Key Points

• Cathie Wood recently added Bitmine Immersion Technologies to three of her Ark Invest ETFs.

• Bitmine is following in the footsteps of Strategy and other companies that have added cryptocurrencies to their balance sheets.

• Bitmine's core business is Bitcoin mining, but Wood considers it a "digital asset treasury" company.

• 10 stocks we like better than Bitmine Immersion Technologies ›

Cathie Wood is one of Wall Street's most closely followed investment managers. Wood founded Ark Investment Management in 2014 with a focus on disruptive innovation, and has endeared herself to investors with her transparent, social-media-friendly approach to portfolio management.

A longtime crypto bull, Wood recently started a position in Bitmine Immersion Technologies (NYSEMKT: BMNR). Ark's ETFs purchased 4.4 million shares on July 21. Bitmine chugged 2% higher the following day, but that's a drop in the bucket compared to the stock's 435% gain since it debuted on the public markets in June. Is now the time to follow Wood and get in on this stock.

Where to invest $1,000 right now? Our analyst team just revealed what they believe are the 10 best stocks to buy right now. Continue »

All in on Ethereum

Bitmine's core business is mining Bitcoin. The company claims that its immersion-cooled mining technology is more cost-effective and environmentally friendly than conventional Bitcoin mining systems. Bitmine also offers mining-as-a-service and Bitcoin treasury consulting.

For its fiscal 2024, which ended Aug. 31, 2024, Bitmine reported $3.3 million in revenue, a 413% year-over-year increase. The lion's share of its revenue came from mining. While the company reported a net loss of $3.29 million, its net cash used in operating activities was a loss of $28,753 -- a dramatic improvement over the $809,715 loss in 2023.

On June 5, Bitmine stock began trading on the New York Stock Exchange with little fanfare, closing at $7.75 per share. Shortly after, the company began buying Bitcoin, following in the footsteps of MicroStrategy (doing business as Strategy) and other companies that have added the cryptocurrency to their balance sheets.

Image source: Getty Images.

Here's where things take an interesting turn. On June 30, Bitmine said it was pivoting to Ethereum as its primary financial reserve. The company announced a $250 million private placement of common stock to bankroll its first Ethereum purchase, and named market strategist and outspoken crypto bull Tom Lee as chairman of the board. The share price skyrocketed 696% in one trading day.

The stock has been on a roller-coaster ride since then, peaking at $161 a share in early July before settling into a tighter trading range. As of the closing bell on July 24, Bitmine stock was trading at around $42 a share. Meanwhile, Ethereum is up nearly 139% over the past three months.

How it's using Cathie Wood's money

As of July 17, Bitmine Immersion Technologies held 300,657 Ethereum tokens -- 60,000 of which were via in-the-money options -- worth more than $1 billion. The company's publicly stated goal is to acquire and stake 5% of the overall Ethereum supply.

Bitmine has said it pivoted to Ethereum because of its utility as a facilitator of smart contracts, stablecoin payments, and decentralized finance transactions. Stablecoins, in particular, are seeing mainstream adoption by consumers, merchants, and financial services providers, and Lee has called them "the ChatGPT of crypto."

"Acquiring $1 billion of ETH is a clear signal of our conviction in Ethereum's long-term value," Bitmine CEO Jonathan Bates said in a press release.

Bitmine said it plans to use the net proceeds from Wood's investment to purchase more Ethereum.

Is Bitmine a buy?

Wood isn't the only high-profile investor to start a position in Bitmine. Earlier this month, tech mogul Peter Thiel disclosed a 9.1% stake in Bitmine through his venture capital funds.

While Bitmine's core business is Bitcoin mining, stockpiling Ethereum has completely changed its value proposition for investors. You won't find any pure-play Bitcoin miners in Wood's flagship Ark Innovation ETF. That's because Wood considers Bitmine a "digital asset treasury" company.

"These companies could be the next-gen asset managers in the on-chain capital markets age," Wood asserted in a post on X.

Bitmine reported $1.2 million in revenue for its first quarter of fiscal 2025, which ended on Nov. 30, 2024. That's a 135% year-over-year increase. The company reported a net loss attributable to common shareholders of $3.9 million, compared to $930,000 in the year-ago quarter. The increase was mainly due to an accounting adjustment related to preferred stock, according to the company.

The price-to-sales (P/S) ratio can be a useful metric when comparing the valuations of companies that aren't profitable. With a P/S ratio of 16 on a trailing-12-month basis, Bitmine is trading at a premium compared to other crypto miners.

BMNR PS Ratio data by YCharts

While Bitmine's top line is growing at an impressive clip, it's clear to me that investors are piling in because of its massive stockpile of Ethereum, not its underlying fundamentals. Ultimately, this is an unprofitable company that's selling shares of common stock to buy Ethereum.

With $1 billion in Ethereum on its balance sheet, I would expect Bitmine's fortunes to be closely tied to the price action in Ethereum -- more so than Bitmine's fundamentals. And that raises the question: As an investor, why not just buy Ethereum directly?

Should you invest $1,000 in Bitmine Immersion Technologies right now?

Before you buy stock in Bitmine Immersion Technologies, consider this:

The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy now… and Bitmine Immersion Technologies wasn’t one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years.

Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $636,628!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $1,063,471!*

Now, it’s worth noting Stock Advisor’s total average return is 1,041% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 183% for the S&P 500. Don’t miss out on the latest top 10 list, available when you join Stock Advisor.

See the 10 stocks »

*Stock Advisor returns as of July 21, 2025

Josh Cable has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Bitcoin and Ethereum. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

Key Points

• The iShares Ethereum Trust (ETHA) has attracted more assets than any other Ethereum ETF, with 42% of asset inflows in just the past month.

• BlackRock's backing provides institutional credibility and virtually unlimited financial resources behind the fund.

• Buying Ethereum through an ETF eliminates the need for crypto wallets, special exchanges, and fractional coin calculations.

• 10 stocks we like better than iShares Ethereum Trust - iShares Ethereum Trust ETF ›

Exchange-traded funds (ETFs) based on the real-time price of Ethereum (CRYPTO: ETH) have been around for a year now. Since the funds were approved and launched in July 2024, Ethereum has gained 7% while the S&P 500 (SNPINDEX: ^GSPC) rose 18%. The leading ETFs have done a great job of tracking this performance precisely, even if the cryptocurrency has been lagging behind stocks recently.

But one ETF stands apart from the rest in many ways. If you're planning to enter the Ethereum market via an ETF, the iShares Ethereum Trust (NASDAQ: ETHA) should be at the top of your list. Apart from having the most assets under management (AUM) in its category, the iShares ETF also comes with low fees and a proven fund family.

Where to invest $1,000 right now? Our analyst team just revealed what they believe are the 10 best stocks to buy right now. Learn More »

So if you have $500 to spend on a crypto investment today, here's why you should consider the iShares Ethereum Trust.

Is Ethereum a good investment?

Ethereum is often more volatile than the larger Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC) cryptocurrency. For instance, the two crypto giants have both posted approximately 1,200% gains in the last five years, but Ethereum's path to this peak had many more peaks and valleys along the way. The S&P 500 is basically flatlining next to both, even in the midst of the generative artificial intelligence boom:

Ethereum Price data by YCharts

Now, Ethereum serves a very different purpose than Bitcoin. Instead of a fundamental wealth-holding tool, Ethereum's smart contracts help app developers manage financial tools and trends in a global blockchain ledger. So Ethereum's value doesn't spring from a scarce supply, but from real-world usage of the resulting programs.

That makes Ethereum a promising investment if you feel like the financial world could use a whole new set of basic tools. Ethereum-based apps can track ownership of physical assets, execute financial transactions automatically, or manage your digital wallet securely. The Ethereum ledger is readable anytime, from anywhere.

At the same time, its encryption effectively makes all of this transaction data immune to hacking and fraud attacks. On this platform, developers can build a wide variety of financial apps, mobile games, and so on.

So if you see a market for this sort of thing in the long run, Ethereum has led the blockchain-based app development space for years. It's the industry standard -- for good reason. And that should make Ethereum a solid investment over the years, as decentralized app development continues to gain traction.

Image source: Getty Images.

Why buy via an Ethereum ETF?

Buying Ethereum directly often means setting up a new account with a different type of brokerage -- one that can handle cryptocurrency trades rather than stock transactions. You also need to get comfortable with a different type of transaction, where you're usually trading fractions of a digital coin rather than batches of full shares of a stock. Prices are always changing, and you have to figure out where to store your new Ethereum coins.

ETFs make the whole process much easier, assuming you already have a stock-trading brokerage account. These funds act just like stocks, with shares usually priced in a comfortable range. A few iShares Ethereum Trust shares at $27 apiece can be more comfortable than a single Ethereum coin at $3,640.

What makes the iShares ETF special?

As mentioned, the iShares fund is more popular and therefore more liquid than other Ethereum-based ETFs. This makes trading safer and easier, with more stable share prices and quicker transactions.

It's part of the world-famous iShares fund family, next to the even more popular iShares Bitcoin ETF (NASDAQ: IBIT) and the massive iShares Core S&P 500 ETF (NYSEMKT: IVV). Financial services giant BlackRock runs the show, giving investors the peace of mind that comes with essentially bottomless financial backing.

And like most of its iShares cousins, this one comes with a low fee ratio. At 0.25% per year, it's not exactly the cheapest Ethereum ETF to own, but it comes close to the lowest-cost Grayscale Ethereum Mini Trust (NYSEMKT: ETH) at 0.15%. The BlackRock backing and world-class liquidity can make up for this small gap, and some Ethereum ETFs come with fee ratios as high as 2.5%.

The iShares Ethereum Trust is only pulling away from the competition, too. With 42% of AUM inflows over the last month, this fund added more AUM than any other Ethereum ETF has done year to date.

