obsessed with product, consumer product, and how it can be integrated into crypto to create an absolutely explosive token network.

[00:06:36]And our next project that we're going to be talking about has been doing that in the AI sector. And that project is called Ask Venice. Now, we covered this project pretty deeply when it came out, and that's because its CEO and co-founder, Eric Vorhees, is an absolute legend of Bitcoin and crypto and someone who I look up to tremendously based on his public speeches. He's one of the best characters that we have in this industry. Ask Venice is essentially all your favorite AI models. You can use chat GBT, you can use Claude, you can use Qen, you can use DeepSeek, all through this Venice.AI platform. What makes it so unique is that it is actually completely anonymous and private. So unlike when your information is getting rooted through to ChatGBT and Sam Alman can now read your deepest darkest inner thoughts or know your full medical history, something that I'm sure none of us really want. Well, Venice doesn't store that information. So, it's a very simple idea. Hey, we allow you to use AI, but not to give up your privacy.

[00:07:26]Seems incredibly simple, but it is incredibly powerful. The Venice tokconomics in token VVV are actually very interesting. I know, terrible.

[00:07:34]Anyway, VVV you can stake and earn a 15% uh VVV on VVV yield. That's not the interesting part. The point is when you have staked VVV, it gives you DM tokens.

[00:07:43]And these DM tokens effectively allow you $1 of AI credits every single day forever. So your DM is essentially your access to compute. So they've taken VVV and they've put it in between you and accessing compute and you can access compute in any of your favorite AI models and you're getting it for free and you're getting it privately. This is a great value prop. And though it's an insane value prop and the tokconomics are very cute and make a lot of sense, the truth is that this stuff normally just doesn't make the number go up in crypto. Except this time it is. And you can see here while it was a tough year for Venice since launch. It launched here peaking at $23, but really it started around this $10 mark and just gradually ground down for what felt like forever. It was pretty much a year of down only for Venice. And then out of nowhere, product traction, we got a whole new wave of AI adoption and this thing has gone up only since pretty much December going up about 17x. So absolutely killing it. But of course, this is not just some speculative hype wave. There have been 3 million users that now use Venice regularly. It took them what felt like forever to get to 1 million. Then it took them another half of that forever to get to 2 million. And then now I think they added their third million users in half the time. I think only a month and a half to get to their third million users. So it shows you that they are actually hitting product market fit, getting hockey stick growth with millions of real AI users, and their tokconomics make total sense. This is exactly what you'd want to see if you're a crypto native like me who thinks building products connecting them to tokens is the key to bringing crypto and its revolution of communal ownership, open and decentralized movements to the world. This is absolutely incredible. Not only is it a great product that aligns with my values, okay, you want a chat GPT that doesn't spy on you, you want to avoid intellectual degradation of paternalistic censorship, Eric has quite the tongue on him. I highly recommend you check out his speeches. And so if you want to join the 3 million sovereigns avoiding future surfom, feel free to check out Venice. And of course, I will be stocking up slowly because this chart has gone pretty parabolic.

[00:09:36]But I will be stocking up slowly and surely averaging into Venice over the next several months. I have no idea whether this is about to be the next leg or not. Remember the context on all this is that BTC looks pretty bad here.

[00:09:47]Remember I was saying there's a risk that BTC could deviate into the 80s and come down. It doesn't look super great right now. It doesn't look amazing. It's had a really bad last few days. So again, if BTC starts hemorrhaging and starts just going down only, that is going to ruin the party for these altcoins. Make no mistake, none of the altcoins on this list can survive if BTC decides to sepu and just go down. So all of this, the Venice train, the hype train, all of it depends on BTC just at least holding it together. If not, hopefully going up a bit. But if BTC goes crazy down, forget about these altcoins. It's not going to save you just cuz they're doing very well. but it is going to give you an opportunity to accumulate more, which is why I say accumulate with a longerterm horizon. If these coins are really going to define the next cycle, then it's okay to accumulate them as they go down, as they chop around, and hopefully as they come back strong. It's also worth noting that Venice is not alone in this narrative.

[00:10:37]There's actually several little coins around Venice, like Pod, uh the AI lab behind Venice's uncensored models, that are starting to catch some serious steam as well. Now, Pod is a much smaller coin. I'm not going to talk a lot about it, but there's a lot of these AI adjacent Venice adjacent coins that people are now interested in because the Venice narrative is starting to become very significant. Is this our crypto chat GPT? Is this our crypto version of AI? And is this a model that can command a valuation in the tens or hundreds of billions like the mainstream AI models?

[00:11:06]Maybe, just maybe. And of course, in that world, what are the partner projects? What does the ecosystem look like? That's what this whole pod thing is about. Again, very low cap, very risky. I don't hold any, but it's worth looking into the Venice ecosystem.

[00:11:19]Finally, let's talk about Ze or Zeke, the artist formerly known as Zcash. This is the leading privacy token in crypto.

[00:11:26]Of course, not the only one. There's also XMR Monero, which they argue constantly which one is the real privacy coin. Honestly, own them both. You could just own both of them and be a happy person. Though, I will say the Zcash chart has been more bullish and more exciting lately. It's important to realize that they both have strong privacy narratives and they tend to both pump similarly. So, I'm not here to split hairs. I think they both serve the same purpose, which is private money.

