OVERVIEW

The Beaten-Down Kept Building In 2025 🧱

Before we dive in, here’s today’s crypto market heatmap:

And here’s a look at crypto’s total market and altcoin market cap charts:

NEWS
The Beaten-Down Kept Building In 2025 🧱

GALA. SAGA. HBAR. SUI. SHIB. ALGO. CHZ. ZEN. ANKR. NEXO. Some of these you may have never heard of. Others you probably assumed were dead. 💀

Pull up the charts and you'll find the kind of price action that makes long-term holders stop checking portfolios - down 70%, 80%, 90% from highs while participation on their respective Stocktwits streams moved on to whatever's working now.

But that's exactly why they're worth highlighting.

These aren't the tokens with cult followings (well, some do), massive VC war chests (again, a couple do), or top-trending narratives. They're the altcoins grinding in obscurity - and scrolling through their year-end retrospectives, something unexpected emerges:

• Actual shipping.

• Infrastructure processing real volume.

• Products that real entities, banks and governments are using.

Price and progress aren't always correlated, but these teams kept building when nobody was watching. That resilience, more than any narrative rotation, is the heart and soul of what crypto actually is.

SPONSORED
Invest in one of Crypto’s Fastest-Growing Networks…for a 0% Fee

Grayscale Solana Trust ETF (ticker: GSOL) delivers exposure to SOL, the native token of Solana, a high performance, low-cost, user-friendly blockchain emerging as one of the industry's most used networks. SOL is among the largest and most widely traded digital assets, a result of Solana’s wide range of applications and functional utility.

GSOL is now delivering enhanced value to investors, including 100% staking and a 0% management fee. Solana staking rewards have historically averaged 6-8% a year ², which is accretive to GSOL’s total return potential. 

GSOL is sponsored by Grayscale, the world's largest digital asset-focused investment platform ³. GSOL trades on NYSE Arca and is available through your brokerage account, offering efficient exposure to SOL in an ETP wrapper.

1 Gross expense ratio at 0% for 3 months or the first $1.0 billion of assets. After GSOL reaches $1.0 billion in assets or after a 3-month waiver period ending February 5, 2026, the fee will be 0.35%. Brokerage and other fees may apply. 

2 Stakingrewards.com. The range observed is from 09/16/22 to 09/28/25 and the average over this period is 7.10%.

3 Largest crypto-focused asset manager based on AUM as of 10/31/2025. For other companies in this category, AUM is considered as of most recent public disclosure.

Grayscale Solana Trust ETF (GSOL), an exchange traded product, is not registered under the Investment Company Act of 1940, as amended (“40 Act”), and therefore is not subject to the same regulations and protections as 40 Act registered ETFs and mutual funds. GSOL is subject to significant risk and heightened volatility. GSOL is not suitable for an investor who cannot afford to the loss of the entire investment. An investment in GSOL is not a direct investment in Solana.

Please read the prospectus carefully before investing in the Fund. 

Foreside Fund Services, LLC is the Marketing Agent for the Trust.

Staking Risk. When the Fund stakes Solana, Solana is subject to the risks attendant to staking generally. Staking requires that the Fund lock up Solana for the period of time required by the staking protocol, meaning that the Fund cannot sell or transfer the staked Solana, thereby making it illiquid for the period it is being staked. In addition, during the lock-up period, the Fund is subject to the market price volatility of Solana, and it may miss opportunities to sell the staked SOL during opportune times. During the unstaking period, the Fund may miss out on earning opportunities because, in some cases, the staked SOL may not earn rewards during the unstaking period or may only earn rewards during part of the unstaking period. Staked SOL is also subject to security breaches, network downtime or attacks, smart contract vulnerabilities, and validator or custodian failure or compromise, which can result in a complete loss of the staked Solana or a loss of any rewards.

Digital assets represent a new and rapidly evolving industry. The value of GSOL depends on the acceptance of the digital assets, the capabilities and development of blockchain technologies, and the fundamental investment characteristics of the digital asset. Digital assets may be volatile and subject to fluctuations due to a number of factors.

*3rd Party Ad. Not an offer or recommendation by Stocktwits. See disclosure here.

NEWS
The Institutional Breakthrough 🔨

‘Institutional adoption’ is crypto's favorite vaporware. Endless announcements about partnerships, pilots, and "exploring blockchain solutions" that never seemed to materialize into anything you could actually point to. 🌬️ 

2025 was different.

Real banks used real blockchain rails for real collateral. Real regulators selected real networks for pilot programs. Real ETFs traded on real stock exchanges with tokenized after-hours transactions.

These four protocols were just some of the tickers the center of it - not because they chased hype, but because they built infrastructure boring enough for compliance departments to approve.