You should consider the iShares Ethereum Trust before any other fund in this category. It's a great place to put your next $500 (about 18 shares) of investable cash to work. Market makers broadly agree, judging by the dominant inflows of more funding.

Should you invest $1,000 in iShares Ethereum Trust - iShares Ethereum Trust ETF right now?

Before you buy stock in iShares Ethereum Trust - iShares Ethereum Trust ETF, consider this:

The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy now… and iShares Ethereum Trust - iShares Ethereum Trust ETF wasn’t one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years.

Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $636,628!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $1,063,471!*

Now, it’s worth noting Stock Advisor’s total average return is 1,041% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 183% for the S&P 500. Don’t miss out on the latest top 10 list, available when you join Stock Advisor.

See the 10 stocks »

*Stock Advisor returns as of July 21, 2025

Anders Bylund has positions in Bitcoin, Ethereum, iShares Bitcoin Trust, and iShares Ethereum Trust - iShares Ethereum Trust ETF. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Bitcoin and Ethereum. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

• A West Point official said in December that Pete Hegseth hadn't applied to the military academy.
• Hegseth proved he had been accepted, prompting attacks from Republicans and calls to investigate.
• Internal emails released to BI show staffers had to query an "out-of-use database" to find the record.

Recently released West Point records shed new light on exactly how the December snafu over Pete Hegseth's admission to the prestigious military academy happened.

On the morning of December 11, Hegseth wrote on X that the investigative news website ProPublica was about to run a "knowingly false" story saying that he hadn't been admitted to the US Military Academy, where many of America's Army officers are trained.

ProPublica denied Hegseth's claim, saying it had simply asked Hegseth to respond to a statement by a West Point public affairs official who told the news outlet that Hegseth hadn't even applied, much less been admitted.

At the time, Hegseth and his allies used the incident to blame West Point and the media. The new records show the mistake was West Point's, which neglected to review an old archive of the academy's thousands of past applicants before the controversy took off.

Internal emails, released to Business Insider under the Freedom of Information Act, showed West Point staffers exchanging emails on December 10 about Hegseth's claim to have been admitted, after he produced a letter as proof.

"Look what they now provided??" Theresa Brinkerhoff, a public affairs official, wrote to another West Point employee.

In another email thread, an employee whose name was redacted wrote, "anyone can generate an acceptance letter...doesnt mean its legit."

"Very true," Brinkerhoff replied.

By the afternoon of the 10th, West Point staff seemed to have realized their mistake. "Hes in there," an employee whose name was redacted wrote in an email. "Its in an old archived table," the person said, typing out a line of search query language to demonstrate how the admissions record could be found.

"The record shows that he declined the offer," the employee wrote.

Hegseth ended up going to Princeton, where he studied politics, played basketball, and joined the Reserve Officers' Training Corps. He served in the Army National Guard after graduation and moved into conservative activism and media jobs.

Hegseth has been a magnet for criticism in his six months as defense secretary. His nomination to lead the Pentagon was looking uncertain last December amid allegations of alcohol abuse and mistreatment of women. Hegseth denied the claims and promised to stop drinking.

Terrence Kelley, the head of West Point's communications office, apologized to ProPublica the afternoon of the 10th. "My sincere apologies for the incorrect information," he wrote. "It was inadvertent."

Hegseth apparently didn't get the memo. He posted at 8:10 am the next day that ProPublica was about to run a false story.

Kelley told colleagues on December 11 that it was important that they get "official word" to ProPublica that Hegseth was telling the truth. "Confirming Hegseth's claim probably kills any interest Propublica has in the story but the longer we delay response, the more likely that becomes a story," he wrote.

In a later email to ProPublica, which never ran a story about Hegseth's admission, he called the flub an "honest mistake."

By the afternoon of the 11th, West Point's press office had received inquiries about Hegseth's post from eight other media outlets. That same day, Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas asked the school's leadership to look into how the statement was made.

"The academy takes this situation seriously and apologizes for this administrative error," West Point told media outlets.

"Following the release of inaccurate admissions information last December, West Point implemented additional guidance for the proper review and release of any information to outside parties," Kelley, the West Point spokesperson, told BI. "We regret the error and are committed to ensuring it does not happen again."

"Reporters do their job by asking tough questions to people in power, which is exactly what happened here," a spokesperson from ProPublica said. "Responsible news organizations only publish what they can verify, which is why we didn't publish a story once Mr. Hegseth provided documentation that corrected the statements from West Point."

The Pentagon and Cotton didn't respond to requests for comment.

Key Points

• Solana could draw in more developers with the speed of its transactions.

• Cardano's recent ecosystem upgrades could make it a lot more useful.

• XRP could gain momentum as a bridge currency for cross-border transfers.

• 10 stocks we like better than Solana ›

Many investors flocked back to cryptocurrencies during the past year as lower interest rates made speculative investments more attractive again. Earlier this month, I said the two big blue-chip cryptocurrencies -- Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC) and Ethereum (CRYPTO: ETH) -- were still great places to park $1,000 for a few decades.

But today, I'll take a look at three riskier cryptocurrencies -- Solana (CRYPTO: SOL), Cardano (CRYPTO: ADA), and XRP (CRYPTO: XRP) -- that could also have a bright future. While they might be a bit riskier than Bitcoin or Etherereum, they might be worth a more modest $500 investment.

Where to invest $1,000 right now? Our analyst team just revealed what they believe are the 10 best stocks to buy right now. Continue »

Image source: Getty Images.

Solana

Solana's blockchain blends together the energy-efficient proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus mechanism used by Ethereum with its own proof-of-history (PoH) mechanism. That combination gives it a theoretical top speed of 65,000 transactions per second (TPS), compared to Ethereum's theoretical maximum speed of just 30 TPS. In real world transactions, which are limited by network congestion and other factors, Solana has a daily average speed of over 1,400 TPS -- compared to Ethereum's average speed of 19 TPS.

As a PoS blockchain, Solana supports the development of decentralized apps (dApps) and other crypto assets through its smart contracts. Since it's faster than Ethereum and other PoS blockchains, it's becoming a popular platform for building decentralized finance (DeFi) apps and non-fungible tokens (NFTs). Visa, Shopify, and other companies have also integrated Solana Pay (its peer-to-peer payment protocol for accepting stablecoins, Solana, and other Solana-based tokens) into their own digital ecosystems.

Solana is an inflationary token with no maximum supply, so it can't be valued by its scarcity like Bitcoin. But the growth of its ecosystem could gradually boost its value. Artemis Analytics estimates that Solana only serves about 1.5 million daily active users (DAUs) today, but VanEck thinks it could eventually rise to more than 100 million DAUs in the next five years in a bull case scenario. We should take that rosy outlook with a grain of salt, but Solana could still have plenty of room to grow.

Cardano

Cardano, which was created by Ethereum co-founder Charles Hoskinson, is another PoS blockchain that supports the development of decentralized apps. Like Solana, Cardano is faster than Ethereum with a daily average speed of about 250 TPS. By deploying its new "hydra heads," which process some of its transactions off-chain to alleviate the congestion on its main blockchain, it aims to achieve average speeds more than 1,000 TPS.

The deployment of those heads could make Cardano a more popular platform for the development of DeFi, gaming, and enterprise apps. Its new Mithril protocol, which aggregates all of the data across its blockchain into a single compressed index -- should further improve its accessibility for users and developers. It also recently enabled the transfer of Bitcoin assets on its own blockchain, and that upgrade could draw more Bitcoin-backed stablecoins to its ecosystem and support the growth of its DeFi apps.

Cardano is an inflationary token, but its speed and recent upgrades could make it a more attractive platform for developers. Assuming that happens, its price might stabilize and rise over the next few decades as it catches up to blue-chip cryptos like Bitcoin and Ethereum.

XRP

XRP is a cryptocurrency created by the founders of the fintech company Ripple Labs. Its entire supply of 100 billion tokens was mined before its launch in 2012, and Ripple sold those tokens to fund its own expansion. Those sales caught the attention of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which sued Ripple for allegedly selling unregistered securities. Those lawsuits dragged on until last year, when a court slapped Ripple with a lighter-than-expected fine and ruled that XRP wasn't an unlicensed security when sold to individual investors.

That mostly favorable ruling drew back a stampede of bulls. XRP was relisted on the major crypto exchanges, Grayscale relaunched its XRP Trust as a closed-end fund (CEF), and several crypto firms submitted their applications for XRP exchange-traded funds (ETFs). But looking beyond that near-term boost, XRP still has other irons in the fire.

Ripple is promoting the usage of XRP as a bridge currency to speed up foreign currency transactions (by temporarily converting both currencies into XRP) at lower fees. It also launched pilot programs with several central banks to use XRP to bridge the liquidity between their national central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), and it recently applied for a U.S. banking license, which would enable it to integrate XRP into more cross-border transfers. To make it more relevant with developers, it's been adding support for lightweight smart contracts (mainly used for payments instead of apps) to its blockchain. The rapid expansion of that ecosystem could drive XRP's price higher during the next few decades.

Should you invest $1,000 in Solana right now?

Before you buy stock in Solana, consider this:

The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy now… and Solana wasn’t one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years.

Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $652,133!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $1,056,790!*

Now, it’s worth noting Stock Advisor’s total average return is 1,048% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 180% for the S&P 500. Don’t miss out on the latest top 10 list, available when you join Stock Advisor.

See the 10 stocks »

*Stock Advisor returns as of July 15, 2025

Leo Sun has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Bitcoin, Ethereum, Shopify, Solana, Visa, and XRP. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

Key Points

• Shiba Inu has not enjoyed the same success as many other cryptos this year.

• Shiba Inu is largely viewed as a meme token that lacks real-world utility.

• But there is one catalyst that could help the token take off, although it is far from a certainty.

• 10 stocks we like better than Shiba Inu ›

Shiba Inu (CRYPTO: SHIB) has been a top cryptocurrency since it sprung to life in 2020, but that's largely because of its cult-like following on social media as one of the major meme tokens. Many investors still don't take the token seriously because it lacks a real use case or technical advantage over any of its peers. Still, there is one catalyst that could help Shiba Inu catch fire.