[00:11:48]Now, for a lot of crypto history, we said, "Hey, look, private money, don't worry about that. We need to get crypto approved. If they see this thing as illicit, as connected with drugs and human trafficking and evil, evil stuff, they won't want to do business with us crypto people." And that's true. And that's why Bitcoin being the most trackable, the least private thing of all time, same with every other crypto, has actually been a great selling point for the regulators. Hey, actually, this stuff is totally open. We can actually spy on everyone. We can see what everybody's doing. And of course, if you've seen any level of internet sleuththing, you know that any transaction will eventually become public to a degree. People know whose wallets are whose. They pretty much can track anyone and everything. It's actually not great if you have a lot of money. Which is why up until recently, the Zcash narrative, while it was interesting, hadn't been central. But now that things are warm and cozy with the regulators, we're in a hot tub together sipping champagne, smoking cigars, things are getting a little loose and we can open our tongue a bit.

[00:12:36]Us crypto people are saying the things that are really on our minds, which is, hey, we're a bit worried about having all of our finances out there in the public. We don't want everyone to know where our money is. And specifically, we don't want the government to know where our money is because we don't trust them very much at all. And that's what led one of the most respective online thinkers of our modern era, Naval, to tweet this in 2025. Satoshi himself can't use Bitcoin. Aka, the privacy that Bitcoin does not have is preventing its actual creator from even using it. And whether Satoshi is alive or dead, most people believe he's not alive. The truth is that if he moved any of those coins, it would create a tsunami, a destructive force in the Bitcoin community, the likes of which could never be overstated. Whereas, if it was Zcash, we'd never know, and no one would have to care what everyone was doing with their stack. But the reason why Zcash now makes sense is much deeper than that. We've had another several years of seeing capital and labor continue to diverge as far as value in the economy.

[00:13:27]The value of capital versus the value of labor in the modern economy is so drastically different that there's only so far this rubber band can stretch before we start seeing a snapback. And that snapback is being expressed in all ways, shapes, and forms. most notably the California wealth tax which is written in such a way as to target only the billionaires but in truth is the first of many steps to encroach and have the government openly reach into the pockets of first the superw wealthy eventually the semi-wealthy and soon all of us to take our hard-earned wealth our property and seize it for the good of the public which of course if you really trusted the government a lot would be an awesome thing but if you don't trust the government so much or you think the government is prone to making a lot of mistakes especially with money maybe that's not such a good thing as Mark Andre says here, "The income tax started as 3% only on super rich people. The wealth tax is 5% only on the billionaires. By the 1950s, marginal rates were in the '9s. Mark Andre warns that California's proposed 5% asset tax on unrealized gains following the same playbook. The unrealized gains taxing is so crazy once you know how the economy works, it doesn't even bear explaining.

[00:14:33]And again, I've been mentioning UBI and socialism being an undeniable and unavoidable byproduct of AI for years now. In fact, I'm having a stream.

[00:14:41]Probably by the time you've seen this video, this will already be out. So, go and check this out if you haven't seen it. I'm doing a stream tomorrow with Andrew Yang, who is of course one of the originators of the UBI ideology. This was back in 2019 and 2020, way before society was really ready for this one.

[00:14:56]But now, the world is cascading towards a world of AI where there's far less jobs, far less opportunity for each and every human out there. And it really begs the question, what will the social contract be with the government? What will you get just for existing as a citizen? And how valuable will that be?

[00:15:11]How important will that be? Because in a world where there's no jobs and there's no need for humans to use their brains or their bodies, it's really hard to say just pull yourself up by your bootstraps and just go work harder. And in that world, whether you like it or not, many people, many wealthy people will not want their assets seized. They will seek out privacy. And something like Zcash, in my opinion, seeing it run so hard, on the backdrop of AI getting exponentially more useful, on the backdrop of Daario, a head of anthropic, saying that 50% of all white collar jobs are going to get automated. On the backdrop of UBI becoming a real and tangible idea and wealth taxes becoming a popular policy, I certainly don't blame wealthy people for being a little scared that someone will come and take away their hard-earned nest egg. Why is he cash?

[00:15:55]Well, I don't think anyone should be watching what you do with your money.

[00:15:57]And I also think that you're essentially frontr running a major societal change, which is capital flight. And as a final piece of information, I'll just say the Zcash chart looks absolutely insane. It looks phenomenal. It's one of the best charts I've seen in all my years of crypto. Now, there is a risk here. There is a risk here that this is a lower high after this uh 2025 high of about 750 bucks. But if we're able to get back over this and especially challenge this prior high, I think that gives Zcash room for liftoff for four figures potentially beyond. This is an insane chart. As we know, it went from just about 30 bucks here. Uh 28 bucks at the beginning of 2025. It's up a monstrous amount. Even today, it's up 23x. It made a total of a 30x in the last cycle. But if these trends hold, I don't think that's saying a lot. I think Zcash can become a main asset in crypto because it performs a function that fundamentally you can't get anywhere else in the world. You cannot have private and anonymous money anywhere in the world.

[00:16:53]Bitcoin doesn't do it. Tradfi, there's no option for it. Swiss banks, they still know who you are. They share the information. No, you can't do it.

[00:16:59]Crypto, this is something that the technology enables that simply is not available, not possible anywhere else.

[00:17:05]So, there you have it. Those are my big three. They're not only doing well in the charts, but they make sense.

[00:17:10]Hyperlid could become the number one trading facility in the world, starting with the number one trading vehicle, the perpetual future, and applying that with crypto rails to every asset in the world 24/7. Venice very well might be the open AI, the anthropic that is cryptonative, providing the one very very important feature that crypto people and really everybody completely needs, which is privacy with an amazing tokconomics that link the amount of users and the demand for Venice to the actual token itself.

[00:17:38]It's beautiful. And then finally, we have Zcash, a private Bitcoin, a Swiss bank in your pocket in a time where wealth seizures and demonizing of wealthy people has started to reach a fever pitch. Let me know what do you think about the choices I made. Do you agree that these are the big three for the next cycle of cryptocurrency?