$HBAR ( ▼ 2.27% )

• Institutional rails actually used: Tokenized MMF units and UK gilts used as collateral in real FX trades between Lloyds Banking Group and Aberdeen via Archax

• ETF milestone: Canary HBAR ETF launched on Nasdaq; live tokenized ETF transaction executed on Thanksgiving while traditional markets were closed

• Central bank pilots: HashSphere hybrid networks deployed in RBA's Project Acacia (wholesale CBDC exploration) and Qatar Financial Centre digital receipt PoC

$ALGO ( ▼ 3.01% )

• Real-world adoption landed: Mann Deshi credit scorecard pilot for 400K+ women in India; SEWA digital identity for millions; Pera Debit Mastercard live in 12 countries

• Staking took off: Reti Pooling surpassed 480M ALGO staked; participation available through Folks Finance, Tinyman, Binance, and others

• Major integrations: Google Agent Payments Protocol added Algorand; Nubank (100M+ clients) listed ALGO; AEON Pay enabled payments across 20M+ merchants

$NEXO ( ▼ 1.29% )

• Latin America expansion: Acquired Buenbit in Argentina, securing foothold in high-adoption market with persistent inflation demand

• Lending market position: Ranked second-largest centralized crypto lender per Galaxy Research, trailing only Tether

• Institutional positioning: Continued sports partnerships (Australian Open, DP World Tour) teaming up their brand with established global institutions

$ANKR ( ▲ 0.63% )

• Infrastructure at scale: 12 trillion RPC requests processed across 100 supported chains; BSC led with 623B calls, followed by Ethereum (580B) and Polygon (516B)

• Expanded coverage: Added 11 new RPC connections including Monad, Story, Fuel, Midnight, and Etherlink; new validators across IoTeX, Aleo, zkVerify

• Enterprise readiness: SOC 2 Type 2 compliance achieved; Bitcoin-secured infrastructure offering launched for chains inheriting BTC security

The irony of institutional crypto is that the wins are boring by design. Compliance frameworks, custody solutions, regulatory sandboxes - none of it makes for ‘oooo shiny’ content. But it's the work that has to happen before the next boat load of money and attention piles in. 💪 

NEWS
The Community Grind 👯‍♀️ 

There's no way to fake people showing up. Repeatedly. Across continents. In person. 🫂

While most of crypto optimized for online engagement metrics, these three protocols bet on something older: physical presence, grassroots community, and the slow accumulation of trust that only happens face-to-face.

$SUI ( ▼ 1.0% )

• Massive in-person traction: 13,000+ attendees across 17 global events; SuiFest Singapore drew 4,000+; Sui in Seoul engaged 5,000+ during Korea Blockchain Week

• Community compounding: 25%+ of 2025 event participants were returning attendees, up from ~10% the prior year

• Infrastructure expansion: Walrus decentralized storage debuted at ETHDenver; SuiBall hardware wallet and suiUSDe stablecoin launched

$CHZ ( ▲ 6.24% )

• Core architecture completed: Whitepaper v1.0 in August, Snake8 hard fork in October finalized PoSA consensus with 3-second block times and deterministic finality

• "Proof of Reputation" validators: PSG and K-League now run nodes - billion-dollar entities with reputations to protect, not anonymous mining pools

• $PEPPER as developer tool: Massive airdrops created wallet-active users; devs launching on Chiliz get instant access to hundreds of thousands of "Pepper People" without bootstrapping liquidity

$SHIB ( ▼ 1.94% )

• Recovered from the hack: Plasma Bridge back online with blacklisting, 7-day withdrawal delays, hardened contracts; 100+ critical contracts migrated to hardware custody

• SOU (Shib Owes You) launched: On-chain NFT system creating cryptographic proof of what the ecosystem owes affected users - verifiable, transferable, audited by Hexens

• Brutally honest leadership: "This year has been the hardest period in Shiba Inu's history... I'm not the right person to lead this. But I am the person who's here, doing the work."

Stocktwits knows a thing about community. Community is the asset that doesn't show up on a balance sheet. You can't tokenize it directly, can't put it in a treasury, can't point to it in a pitch deck.

But when everything else falls apart - when price dumps, when hacks happen, when leadership disappears - it's the only thing that determines whether a project survives or fades. 😎 

SPONSORED
 100% Staking, 0% Fee

Grayscale Solana Trust ETF (ticker: GSOL) now offers 100% staking and a 0% management fee ⁴. Solana staking rewards have historically averaged 6-8% a year ⁵.

GSOL is designed to capture the continued growth potential of Solana, a high performance, low-cost, user-friendly blockchain emerging as one of the industry's most used networks.

GSOL is sponsored by Grayscale, the world's largest digital asset-focused investment platform ⁶, with over a decade of expertise innovating within the asset class.