Could a negative eventually become a positive?

Shiba Inu has never had a lot to offer from a use-case perspective, aside from its fervent community on social media that has made it a top 20 cryptocurrency by market cap. Shiba Inu started as an ERC-20 token, meaning it was developed on the Ethereum network and abided by a set of principles that any token wishing to operate on the network must follow.

Where to invest $1,000 right now? Our analyst team just revealed what they believe are the 10 best stocks to buy right now. Continue »

Image source: Getty Images.

In 2023, Shiba Inu launched Shibarium, a Layer-2 solution on Ethereum to help ease congestion issues on the network. Shibarium essentially lets Shiba Inu settle transactions off of Ethereum's network, which is intended to scale the Shiba Inu ecosystem and make transactions cheaper. The Layer-2 solution has also led developers to start building decentralized applications on Shibarium, offering more utility than it once had.

Like many cryptocurrencies, one issue with Shiba Inu is its large supply of tokens, which makes it difficult to benefit from any kind of supply-and-demand dynamic.

After all, one of the reasons investors love Bitcoin is because there will only be 21 million tokens ever mined. Shiba Inu launched with nearly 1 quadrillion tokens. However, the supply has been greatly reduced. Shiba Inu founder Ryoshi, who remains anonymous, gave 505 trillion SHIB tokens to Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin, who put most of these tokens in a dead wallet and then donated the rest.

Today, there are 589.5 trillion tokens in circulation, according to CoinMarketCap. Now, that's still a huge amount, but if Shiba Inu can keep reducing total supply over time, perhaps demand will pick up and drive the price higher. Shibarium actually created a burning mechanism, which moves 70% of base transaction fees into SHIB tokens that then get burned and deleted from the total supply. The purpose is to bring down total supply over time.

Still, since the launch of Shibarium, only about 5.5 trillion tokens, or less than 1% of the total supply, have been burned, if you back out the 505 trillion that were given to Buterin.

Can the supply actually decline meaningfully?

Shibarium has certainly made progress in reducing supply and billions of SHIB tokens are being burned each month. But billions doesn't mean much when you are talking in trillions. Many estimates indicate that it will still take many, many years at the current pace to reduce the supply of Shiba Inu to the point where the supply-and-demand balance would become an attractive selling point to investors.

Perhaps Ryoshi can give away more tokens or the burn rate will continue to pick up at an exponential rate that would start to make a meaningful impact, but it's unclear whether this will ever happen.

I will say, I do think the addition of Shibarium gives Shiba Inu more legitimacy than it had as just a meme token. Unfortunately, I don't think it's enough yet to make the token a buy. Shiba Inu is still highly speculative and very risky for investors. However, investors should continue to monitor the situation for improvements to the burn rate and lower supply.

Should you invest $1,000 in Shiba Inu right now?

Before you buy stock in Shiba Inu, consider this:

The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy now… and Shiba Inu wasn’t one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years.

Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $652,133!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $1,056,790!*

Now, it’s worth noting Stock Advisor’s total average return is 1,048% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 180% for the S&P 500. Don’t miss out on the latest top 10 list, available when you join Stock Advisor.

See the 10 stocks »

*Stock Advisor returns as of July 15, 2025

Bram Berkowitz has positions in Bitcoin and Ethereum. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Bitcoin and Ethereum. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

Key Points

• Market bubbles can form when macroeconomic and industry trends combine.

• Cryptocurrency's last big bubble was in 2021.

• It is reasonable to wonder whether crypto is in a bubble right now.

• 10 stocks we like better than Bitcoin ›

Markets love a juicy narrative, and "crypto bubble 2.0" is certainly juicy. Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC) sits near $117,000, only a whisker from its all-time high set July 10, while big altcoins, such as Solana (CRYPTO: SOL), Ethereum (CRYPTO: ETH), and XRP (CRYPTO: XRP), have doubled or better since mid-2023. Yet bubble talk is cheap. History punishes investors who sell first and ask questions later, so it pays to look under the hood before slapping the B-word on today's rally.

Let's unpack why prices are higher, why the mood is nothing like the euphoria of 2021, and what that means for long-term investors. If you pay careful attention here, it just might save you from timing mistakes that haunt your portfolio for years.

Where to invest $1,000 right now? Our analyst team just revealed what they believe are the 10 best stocks to buy right now. Continue »

Image source: Getty Images.

Fundamentals are in line with pricing

A bubble, by definition, is a price divorced from fundamentals. That diagnosis is tricky in crypto because fundamentals evolve fast, but a few data points stand out.

First, demand in the sector is now predominantly institutional, not retail. U.S. spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) have sucked in roughly $50 billion since launching 18 months ago. Those coins are locked away in cold storage for a steady trickle of staking fee income, which is hardly the stuff of manic speculation.

Second, the macro backdrop is set to improve rather than worsen. The Federal Reserve held its benchmark interest rate steady in June but penciled in two cuts before the end of the year, with potentially more to follow in 2026. Looser monetary policy historically expands the money supply and the risk appetite, which is exactly what happened during the last big crypto bubble in 2021. If cuts arrive on schedule, crypto could enjoy a liquidity tailwind that was absent during 2022's wipeout.

Third, utility on leading chains is finally visible, which is to say there's a concrete reason to buy the native tokens of those chains. Solana's weekly network fees and its application revenue are surging to new highs -- people are using its decentralized finance (DeFi) applications, and platform operators are generating money as a result.

XRP's ledger, meanwhile, is onboarding tokenized U.S. Treasuries and bank-friendly compliance tools, making it a more attractive home for institutional capital. That fee and transaction revenue is small in absolute terms, but it proves that these coins are being bought to pave the way for real workloads, not just speculation.

Separately from the above, one thing that people tend to be curious about is how meme coins fit into the picture. Yes, meme coins exist, and they still spike to silly valuations of $1 billion or more. However, the entire meme coin cohort is currently valued at only $64.1 billion, just a smidgen of crypto's $3.7 trillion total market capitalization.

And it isn't as though new meme stars are emerging every day in a way that captures attention outside of the limited circles of crypto insiders.

Classic bubble signals aren't even present

When the market is at its euphoric peaks, there are many tell-tale signs, ranging from soaring retail inflows to sky-high use of leverage and nearly incessant dinner table chatter from people who don't usually invest. None of those are flashing red today.

Start with sentiment. The Crypto Fear & Greed Index, offered by CoinMarketCap, reads 67 ("greed"), well below the 90-plus extremes logged in early 2021 and late 2024. Greed is in control at this moment, yes, but it's hardly mania by historical standards.

Web search interest tells a similar story. Searches for "Bitcoin" remain near six-month lows even as its price grinds higher, indicating that newcomers are not piling in en masse. Other signals, like the app store ranking of crypto wallet and trading apps, also look ice cold.

On-chain data is equally sober. Glassnode, a crypto data provider, calculates that a "super majority" of holders sit on unrealized profits after Bitcoin's rebound past $107,000. This implies that there could be some profit-taking in store, but also that almost nobody is under pressure to sell.

Furthermore, leverage in derivatives markets sits well below 2021 peaks. The odds of a liquidation spiral sending the price downward are low.

Could sentiment overheat relatively soon? Absolutely.

The macroeconomic tailwinds look quite favorable for the entire crypto sector right now, as does government policy, and as does monetary policy in the near term. And with institutional capital piling in, a lot could happen to ignite super-positive sentiment as soon as this fall.

But for now, no crypto traders are flashing their newly purchased Lamborghinis on social media. Nor are the valuations of most of the crypto majors overextended compared to 2021. So, don't get scared out of the market by talk of a bubble.

In sum, the data indicates that we are in a warm but far from overheated market. Keep an eye on the key indicators so that you will be ahead of the game if they start to signal too much froth.

Should you invest $1,000 in Bitcoin right now?

Before you buy stock in Bitcoin, consider this:

The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy now… and Bitcoin wasn’t one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years.

Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $671,477!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $1,010,880!*

Now, it’s worth noting Stock Advisor’s total average return is 1,047% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 180% for the S&P 500. Don’t miss out on the latest top 10 list, available when you join Stock Advisor.

See the 10 stocks »

*Stock Advisor returns as of July 7, 2025

Alex Carchidi has positions in Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, and XRP. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

Key Points

• Cryptocurrency prices boil down to the basics: supply and demand.

• Bitcoin continues to hold advantages in adoption and tokenomics over other cryptocurrencies, also known as altcoins.

• The government's spending habits bode well for Bitcoin's long-term price action.

• 10 stocks we like better than Bitcoin ›

The cryptocurrency market has been heating up since the Trump administration assumed office in January.

President Donald Trump campaigned on supporting cryptocurrencies, and his actions have followed through on this promise. He signed an executive order to establish a strategic federal reserve for digital assets and has broadly loosened the regulatory grip on the industry.

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But when it comes to deciding the smartest cryptocurrency to buy right now, it may still pay to stick with the basics. Most cryptocurrencies are highly speculative investments. That said, Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC) appears poised to build on its years of impressive returns.

I'll explain below why Bitcoin remains the smartest cryptocurrency to invest $1,000 into today.

Image source: Getty Images.

Understanding how market forces affect Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency prices

The price of any traded asset at any given moment boils down to market forces -- what someone is willing to sell something for, versus what someone is willing to pay for it. It's the fundamental basics of supply and demand.

Some assets represent tangible things. For instance, real estate is physical property that you can appraise. Stocks represent ownership in companies, with revenue and profits. Having something tangible helps someone determine how much to pay for it.

However, cryptocurrencies are digital assets, often with little or no tangible value to support their market prices. As a result, cryptocurrencies can be highly volatile. Their long-term price direction depends on factors that ultimately influence that delicate balance between supply and demand.

