I know many of the crypto community are disappointed in how 2025 turned out as most expected with myself included in the at assumption some type of Bull Cycle like we have always had. Things do change and change is actually not such a bad thing as long as you adapt to whatever the change is.
I think the above screenshot is rather telling besides the 101-200 market cap category which does not tell the full story with Pippin which I would assume is a Meme coin up 5179 % this year.
During any crypto cycle which was an average of 4 years at least 95% of that time was about accumulation and 5 percent was for the selling part. This tells us the time spent of accumulation is the important part as this dictates your overall crypto bag sizes and dollar value.
Back in 2021 at the start of the new cycle I started to research tokens that I thought could expand my portfolio and not have all my eggs in the HIVE basket. This is not that I do not have faith in HIVE because I do, but it also does not put pressure on HIVE being the one to have to make it. The hope back then was to have 10 investments staked earning daily rewards via an APR earning around $25 each monthly. Again that was the thought process and this is easier said than done as I only found two crypto's I was comfortable investing into.
One has to be strict when it comes to ticking boxes because if we really look at the crypto's on offer so few actually offer any real life use cases. The cross over is so important for adoption to take place and why Meme coins is never going to be on my investment list as when researching you are looking for bankers for long term wealth generation and not short term pumps.
Finding 10 investable crypto investments that offered a future was far more difficult than I first imagined. I selected 2 and each one took a good 6 months of deep diving research which still continues to this day. One has to stay up to date and be informed of what is taking place and not rely on others as very few in crypto take any time or effort to learn about their investments and tend to follow the crowd. The crowd will not make you rich and you need to be ahead of the crowd unearthing gems that have legs to perform adding value or uses cases in the real world.
When we look at 99% of most crypto projects the tokens or coins they have are related to those projects and for many they have internal use cases which makes them no different from the next crypto. Trying to find any that actually offer something tangible that can be used by companies and what would make them stand out as a must have crypto because companies need it to transact is not obvious. I am sure there are loads out there that will eventually one day crossover and have a use case, but right now it is not that obvious which ones. This is the reason why research needs to be an ongoing must do activity each week on your current investments and looking for new ones.
2026 has to be the year a crypto crosses over and actually finds adoption as I believe there are a few that are in that final stage of making it big where we will see corporations using those blockchains on a daily or weekly basis. This is where the real value will be unlocked and the value will not depict what Bitcoin is doing and will rise on its own merit. Some of the older crypto projects have been around 10 years or longer and a few are only now ready to show what they have developed.