4  Gross expense ratio at 0% for the first 3 months of trading or the first $1.0 billion. Afterwards, the fee will be 0.35%. Brokerage and other fees may apply.

5 Stakingrewards.com. The range observed is from 09/16/22 to 09/28/25 and the average over this period is 7.10%. Past performance is not indicative of future results.

6 Largest crypto-focused asset manager based on AUM as of 10/31/2025. For other companies in this category, AUM is considered as of most recent public disclosure.

Grayscale Solana Trust ETF (GSOL), an exchange traded product, is not registered under the Investment Company Act of 1940, as amended (“40 Act”), and therefore is not subject to the same regulations and protections as 40 Act registered ETFs and mutual funds. GSOL is subject to significant risk and heightened volatility. GSOL is not suitable for an investor who cannot afford to the loss of the entire investment. An investment in GSOL is not a direct investment in Solana.

Please read the prospectus carefully before investing in the Fund. 

Foreside Fund Services, LLC is the Marketing Agent for the Trust.

Staking Risk. When the Fund stakes Solana, Solana is subject to the risks attendant to staking generally. Staking requires that the Fund lock up Solana for the period of time required by the staking protocol, meaning that the Fund cannot sell or transfer the staked Solana, thereby making it illiquid for the period it is being staked. In addition, during the lock-up period, the Fund is subject to the market price volatility of Solana, and it may miss opportunities to sell the staked SOL during opportune times. During the unstaking period, the Fund may miss out on earning opportunities because, in some cases, the staked SOL may not earn rewards during the unstaking period or may only earn rewards during part of the unstaking period. Staked SOL is also subject to security breaches, network downtime or attacks, smart contract vulnerabilities, and validator or custodian failure or compromise, which can result in a complete loss of the staked Solana or a loss of any rewards.

Digital assets represent a new and rapidly evolving industry. The value of GSOL depends on the acceptance of the digital assets, the capabilities and development of blockchain technologies, and the fundamental investment characteristics of the digital asset. Digital assets may be volatile and subject to fluctuations due to a number of factors.

*3rd Party Ad. Not an offer or recommendation by Stocktwits. See disclosure here.

NEWS
Platform Expansion 🪴

Sometimes the answer is to become something else entirely. 🎭️ 

To be clear, these are big platform level pivots that helped define or redefine each project/network/ticker.

$GALA ( ▼ 1.18% )

• DeFi pillar went live: GalaSwap processed $40M+ in volume across 250K+ swaps; GalaPump saw 650+ tokens created in its first month; 7.5B GALA now held on GalaChain

• White House Easter Egg Roll partnership: First blockchain partner in event history; mini-game played 600K+ times

• Shrapnel agreement signed: First foreign Web3 game approved in China via government-backed TCC framework, opening access to ~600M Chinese gamers

$SAGA ( ▼ 2.56% )

• LIL went from whitepaper to production: Liquidity Integration Layer powered $800M+ in DEX volume with multi-hop atomic transactions and protocol-native bridging

• Permissionless Chainlets launched: Burn tokens, get a blockchain - no gatekeepers, no forms, just code and capital

• AI agent infrastructure unveiled: "Sidekick" toolset at GDC 2025 enables deploying on-chain AI agents that hold wallets and execute logic autonomously

$ZEN ( ▼ 2.85% )

• Migrated ZEN to Base: Moved from isolated L1 to ERC-20 on Base, unlocking access to deep liquidity and native DeFi integrations

• Launched as privacy-enabled L3: Positioned privacy inside the Ethereum ecosystem where developers and capital already live

• Thrive Builder Program: 1M ZEN allocated over five years for milestone-based funding; first cohort includes Zendex (private DEX), Tachyon (cross-chain transfers), Nyra (private perpetuals)

Whether these bets pay off depends on execution in 2026. But the willingness to make them - to rebuild rather than coast - says something about what these teams think is possible. 👍️ 

LINKS
Links That Don’t Suck 🔗

🕵️ Cypherpunk Technologies Stock Jumps Pre-Market After It Accumulates More Zcash

😨 Nearly $3 Billion Lost In 200 Crypto Security Incidents In 2025 – With Bybit Alone Losing $1.5 Billion

🤔 Will Crypto Thrive In 2026? Coinbase Exec Flags Market Structure As The Big Question

🚗 Tesla’s Self-Driving Ambitions Could Add $1 Trillion To Valuation In 2026, Says Dan Ives

🎢 Trump Expected To Roll Out Fresh Levies If Supreme Court Rules Against Tariffs: Report

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Author Disclosure: The author of this newsletter holds positions in AVAX, ADA, PUDGY, WLC, IMX, XTZ, NEAR, HBAR, ALGO, INJ, LTC, LINK, ZEC, XLM, and FET. 📋