It's that simple. Bitcoin, the original cryptocurrency, has been such a lucrative investment over the years because it continues to get this right.

Bitcoin's advantages over most altcoins

For starters, Bitcoin has a capped maximum supply, and new coins enter circulation at a slower rate following each halving, when mining rewards decline. Meanwhile, interest (demand) in Bitcoin has risen over time as it gains support from individuals, institutional investors, and even corporations and governments. For example, some companies have begun carrying Bitcoin on their balance sheets instead of cash and equivalents, and the U.S. government will start stockpiling Bitcoin thanks to Trump's executive order earlier this year.

Investors looking to invest in altcoins, or any cryptocurrency aside from Bitcoin, must consider their purpose and tokenomics. Many altcoins are meme coins, designed with little intention of real-world utility. Their market prices depend on sustained popularity.

Ethereum and XRP are popular altcoins, but both come with some issues. The Ethereum network's token, Ether, has an unlimited supply, which applies downward pressure on the token's market price. Meanwhile, XRP's creator, Ripple Labs, remains entangled in a civil lawsuit with U.S. regulators after a judge recently rejected their efforts to settle the case. It could weigh on XRP's real-world adoption and its market price until the litigation is resolved.

Cryptocurrencies as a whole have become increasingly popular across the investing community, but Bitcoin remains, at least for now, the most widely adopted and valued cryptocurrency by a wide margin.

Why Bitcoin's price can continue to rise

Bitcoin may not represent property or a business, but society has given it value as an anti-inflationary asset. This purpose drives higher interest in Bitcoin, and it's an important distinction that separates it from other cryptocurrencies at the moment.

One might think of Bitcoin as a digital version of gold. It doesn't have as much practical use as fiat currency, but it is valued, and there is only a limited amount of it. Just like gold, Bitcoin's price, denominated in U.S. dollars, continues to increase as more dollars flood the economy.

US M2 Money Supply data by YCharts

Bitcoin has risen much faster than gold, but it also started at a much smaller value. Even today, Bitcoin's fully diluted market value of $2.3 trillion is a fraction of the world's gold supply, which is about $22.3 trillion. I'm not sure that Bitcoin will ultimately match gold's value, but it's reasonable to think that there's more upside ahead, given the huge disparity.

The U.S. government's consistent fiscal deficit helps contribute to an expanding money supply. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the newly passed "big, beautiful bill" will likely increase the U.S.'s national debt during the next decade, which bodes well for Bitcoin and other assets priced in U.S. dollars.

These tailwinds, combined with a growing interest in Bitcoin from various parties worldwide, make it the clear choice for investors looking to invest $1,000 in cryptocurrencies today.

Should you invest $1,000 in Bitcoin right now?

Before you buy stock in Bitcoin, consider this:

The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy now… and Bitcoin wasn’t one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years.

Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $671,477!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $1,010,880!*

Now, it’s worth noting Stock Advisor’s total average return is 1,047% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 180% for the S&P 500. Don’t miss out on the latest top 10 list, available when you join Stock Advisor.

See the 10 stocks »

*Stock Advisor returns as of July 7, 2025

Justin Pope has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Bitcoin, Ethereum, and XRP. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

Key Points

• The crypto market is heating up again.

• Bitcoin remains the best "blue chip" token to buy.

• Ethereum should continue to lead the developer-oriented market.

Many cryptocurrencies skyrocketed during the buying frenzy for speculative investments in 2020 and 2021. That rally was fueled by near-zero interest rates, stimulus checks, social media buzz, and commission-free trading platforms. But in 2022 and 2023, many of those tokens crashed as interest rates rose and a new crypto winter began.

Over the past year and a half, investors have gradually pivoted back toward cryptocurrencies as interest rates declined and President Donald Trump's crypto-friendly administration took the helm. So if you're still bullish on cryptocurrencies, it might be a great time to go shopping again.

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Image source: Getty Images.

You shouldn't stake your life savings in cryptocurrencies, but it might be smart to set aside a modest $1,000 in a few tokens that could soar over the next few decades. I'd personally stick with the two largest cryptocurrencies -- Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC) and Ethereum (CRYPTO: ETH) -- instead of the smaller and more speculative meme coins.

Bitcoin

Bitcoin, the world's most valuable cryptocurrency, still has plenty of upside potential for a few simple reasons. First, it's still mined with an energy-intensive proof-of-work (PoW) consensus mechanism, which becomes more costly every four years with each "halving" that cuts its mining rewards in half. Its maximum supply is also capped at 21 million tokens. Nearly 19.9 million of those Bitcoins have already been mined, and the final token is expected to be mined in 2140. There isn't much room for long-term inflation in this model.

Bitcoin's increasingly difficult mining process, scarcity, and deflationary nature make it more comparable to gold, silver, and other physical assets than many other cryptocurrencies. That makes it a potential hedge against inflation and the devaluation of fiat currencies.

Bitcoin's first spot price exchange-traded funds (ETFs), which were approved in January 2024, made it easier for retail and institutional investors to invest in the coin without a crypto wallet. Big companies like MicroStrategy (NASDAQ: MSTR) continued to accumulate Bitcoin, the Trump administration recently established a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve, and inflation-wracked countries like El Salvador and Central African Republic even adopted Bitcoin as a national currency for a while. All of those developments supported the notion that Bitcoin was becoming "digital gold."

So even though Bitcoin might seem pricey right now at roughly $110,000, it could have even more upside potential. Standard Chartered's analysts expect its price to climb to $500,000 by 2028, while Ark Invest's Cathie Wood sees it flying as high as $1.5 million by 2030. You should take those bullish estimates with a grain of salt, but Bitcoin could remain the best "blue chip" cryptocurrency to buy and hold for the next few decades.

Ethereum

Ether, the native token of the Ethereum blockchain, is the world's second most valuable cryptocurrency. It was originally a PoW token that was mined like Bitcoin, but it transitioned to the more energy-efficient proof-of-stake (PoS) mechanism in "The Merge" in 2022.

As a PoS token, Ether can no longer be mined. Instead, its investors "stake" their tokens on the blockchain to earn interest-like rewards. Ethereum's PoS blockchain also supports smart contracts, which can be used to develop decentralized apps (dApps) and other crypto assets. Its declining or rising network activity can either make it inflationary or deflationary, respectively, and it currently has a circulating supply of roughly 120.7 million tokens.

Ether is usually valued by the growth of its developer ecosystem and its transaction speeds instead of the scarcity of its tokens. Its core Level-1 blockchain is slower than PoS blockchains like Cardano, but it's assisted by faster Level-2 protocols that process the transactions off-chain before returning them to the Level-1 layer.

Ether's first spot price ETFs were also approved last year, but they only held the tokens in cold storage without passing on the staking rewards (about 3% to 5% annually) to their investors. That made the ETFs less appealing than Ether itself, but the next batch of ETFs might add those rewards.

Ethereum's next upgrade, "The Verge," will further improve its security features and lower its hardware requirements so it can run on smaller devices like smartphones. It's also expected to reduce its Layer-2 fees with "danksharding" upgrades to clear more space for fresh data.

At about $2,600, Ethereum still trades well below its all-time highs. But Cathie Wood predicts it could climb as high as $166,000 by 2032, and big institutional investors like BlackRock are still accumulating the token. Therefore, this developer-oriented token could still be a great investment for the next few decades.

Should you invest $1,000 in Bitcoin right now?

Before you buy stock in Bitcoin, consider this:

The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy now… and Bitcoin wasn’t one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years.

Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $699,558!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $976,677!*

Now, it’s worth noting Stock Advisor’s total average return is 1,060% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 180% for the S&P 500. Don’t miss out on the latest top 10 list, available when you join Stock Advisor.

See the 10 stocks »

*Stock Advisor returns as of June 30, 2025

Leo Sun has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Bitcoin and Ethereum. The Motley Fool recommends Standard Chartered Plc. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

Coinbase (NASDAQ: COIN) is a leading crypto exchange, but the business is so much more than that. It's a stablecoin giant, infrastructure company, and blockchain operator with tremendous growth opportunities in the future.

*Stock prices used were end-of-day prices of June 13, 2025. The video was published on June 13, 2025.

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Should you invest $1,000 in Coinbase Global right now?

Before you buy stock in Coinbase Global, consider this:

The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy now… and Coinbase Global wasn’t one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years.

Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $659,171!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $891,722!*

Now, it’s worth noting Stock Advisor’s total average return is 995% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 172% for the S&P 500. Don’t miss out on the latest top 10 list, available when you join Stock Advisor.

See the 10 stocks »

*Stock Advisor returns as of June 9, 2025

Suzanne Frey, an executive at Alphabet, is a member of The Motley Fool's board of directors. John Mackey, former CEO of Whole Foods Market, an Amazon subsidiary, is a member of The Motley Fool's board of directors. JPMorgan Chase is an advertising partner of Motley Fool Money. Travis Hoium has positions in Alphabet, Circle Internet Group, Coinbase Global, and Ethereum. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet, Amazon, Bitcoin, Ethereum, and JPMorgan Chase. The Motley Fool recommends Coinbase Global. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

Investors in XRP (CRYPTO: XRP) are in a good position today. The coin has broken above $2 and sports a market cap north of $127 billion, making it the world's fourth-largest cryptocurrency. It's seeing widespread adoption by institutional investors, and there are a plethora of other reasons to be bullish about XRP's future.

Yet three headwinds are blowing straight in its face, and they explain why the gains have cooled since March. None of them are fatal, but ignoring them is like pretending a stiff breeze won't slow a kayak. So let's look at each challenge and see what it might mean for long-term holders.

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1. Competitors want to eat its lunch

The first challenge is the chain's competition from other cryptocurrencies and fintechs.

Ethereum now anchors roughly $126 billion of the $240 billion stablecoin market, cementing its role as the default solution for dollar-denominated transfers in the crypto sector despite its frequent clunkiness and mediocre user experience on average. Every stablecoin dollar routed through Ethereum is one less unit that might have been transferred via the XRP Ledger (XRPL).

