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| By Bob Czeschin |
As of March 2025, Statista estimates that there are over 20,000 cryptocurrencies.
But shockingly, most are either inactive or discontinued. In fact, the top 20 cryptocurrencies make up nearly 90% of the total market value.
It’s no wonder picking the next big project is so difficult!
But there are ways to cut through the noise to find coins capable of standing out from the crowd. Two of my favorites are …
- To identify coins on the cusp of breaking into a vast new market … where they’re likely to enjoy a first-mover advantage.
- To zero in on coins connected to the market-moving narratives sending crypto prices higher.
Neither approach guarantees success. But they can go a long way in finding projects more likely to run when the rally comes.
In fact, there are three cryptos I’ve found using these two methods that have already posted impressive gains.
PENDLE: The Biggest Breakthrough in DeFi
Pendle (PENDLE, “B”) opens up the vast universe of fixed-income investing to the DeFi revolution.
This is a big deal.
Because bonds comprise the biggest securities markets on the planet — roughly three times the size of world stock markets.
And while DeFi users can target insane yield opportunities … most of those are variable yields that will change.
PENDLE’s conceptual breakthrough is in how it brings bonds to the blockchain. It basically deconstructs a standard bond contract into two, independently tradable tokens.
The first is a principal token, similar to a zero-coupon bond.
And the second is a yield token that represents the accompanying stream of interest payments.
Using them in artful combination, there’s virtually nothing in legacy bond markets that cannot also be done faster and cheaper on the blockchain.
On top of that, despite trade wars and tariff panic, the fixed income universe — thanks to meteoric growth in government borrowing — just keeps on growing.
This puts PENDLE in an extremely enviable position going forward.
Since its launch in 2021, it soared over 300% to its all-time high last year.
With PENDLE trading -44% from that high, current prices could represent a nice discount.
RENDER: Where Decentralized AI Thrives
Video rendering is probably the hottest narrative most people have never heard of.
That’s because it’s full of projects that operate behind the scenes. But it empowers media that is much flashier than the process itself.
Think of it this way: A standard HD video frame contains 2 million pixels — each involving up to 10 separate calculations (for position, color, saturation, etc.).
So, at 24 frames a second, a mere two hours of screen time requires a whopping 3.4 trillion calculations!
Now, think about your favorite animated movie, video game or metaverse. Can you imagine the number of calculations they needed?
Video rendering is one of the most computer-intensive tasks on the planet.
And before Render Network (RENDER, “B”), rendering services were limited to large companies with enough computer firepower for this kind of work. Because of this, the likes of Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud, were able to charge an arm and a leg for it.
Render’s genius was to cleverly exploit the fact that the vast majority of computers are used only a few hours a day. Its app allows you to rent out unused idle time on your machine in exchange for RENDER tokens.
Render aggregates these resources, from tens of thousands of computers around the world, for video rendering.
Which it can do faster and cheaper than the cloud computing giants.
That’s thanks to Render’s decentralized nature.
Unlike those big cloud computing services, Render has no hardware that needs to be stored in a physical building and serviced by expert technicians.
Those costs can add up quickly. Without them, Render can afford to charge less for its services.
And now, it turns out this same technology can also be used to train the neural nets at the heart of ChatGPT and other AI platforms. Which is another massive computer-intensive task.
This puts RENDER in a very exciting position where two of the hottest narratives in crypto — decentralized rendering and AI — converge.
First launched in 2020 for just 6 cents, RENDER now trades just over $5. But its previous all-time high sits north of $13.
In such an advantageous position, usage, adoption and token prices could keep going up … for a very long time.
PROMPT: Bring Average Users to the DeFi AI Revolution
Launched on April 11, 2025, Wayfinder (PROMPT, Not Yet Rated) is still mostly unknown among crypto investors.
But I don’t think that’ll be the case for long. In fact, Wayfinder could be even bigger than PENDLE — which, you recall, opened the vast fixed-income market to DeFi.
Wayfinder has the potential to open up an even bigger market. One that virtually anyone with a cellphone and an internet connection can access.
And they can do it by simply talking to the blockchain.
It’s no secret that AI has been a hot narrative in crypto. Heck, it’s dominated headlines across markets in the past year.
But Wayfinder is not your typical AI-driven platform.
Sure, it is designed to enhance interactions between artificial intelligence and blockchain environments. But what really sets it apart is how it uses natural language to create autonomous AI agents called “Shells.”
Shells are crypto bots with individual personalities. They can learn, influence and accumulate on-chain resources,
That means Wayfinder users do not need to understand how to code the complex algorithms AI agents run on. Instead, average folks like you or I can speak plainly to create an AI that does exactly what we want it to.
For example, Shells can execute …
- token swaps,
- smart contracts,
- DeFi strategies and …
- bridging assets across chains.
All in ways that optimize speed and cost. All initiated and directed by natural language commands.
Look, merely being able to talk to crypto (in plain English) to get stuff done … is an immense breakthrough all by itself.
By democratizing AI blockchain access in this way, Wayfinder could potentially open up, introduce and connect virtually the entire sentient world to crypto.
Talk about mass adoption! It simply doesn’t get more massive than this.
Investors with long time-horizons and robust risk tolerance quite naturally see potential to change the world on such a grand scale … as a seedbed for vast future fortunes.
PROMPT, Wayfinder’s native token, is currently up 76% from its launch price.
But, unlike PENDLE or RNDR, it doesn’t have a complete cycle under its belt. That means we don’t have a precedent for how PROMPT will react in a more risk-off environment.
Still, if things work out as expected, Wayfinder could be an opportunity much like the very early days of crypto … when you could still buy Bitcoin for under a dollar.
Of course, only you can decide which cryptos are right for your portfolio.
If you want to keep an eye on their performance, I suggest you add them to your watchlist right here on the Weiss Ratings website.
Best,
Bob Czeschin