Meanwhile, traditional payment processors are rolling out the same kinds of cross-border tools that once made XRP look revolutionary.

Image source: Getty Images.

Visa just backed a fintech moving $12 billion a year in stablecoin settlements for businesses. Stripe, another payment processing company, is striking bank partnerships to do the same.

These companies own distribution channels, meaning that merchants already clear trillions of dollars through their pipes every year. If they add stablecoin rails, corporate treasurers have fewer reasons to bother with a crypto they have never held.

In theory, XRPL's speed and tiny fees still shine. In practice, network effects reward the chain where counterparties already keep accounts.

Unless Ripple, the business that issues XRP, can persuade the next wave of stablecoin issuers to launch natively on XRPL or deliver a blockbuster central-bank deal, the payments pie could keep enlarging without XRP securing a bigger slice.

2. Supply unlocks are problematic for some investors

For a value-oriented cryptocurrency like Bitcoin, the scarcity of coins is a major driver of higher prices, as new coins can only be produced at a very slow rate. So there's no untapped major reservoir of supply that buyers can reliably count on.

With XRP, supply trickles in like clockwork. Ripple's programmatic schedule releases 1 billion XRP from escrow on the first of every month. Roughly 80% of that sum is relocked and thus retained, but 100 million to 200 million coins still hit the float (get sold) in each cycle. At $2.15 per coin, that is $215 million of potential sell pressure every 30 days.

Annualized, the unlocked supply could reach 1.2 billion coins, equal to about 2% of XRP's circulating base of 58.9 billion. That dilution is mild compared with new token issuance elsewhere, yet it matters in a market where marginal buyers care about float, not total cap.

Every fresh tranche forces investors to absorb inventory before the price can advance. And aside from preventing prices from surging upward due to a supply shock, the mere existence of the tokens leaving escrow is enough to spook some investors and discourage them from buying anything at all.

3. Retail investor skepticism of crypto remains stubbornly high

Finally, market sentiment about the crypto sector as a whole is stuck in a rut that's likely dragging on XRP to some degree.

A Pew Research Center study from 2024 found 63% of U.S. adults have little to no confidence that today's crypto platforms are safe or reliable. Given XRP's commitment to offering compliance tools to help institutional investors and banks obey regulations, those fears are overblown, but people still have them. Another Pew survey, from 2022, found that 46% of people who actually bought crypto say performance has fallen short of expectations.

Skepticism translates into smaller purchases and slower conversion of the curious into the committed. That matters because retail investors still drive a big slice of crypto's price elasticity. Crypto fatigue is psychological, and bear market scars heal on their own timetable.

Assuming continued macro calm, a few years of visible real-world usage could flip the narrative. Until then, doubt will act like gravity on XRP's rallies -- but be aware that doesn't mean it can't grow significantly anyway.

Should you invest $1,000 in XRP right now?

Before you buy stock in XRP, consider this:

The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy now… and XRP wasn’t one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years.

Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $659,171!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $891,722!*

Now, it’s worth noting Stock Advisor’s total average return is 995% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 172% for the S&P 500. Don’t miss out on the latest top 10 list, available when you join Stock Advisor.

See the 10 stocks »

*Stock Advisor returns as of June 9, 2025

Alex Carchidi has positions in Bitcoin and Ethereum. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Bitcoin, Ethereum, Visa, and XRP. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

Good old Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC) is doing alright this year, trading 13% higher year-to-date on June 18. On the other hand, many altcoins are struggling. For example, the market-defining oracle coin Chainlink (CRYPTO: LINK) is down by 37% in 2025. Is Chainlink fading out for good, or could this be a great time to buy the falling coin?

Let's take a look.

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Bitcoin is running away from Chainlink

Rising Bitcoin prices don't always translate into strong returns from other cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin's dominance of the total crypto market has been surging since November 2022, rising from 38% to 64% in that 30-month period.

Chainlink had a total market value of $3.8 billion on November 30, 2022. That was about 0.44% of the crypto market as a whole. The coin price is up by 78% since then, far behind Bitcoin's 537% price jump. Chainlink's footprint on the crypto market has shrunk to 0.26%.

Why Chainlink isn't just a weaker Bitcoin

So Chainlink has underperformed Bitcoin in recent years -- but why?

First and foremost, Bitcoin is becoming a fairly standard asset nowadays. It's a limited-inflation value carrier, comparable to gold in many ways. Its value is based on computing time and electric bills rather than physical gold bars, but the idea of a limited-supply accounting asset is easily understood. People are doing some very traditional things with Bitcoin now, like building corporate cash reserves and launching exchange-traded funds based on Bitcoin prices.

Chainlink is a different beast. It's harder to grasp how this coin creates value -- and value storage isn't its main purpose.

As an oracle coin, Chainlink's job is to collect and distribute data throughout the cryptocurrency ecosystem. You can use it to read the current market prices of various cryptocurrencies, stocks, and other assets. Chainlink can also track weather data, real estate prices, flight times, and more.

This data comes in handy for smart contracts, automating things in the blockchain-based cryptocurrency world. With Chainlink's real-world data feeds, you can set up Ethereum (CRYPTO: ETH) smart contracts to take action. Like, sell this non-fungible token when its price reaches $100, or transfer some Bitcoin to an emergency fund when the wind speed in Tampa hits 80 mph.

These are simple examples, and developers can take more sophisticated actions. The smart contracts can be written for Ethereum or Solana (CRYPTO: SOL) or Avalanche (CRYPTO: AVAX), just to name a few popular platforms. And the common denominator is Chainlink. Other oracles exist, but none come close to Chainlink's market reach.

So if you want to make a Web3 app, or a decentralized finance tool, or some other program that depends on smart contracts, you pretty much have to rely on Chainlink's data. And every data request generates a tiny fee, which is distributed to coin holders who support data security by staking their Chainlink coins.

Chainlink's value creation makes sense when you think about it, but it's not as simple or obvious as the Bitcoin model. That's why Chainlink's price chart has lagged behind Bitcoin's recently -- setting patient investors up for greater long-term gains. This oracle coin won't be misunderstood and underestimated forever.

Image source: Getty Images.

Where Chainlink goes from here

Long story short, a Chainlink investment is a bet on smart contracts and the apps you can build around them. From tokenized real-world assets to blockchain-based digital wallets, Chainlink will build plenty of usage-based value as these next-generation financial management ideas go mainstream.

As such, I see a bright long-term future for Chainlink and its early investors. None of the catalysts I listed above have gained much traction yet, and Chainlink is waiting for the first killer app. It will probably never be a trillion-dollar asset, like Bitcoin is today, but there's plenty of room for wealth-building growth with much lower market caps.

Should you invest $1,000 in Chainlink right now?

Before you buy stock in Chainlink, consider this:

The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy now… and Chainlink wasn’t one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years.

Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $659,171!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $891,722!*

Now, it’s worth noting Stock Advisor’s total average return is 995% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 172% for the S&P 500. Don’t miss out on the latest top 10 list, available when you join Stock Advisor.

See the 10 stocks »

*Stock Advisor returns as of June 9, 2025

Anders Bylund has positions in Bitcoin, Chainlink, Ethereum, and Solana. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Avalanche, Bitcoin, Chainlink, Ethereum, and Solana. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

Nowhere is the Trump administration's pro-crypto stance more apparent than at the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The organization shook off its crypto caution and appears fully on board. It's dropped cases against crypto exchanges and looks set to approve a slew of crypto ETFs.

But before the SEC can go to the crypto moon, it still has some issues to resolve. One of those issues centers around staking. The SEC recently announced that paying staking rewards doesn't make a crypto into a security. However, it's been more circumspect on approving staking ETFs -- though that may change very soon.

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Image source: Getty Images.

The sticky question of staking

Staking is a way that proof-of-stake cryptos like Ethereum (CRYPTO: ETH) and Solana (CRYPTO: SOL) reward network participants for contributing to network security. To qualify, holders need to tie up their tokens, through solo staking, delegated staking, or on a centralized exchange. At time of writing (June 16), Coinbase pays around 2% annual percentage yield (APY) on Ethereum staking, and Solana pays 5% APY. That makes it an attractive -- and relatively low-risk -- proposition for investors.

Staking is different from crypto lend-earn schemes, such as those offered by the now-defunct Celsius and Voyager Digital. These generate yield by lending out your assets, and carry a lot more risk. In contrast, staking is baked into the individual blockchains.

It was still a bone of contention for the old SEC, which brought charges against crypto exchanges like Kraken for offering staking services in 2023. The new SEC is taking a different approach. At the end of May, it announced that most staked cryptos and staking services are not securities. For U.S. investors, this paves the way for crypto holdings to generate returns.

Staking ETFs are more complicated

The SEC is still hesitating on approving staking ETFs. There's concern over potential financial and security risks. Plus, ETFs need to qualify as investment companies, which means being in the business of securities -- and the SEC has just said that staked cryptos are not securities. It is a difficult circle to square. That's why the existing Ethereum ETFs do not give staking benefits.

At the end of May, the SEC wrote to ETF Opportunities Trust, the company behind the Ethereum and Solana ETFs that would have been the first to offer staking rewards. It raised several unresolved issues, one of which was whether the funds would meet the definition of an investment company.

Even so, change is in the air. Last week, the SEC asked seven funds to update their Solana ETF filings with clarified language about staking. The SEC has not yet approved any spot Solana ETFs. Experts think approval is a stone's throw away. Indeed, Bloomberg Intelligence ETF analyst James Seyffart says staking ETFs are a "matter of when, not if."

What staking ETFs mean for investors

Crypto ETFs make cryptocurrency more accessible to retail and institutional investors alike. If you want to add a small amount of crypto to your portfolio, spot ETFs mean you can do it from most brokerage accounts. You don't need to create an account with an exchange or worry about how to store digital assets. We're likely to see SEC approval for spot altcoin ETFs in the coming months, so more digital assets will be available in ETF form.

However, if those ETFs don't pay staking rewards, investors are missing out. As such, a shift in regulatory tides could be great for U.S. crypto investors.

In the meantime, if you stake crypto, it is not the same as earning interest on a savings account or dividend-paying stocks. And there are some risks to consider.

• Slashing penalties can cost you your stake. Networks occasionally punish malicious players through something called "slashing." It is extremely rare, and centralized exchanges may reimburse slashed crypto. Even so, some (or all) of the staked crypto could be at risk.
• Centralized exchanges often use third parties for their staking. It is important to understand how your platform stakes, specifically what staking provider it will use, and how you'll be compensated if anything goes wrong.
• It can take time to unstake your crypto. Since staking is a security mechanism, blockchains enforce a buffer period on unstaking. The time varies depending on the crypto.

If you are new to crypto or don't plan to actively manage your staking, it is better to use a centralized exchange. Decentralized platforms take work and knowledge and are not set-it-and-forget-it yield generators.

Bottom line

If the SEC approves staking ETFs for Ethereum and Solana, the most obvious benefit would be that all investors could earn yield on proof-of-stake assets. Wider approval of altcoin ETFs could encourage more institutional crypto investment, as we have already seen with Bitcoin. An uptick in staking could bring a third benefit: Reduced volatility. The lockup periods and staking incentives encourage long-term holding, which can stabilize prices.

Should you invest $1,000 in Solana right now?

Before you buy stock in Solana, consider this:

The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy now… and Solana wasn’t one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years.

Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $658,297!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $883,386!*

Now, it’s worth noting Stock Advisor’s total average return is 992% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 172% for the S&P 500. Don’t miss out on the latest top 10 list, available when you join Stock Advisor.

See the 10 stocks »

*Stock Advisor returns as of June 9, 2025

Emma Newbery has positions in Ethereum and Solana. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

The price of Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC) is back over $100,000. But according to many experts, the run is far from over. Ark Invest CEO Cathie Wood recently reaffirmed her 2030 price target of $700,000. Long term, she believes a single Bitcoin could eventually be worth several million dollars.

Every investor should have at least a small exposure to Bitcoin, even if it's just $100. That gives you enough cash to easily buy into the two Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) below. Just be careful: The two ETFs below provide very different exposures to Bitcoin and crypto in general.

Where to invest $1,000 right now? Our analyst team just revealed what they believe are the 10 best stocks to buy right now. Continue »

This is the largest Bitcoin ETF in the world

The largest Bitcoin ETF right now -- at least measured by the amount of money that has been invested into it -- is the iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF (NASDAQ: IBIT). As of last quarter, the ETF's holdings were worth roughly $70 billion -- more than triple the asset value of the next-largest Bitcoin ETF. Scale allows this ETF to charge lower expense ratios than the competition. The total management fee right now is a reasonable 0.25%. Many competing ETFs charge significantly higher fees.

The best thing about this Bitcoin ETF is that it invests solely in Bitcoin. When you buy Bitcoin directly, you need to deal with a long list of complexities. Taxes can be difficult to track manually, and security issues are commonplace, with many investors falling victim to scams or phishing attempts that drain their accounts with little to no recourse available. By investing in the iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF, all of these complexities become streamlined, just as they would by purchasing any other ETF. As the ETF's prospectus describes, packaging a Bitcoin investment vehicle as a simple ETF helps "remove the operational, tax, and custody complexities of holding bitcoin directly."

Perhaps the best news is that buying a Bitcoin ETF lets you automate your investments. So you can buy $100 today, but you can also tell your brokerage to withdraw another $100 each month, with the proceeds automatically invested in more Bitcoin. This helps you dollar-cost average your Bitcoin investment -- a huge advantage for such a volatile asset.

As you'd expect, more than 99.9% of the trust's holdings are invested directly into Bitcoin, with a tiny amount allocated to cash, mostly to meet daily liquidity needs. With such a low expense ratio, this is one of the fastest and most efficient ways to get Bitcoin exposure. But if you want to invest in more than just Bitcoin, check out the new ETF below.

Image source: Getty Images.

This crypto ETF invests in more than just Bitcoin

Launched in 2023, the Bitcoin & Ether Market Cap Weight ETF (NYSEMKT: BETH) invests primarily in Bitcoin. But as the ETF's name suggests, it also allocates some of your funds into Ethereum.

Ethereum is the second-largest crypto asset in the world today. And while it does have distinct differences when compared to Bitcoin, a very simplistic explanation is that it is essentially "programmable" Bitcoin. That is, it is a decentralized asset that allows for other things to be built on top of it, with the Ethereum virtual machine executing commands in a way that can't be controlled by any one individual. By investing in Ethereum, you're essentially betting that the wide crypto universe will also prevail, not just Bitcoin.

As of last quarter, this ETF's portfolio had 88% exposure to Bitcoin, with the remainder invested in Ethereum. Importantly, exposure is gained through futures contracts, not directly through Bitcoin holdings. This approach adds some correlation risk.

As you can imagine, this increased diversification comes with added costs. The expense ratio for this ETF is around 0.95%. For most investors, the cheaper iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF is a suitable option. But if you'd like to make sure you bet both on Bitcoin and crypto in general, this is a great all-in-one ETF to accomplish that. And as with any other ETF, you can set up automated investments to make sure you're putting more money to work on a regular basis. This way, you don't need much to get started.

Whether you go with the cheaper and arguably more effective IBIT ETF, or get fancier with the BETH ETF, both give your portfolio instant exposure to crypto markets with as little as $100.

Should you invest $1,000 in Bitcoin right now?

Before you buy stock in Bitcoin, consider this:

The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy now… and Bitcoin wasn’t one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years.

Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $658,297!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $883,386!*

Now, it’s worth noting Stock Advisor’s total average return is 992% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 172% for the S&P 500. Don’t miss out on the latest top 10 list, available when you join Stock Advisor.

See the 10 stocks »

*Stock Advisor returns as of June 9, 2025

Ryan Vanzo has positions in Bitcoin and Ethereum. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Bitcoin and Ethereum. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

The market loves a good comeback story, and right now Ethereum (CRYPTO: ETH) is auditioning for the lead role. After spending most of 2023 and 2024 lagging other major cryptocurrencies, Ethereum has surged roughly 30% during the past 90 days. There's reason to believe that this move is not just another speculative pop.

There are four catalysts that look built to last. If those forces keep pulling in the same direction, the rally may be only the opening act.

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Let's check them out and understand how they fit into the coin's longer-term picture.

1. Cooling inflation turns the macro tide

Ethereum, like all cryptocurrencies, is very sensitive to macroeconomic phenomena like inflation and the money supply.

On that front, things are looking pretty good right now.

May's Consumer Price Index (CPI) showed inflation running at 2.4%, the lowest readout since early 2023. That reading boosts the odds that the Federal Reserve will cut interest rates later this year, which will make it cheaper for banks to borrow money, and thus more likely that investors will need to look further down the risk curve, toward crypto, to get a return beyond the cost of borrowing.

Image source: Getty Images.

In short, lower rates have historically tended to nudge investors out of cash and into longer‑duration bets like crypto.

Markets are already leaning that way. The U.S. dollar index, which tracks the strength of the dollar relative to other currencies, just slipped to a three‑year low on expectations of easier money.

Cheaper dollars make dollar‑denominated assets with fixed supplies look more attractive, and Ethereum fits that bill.

2. Institutional money is piling in

When the biggest wallets start buying, price moves can snowball. And there aren't any players with bigger wallets than institutional investors like pension funds and hedge funds.

During the week of May 13, $205 million flowed into Ethereum‑linked products, making for the strongest haul since early 2024, and about 25% of all crypto exchange-traded product (ETP) inflows. The momentum kept rolling; by mid‑June, Ethereum exchange‑traded funds (ETFs) had logged a 16‑day intake streak worth almost $900 million.

Pension funds and ETF sponsors are not day traders. Their allocations typically stay parked for multiple quarters or even years, effectively removing supply from the market and signaling that the fear that dominated late 2024 is fading. And that's bullish for Ethereum, because they hold it now.

3. Pectra aims to make Ethereum cheaper and easier to use

Slated for activation in late 2025, Pectra is Ethereum's biggest technology overhaul in recent years.

The package rolls 11 improvement proposals into one release that simplifies wallets and smooths out gas (user) fee volatility via a variety of mechanisms.

Pectra tackles three persistent pain points in one go: user‑friendliness, account security, and unpredictable transaction costs. If its second phase has the intended affects when it launches later this year as planned, it could also help the network to scale, keeping costs lower and improving transaction times.

History suggests that every time Ethereum reduces friction, developer activity and on‑chain demand rise soon after, both of which tend to lift prices.

4. Staking deposits are locking up ever more coins

While Pectra cooks, Ethereum staking is already squeezing supply.

On June 11, staked Ethereum coins hit a record 34.6 million, accounting for roughly 29% of circulating supply, and up from 26% a year ago. Importantly, the staking share of total supply keeps rising even as the coin's price climbs, suggesting holders prefer yield to speculation. That means investors see that they can get a more attractive return by leaving their capital parked in staked coins rather than transferring it elsewhere, which in turn ensures that more value is stored on the chain, boosting the coin's price.

The reason for this is that staked coins cannot be sold without first exiting a validator queue, which can take days. Layering on Pectra's validator simplifications, which are expected to make staking cheaper and easier, it is plausible that 35% or even 40% of all Ethereum coins could be bonded for yield within a year.

A shrinking float (coin available for public trading) paired with growing demand is a classic recipe for sustained price strength, as it forces buyers to compete with each other in the form of bidding higher prices to secure coins of their own.

Still, investors should take note that none of these four forces I've mentioned guarantees a straight‑line ascent.

A macro shock or an unexpected bug in Pectra could smash confidence fast. Yet if inflation keeps easing, institutions keep allocating, the upgrade continues to land smoothly, and staking continues to grow, Ethereum's risk‑reward profile looks far stronger than it did six months ago.

Should you invest $1,000 in Ethereum right now?

Before you buy stock in Ethereum, consider this:

The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy now… and Ethereum wasn’t one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years.

Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $658,297!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $883,386!*

Now, it’s worth noting Stock Advisor’s total average return is 992% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 172% for the S&P 500. Don’t miss out on the latest top 10 list, available when you join Stock Advisor.

See the 10 stocks »

*Stock Advisor returns as of June 9, 2025

Alex Carchidi has positions in Ethereum. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Ethereum. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

The Polkadot (CRYPTO: DOT) cryptocurrency is going through some pretty exciting changes these days. The Web3 Foundation's official crypto coin is becoming a distributed supercomputer, ready to provide a wide variety of apps and services. Yet, the coin price keeps falling.

Should you pick up a few Polkadot coins while they're available for less than $5 apiece? I think that's a good idea, and here's why.

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Polkadot's big internet ambitions

First things first. Polkadot was designed to support a Web3 future. The social networks and paywalls of the Web2 world were unstoppable over the last 20 years. These days, a lot of web users are getting tired of this aging structure, looking around for new ideas. The Web3 idea is one alternative, bringing more personal freedom and giving content creators more control over their creations. In this system, gigantic hubs of advertising and social media connections are replaced by decentralized services. And Polkadot's app-building ecosystem provides a handy platform to get all the Web3 ideas done in the real world.

It's still a futuristic ideology with just a handful of early success stories. But in the long run, Web3 apps could take over your online community connections, your day-to-day financial management processes, and your favorite channels for text, video, and audio infotainment. The tools won't even run in the centrally managed cloud you know and love today, but in a new global network of blockchain-based systems. When tweaked just right, the crypto world's smart contracts can run any kind of program and perform all sorts of services. And that's what Polkadot is doing, with the help of many other cryptocurrency systems.

Image source: Getty Images.

Meet JAM: The next big step in Polkadot's evolution

So far, Polkadot is mostly known for its ability to interact with other blockchain networks. This coin's smart contracts can tap into Bitcoin's (CRYPTO: BTC) monetary value storage, Ethereum's (CRYPTO: ETH) sophisticated contracts, and Chainlink's (CRYPTO: LINK) real-world data reports, just to name a few.

It's also known as a complicated and cumbersome system, but that's changing in 2025. Polkadot's central blockchain will soon be replaced by a more flexible and standards-based system known as JAM (the Joint-Accumulate Machine, if you're curious). This is actually a virtual machine in the blockchain universe. It can compile and run any code for bog-standard central processors, because it's a software-driven and full-featured RISC-V processor.

For example, Polkadot co-founder Gavin Wood has made it a habit to show off old-school computer games running on a test version of JAM. His personal laptop is good enough to make that work, but the full JAM upgrade will run on hundreds of server-class computers around the world. Imagine what this on-demand supercomputer can do for the Web3 vision.

Don't expect instant fireworks

JAM is coming up, probably in the second half of 2025. It won't cause an immediate frenzy in the Polkadot community, because it takes time for people to use new tools. Then the tools must create useful apps, which in turn need to find a target audience of actual users. So it's not a magic wand that will make Polkadot's developer community's dreams come true in a heartbeat, and it won't lift Polkadot's usage-based coin price right away.

But this is a much-needed step toward a true Web3 version of the online world. In the long run, I expect Web3 alternatives to disrupt the online experience as you know it today. Web2 leaders such as Meta Platforms (NASDAQ: META), Spotify (NYSE: SPOT), and TikTok will either join the Web3 revolution or put up roadblocks instead. I can't wait to see how true innovators like Netflix (NASDAQ: NFLX) and Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOG) (NASDAQ: GOOGL) will find their place in the Web3 era.

Take it easy out there, Polkadot investors

I could be wrong, of course. Web2 may stick around for another decade or two, as the current leaders focus on protecting the old social media world. Other cryptocurrencies can also support Web3-worthy apps, though they'll need to overcome Polkadot's built-in advantages first.

So I'm not betting the proverbial farm on Polkadot coins. I simply recommend any investor who agrees with the Web3 project's ideas to pick up a few Polkadot coins while they're cheap.

This cryptocurrency is only worth $6.6 billion today, which is a far cry from the trillion-dollar titans you see ruling today's Web2 structure. The coin price could multiply by 10 or 100 and still look small next to Meta and Alphabet. In short, Polkadot can be a big long-term winner even if it never matches the Magnificent 7 group's trillion-dollar market caps. I think that's worth a modest position in your long-term crypto portfolio.

Should you invest $1,000 in Polkadot right now?

Before you buy stock in Polkadot, consider this:

The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy now… and Polkadot wasn’t one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years.

Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $657,871!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $875,479!*

Now, it’s worth noting Stock Advisor’s total average return is 998% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 174% for the S&P 500. Don’t miss out on the latest top 10 list, available when you join Stock Advisor.

See the 10 stocks »

*Stock Advisor returns as of June 9, 2025

Suzanne Frey, an executive at Alphabet, is a member of The Motley Fool's board of directors. Randi Zuckerberg, a former director of market development and spokeswoman for Facebook and sister to Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg, is a member of The Motley Fool's board of directors. Anders Bylund has positions in Alphabet, Bitcoin, Chainlink, Ethereum, Netflix, and Polkadot. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet, Bitcoin, Chainlink, Ethereum, Meta Platforms, Netflix, and Spotify Technology. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

It's been a strange year for the crypto market. After a hot start to 2025, every major cryptocurrency continues to be whipsawed by the constant ups and downs of tariffs and global trade.

What can investors expect in the second half of the year? According to the new Motley Fool Money 2025 Cryptocurrency Investor Trends Survey, investors remain bullish on the future prospects of crypto, especially Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC). Let's take a closer look.

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Bitcoin could double in value in 2025

Bitcoin has been front and center throughout the year. Even with the volatility of the current tariff situation, investors remain very bullish about the cryptocurrency's prospects.

Image source: Getty Images.

According to the Motley Fool Money 2025 Cryptocurrency Investor Trends survey, 68% of U.S. adults who currently hold crypto in their portfolio think that Bitcoin could hit $200,000 by the end of 2025. Based on its current price of $105,000, that suggests that Bitcoin could double in value over the next six months.

Even U.S. adults who don't own crypto in their portfolios are surprisingly bullish about Bitcoin. For example, 25% of them also think that Bitcoin could hit $200,000 by the end of 2025. Another 49% are undecided. Only 26% think it's unlikely.

As a result, investors are likely to continue to buy the dip for the rest of the year. Anytime Bitcoin loses 10% or more of its value, they'll view it as a buying opportunity. And, indeed, this is what we've already seen in the first half of the year, with money continuing to flow into the spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) from retail investors.

Solana and XRP could rally if new ETFs are approved

Currently, only Bitcoin and Ethereum (CRYPTO: ETH) have spot ETFs. However, one big story of the year has been the potential for other major cryptocurrencies to get spot ETFs of their own. Two that are often mentioned are Solana (CRYPTO: SOL) and XRP (CRYPTO: XRP).

These new spot ETFs could be a game changer. They make buying crypto as easy as buying your favorite tech stock. You can open up an app on your phone, hit a button, and get exposure to Bitcoin instantly. According to the Motley Fool Money crypto survey, "I don't understand how to buy it" remains one of the major barriers to investing in crypto, and spot ETFs help solve this problem.

That leads me to think there will be a rally in Solana and XRP later in the year. That's when the SEC is scheduled to sign off on new spot ETF applications for both cryptos. As soon as these start trading, it could lead to a wave of new investor money flowing into them.

Ethereum may continue to underperform

Ethereum is still the world's second-largest cryptocurrency, and continues to be an important part of the White House's crypto strategy. So why does Ethereum continue to lag the market? Even after a mini-rally in May, Ethereum is still down 20% for the year.

By parsing the data and responses in Motley Fool Money's crypto survey, I might have uncovered the answer: Investors just don't like Ethereum. They can't figure out what to do with it, and it doesn't generate the sort of big, splashy news headlines that can grab their attention.

According to the survey, 36% of respondents who don't own crypto said they "don't know what to do with it." Overall, only 11% of respondents said they understood how crypto works. Bitcoin is easy to explain -- it's "digital gold." But what, exactly, is Ethereum?

Moreover, survey respondents appeared to show a clear preference for big, splashy news headlines. For example, as soon as Bitcoin hit the $100,000 price level, it immediately helped to pull in investors who might have otherwise ignored crypto. Bitcoin hitting $100,000 is the type of headline that's tailor-made to float across the chyron of a TV.

Or, take the example of Elon Musk joining the Trump administration earlier this year. Even though Musk had no direct role in the White House's crypto policies, the overwhelming sentiment of survey respondents was that just having him aboard would somehow be good for crypto.

Ethereum hasn't been able to deliver anything close to a splashy $100,000 news headline or a high-profile public figure like Elon Musk. The biggest news this year has been a new blockchain upgrade in May. As a result, investors just aren't interested. Ethereum may continue to underperform the market until a new narrative emerges.

What happens next for crypto?

In the crypto market, sentiment can change on a dime. Now that Musk has left the White House, for example, will investors become more or less bullish on crypto? And how long are investors willing to wait for Bitcoin to double in value, if it shows signs of stumbling over the summer?

That being said, the new Motley Fool Money crypto survey is a great temperature check on what crypto investors are thinking right now. Using the survey response data, it's possible to put together some compelling narratives about where Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, and XRP might be headed in the second half of 2025.

Should you invest $1,000 in Bitcoin right now?

Before you buy stock in Bitcoin, consider this:

The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy now… and Bitcoin wasn’t one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years.

Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $669,517!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $868,615!*

Now, it’s worth noting Stock Advisor’s total average return is 792% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 173% for the S&P 500. Don’t miss out on the latest top 10 list, available when you join Stock Advisor.

See the 10 stocks »

*Stock Advisor returns as of June 2, 2025

Dominic Basulto has positions in Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, and XRP. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, and XRP. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

For decades, international payments have been routed through the SWIFT network, which is a messaging system that connects thousands of banks. SWIFT transactions can take days, sometimes weeks, because of intermediary banks, currency conversions, and messaging delays. The main users, banks, need to carry liquidity buffers to cover the risk of those issues. This means that using SWIFT, which stands for Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, comes with a capital burden for banks.

XRP (CRYPTO: XRP) is a cryptocurrency designed for nothing flashier than moving value from A to B almost instantly and for almost nothing in fees. Banks wrestling with faster-payments mandates and cross-border fee pressure now have a tool that settles transactions in the time it takes to blink, so long as they're willing to abandon SWIFT. Here's why some of those banks and other financial companies are starting to consider XRP as a core reserve they might keep for decades rather than merely as a cryptocurrency investment to hold on the balance sheet.

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It's a lot faster and cheaper than the status quo

On the XRP ledger (known as XRPL), a transfer finalizes in roughly three to five seconds, with typical network fees of less than 0.001 XRP, or about a tenth of a cent at recent prices. For the sake of comparison, consider that SWIFT's own progress report touts a "dramatic" improvement to a 24-hour average for cross-border settlement last year, down from 96 hours in 2019.

Why does that transaction time and cost gap matter to banks when it comes to choosing a technology to use?

If you're a bank, capital that's trapped in transit is capital that isn't earning a yield. Every hour shaved off transaction settlement frees up capital that can be redeployed, thereby enabling the bank to generate more earnings than it would otherwise. Thus, there's a strong financial incentive here for banks to switch, and little that keeps them tied to the legacy solution except for inertia.

Image source: Getty Images.

Furthermore, XRP's fee structure is predictable. SWIFT's message charges, foreign exchange spreads, and flat fees can be on the order of $50 per transfer. Typically, those exchange fees are billed as a percentage of the transfer amount, with 1% being a common take, so costs add up quickly for players that need to transact frequently and in large sums. With XRP, costs stay microscopic regardless of notional transaction size, and there is no currency being exchanged, so there are no exchange fees at all.

That reliability underpins the token's appeal as a utility reserve rather than a speculative investment. Once adopted, if it's anything like SWIFT, banks will be loath to transition to something else unless the benefits of doing so are very compelling.

Compliance matters too

The speed of a solution alone has probably never sold a big bank's chief compliance officer on adopting a new technology. What moves the needle is control and traceability.

XRP's ledger natively bakes a slew of regulatory compliance features directly into the protocol. Asset issuers, including those with key assets like stablecoins, can freeze individual trust lines, enact a global freeze, or enable deposit authorization so an account only accepts funds it has vetted. These features let banks satisfy know-your-customer (KYC) and anti-money-laundering (AML) obligations without incorporating external smart contract code, which is a tremendous headache on many other chains, particularly Ethereum.

As a result of XRP's compliance features and potential to cut costs, real-world pilots of financial businesses and organizations trialing XRP are piling up. Bhutan's central bank began a central bank digital currency (CBDC) sandbox on XRP's tech three years ago, looking to extend financial inclusion across its mountainous villages. More recently, Dubai green-lit a property tokenization platform that records deeds on XRPL, targeting $16 billion in real estate. Each project requires the ledger to prove it can handle regulated assets at scale, which is progress that risk officers and bank executives watch far more closely than investors typically do.

If those trials mature into production systems, banks holding XRP as an operational reserve gain a second benefit of optionality. The same tokens that are useful for making large international payments can also pay ledger fees for tokenized bonds or be used for trading other tokenized financial instruments. That versatility hedges against the risk that today's fast payment rails become tomorrow's legacy drag in the way that SWIFT is.

Thus, the durability of XRP as an asset is starting to look more persuasive than ever.

XRP's price can be volatile, yet the direction of travel toward faster payments, programmable compliance, and institutional custody is hard to miss.

For investors, that means the thesis behind buying and holding XRP today hinges less on a meme-driven price spike and more on the quiet decisions banks make to incorporate it over the next decade. Ripple, the company that issues XRP, is highly motivated to ensure that banks keep adopting the coin for their back-end use.

If XRP becomes the solution for tokenized deposits, CBDCs, and cross-border wholesale flows, demand from institutions with no intention of selling could easily anchor the coin's long-term value. And so far, the evidence is that things are moving in that direction.

Should you invest $1,000 in XRP right now?

Before you buy stock in XRP, consider this:

The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy now… and XRP wasn’t one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years.

Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $669,517!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $868,615!*

Now, it’s worth noting Stock Advisor’s total average return is 792% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 173% for the S&P 500. Don’t miss out on the latest top 10 list, available when you join Stock Advisor.

See the 10 stocks »

*Stock Advisor returns as of June 2, 2025

Alex Carchidi has positions in Ethereum. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Ethereum and XRP. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

Few investments age gracefully when the world around them speeds up. The same pressure applies in crypto. Builders, investors, and users do not wait politely for laggards to catch up; they migrate to speed, liquidity, and, most of all, excitement.

That reality now confronts Cardano (CRYPTO: ADA), which was once celebrated for its emphasis on peer-reviewed research to advance its underlying technology, as well as for its deliberate pace of technical progress. Three red flags, in particular, suggest that the project risks permanent middle-of-the-pack status unless something changes quickly. Let's check out each of these warning signs in detail.

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1. Rivals are racing ahead in every dimension

In the crypto world, developers are the lifeblood of a blockchain.

They build decentralized apps (dApps), protocols, and tools that generate utility, liquidity, and real-world adoption. A thriving developer ecosystem attracts users, capital, and other partners, creating a virtuous cycle that drives a chain's value and growth. Without them, even the most technically sound chain can remain a ghost town.

In terms of developer activity in Cardano's ecosystem, it doesn't hold up very well against its chief competitors, Ethereum and Solana. Per Cryptometheus, a cryptocurrency data provider, Solana had 499 active developers, and Cardano had just 175 developers pushing updates for the week, down 33% from three months ago.

Image source: Getty Images.

Furthermore, developers flow toward concentrations of capital, and that capital is pooling elsewhere. Fidelity, a major asset manager, filed in March to list a Solana exchange-traded fund (ETF). Bloomberg now pegs the approval odds of that ETF at 90% for 2025, which would be an institutional seal of approval that no Cardano product enjoys.

Meanwhile, Solana's total value locked (TVL) on its chain was nearly $12 billion in January and currently rests at around $8.6 billion. Cardano's TVL is just $331.6 million, down from $680.8 million in early December 2024. That means there's less real money parked on its chain.

And when builders, money, and regulators all prefer the other options, it's a big problem.

2. New upgrades aren't getting used

Blockchains tend to have technical constraints. Sometimes, those constraints are troublesome enough for users that the main engineers of the chain create big new modules or other solutions in an attempt to prevent the flight of disaffected investors, users, or ecosystem developers. The success or failure of those solutions is, thus, often a major factor in determining whether to invest in the chain's native token.

And in Cardano's case, the record with successfully developing workarounds to the chain's issues isn't great, at least not in recent times.

Cardano's Layer-2 (L2) system, Hydra, dazzled testers with a 1 million transactions-per-second (TPS) demo last December, implicitly promising to solve the issue of lethargic transaction times during periods of peak load. L2s like Hydra are designed to handle transactions off the main blockchain, reducing congestion and perhaps also fees while maintaining security and interoperability. But they only matter if users adopt them and volume grows. Otherwise, they're tech demos, not adoption drivers.

Five months after launch, no major exchange, payment processor, or other project has committed to using Hydra beyond a pilot.

Another solution, called Midnight, is a side chain, which means it's a parallel network intended for specialized features such as privacy, among others. Side chains can extend a blockchain's functionality by providing specialized services that don't burden the main chain. Midnight aims to attract institutional users who want confidential holding of assets on the chain, but so far, no major financial players have signed on, and no real user base exists.

These technical marvels might eventually matter. But until developers, institutions, or users adopt them, they remain tantalizing but empty promises. And that's a big warning sign that Cardano is failing to match its development of capabilities to the features that are actually in demand.

3. Cardano's mindshare is eroding, not expanding

Crypto is a popularity contest masquerading as a set of technologies.

On June 4, Cardano counted around 23,273 daily active addresses, whereas Solana cleared nearly 5 million in the same day. That gap widens whenever meme coin mania or non-fungible token (NFT) drops spark traffic spikes. Those are segments where Cardano barely registers, as its ecosystem is very sparse in both areas.

Social chatter mirrors the numbers. Per data from Santiment, a crypto data aggregator, Cardano ranks far below Ethereum and Solana in terms of social media post volume, hinting that investor excitement has simply remained elsewhere. If users, developers, and institutions are not talking about Cardano now, why would they flock to it later?

In other words, Cardano's investment thesis -- that academic rigor in the tech development process will eventually lead to late-bloomer dominance -- faces mounting counter-evidence. Unless Hydra suddenly wins real traffic or Midnight lands marquee clients, the token's upside may remain capped while the opportunity cost mounts. And there's just not much evidence to suggest that's happening, nor is there any reason to believe it will soon.

Should you invest $1,000 in Cardano right now?

Before you buy stock in Cardano, consider this:

The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy now… and Cardano wasn’t one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years.

Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $669,517!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $868,615!*

Now, it’s worth noting Stock Advisor’s total average return is 792% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 171% for the S&P 500. Don’t miss out on the latest top 10 list, available when you join Stock Advisor.

See the 10 stocks »

*Stock Advisor returns as of June 2, 2025

Alex Carchidi has positions in Ethereum and Solana. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Ethereum and Solana. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.