Bitcoin, XRP Get the Spotlight—Could These 5 Altcoins Be Next?

Solana (CRYPTO: SOL), Chainlink (CRYPTO: LINK) and three other altcoins are picking up real adoption signals, according to Altcoin Daily, as institutions look beyond Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC) and XRP (CRYPTO: XRP). Solana Keeps Picking Up Real-World Deals Altcoin Daily on Monday reported that Solana retook the top spot in daily tokenized equity trading volume with 34% market share, overtaking BNB (CRYPTO: BNB) Chain. The network also landed a partnership with Samsung to bring USDC (CRYPTO: USDC) transfers to 82 million US Galaxy devices starting late October, letting Samsung Wallet users send money across borders on Solana. Former Solana Foundation executive Austin Federa said transaction finality has already dropped sharply in recent months. The upcoming Alpenglow upgrade aims to cut finality time from about 12.5 seconds to as low as 150 milliseconds by year-end or early next year. Chainlink Keeps Stacking Institutional Partners Chainlink logged 40 new integrations across 24 partners in September alone, including Coinbase (NASDAQ:COIN), Infosys (NYSE:INFY), Paxos and Circle (NYSE:CRCL). Altcoin Daily frames this kind of steady, institution-friendly growth as exactly what large allocators tend to favor over flashier, newer projects. Ethereum’s Swift Deal Comes With a Catch Ethereum (CRYPTO: ETH) picked up a major signal when Swift, which processes hundreds of millions of transactions daily, chose it to build a tokenized ledger. Swift built that ledger on Hyperledger Besu, though, a permissioned private version of Ethereum that doesn’t require burning ETH or paying gas fees on the public mainnet. That means no direct economic benefit flows to ETH holders yet. Besu nodes can still connect to the public mainnet, which Altcoin Daily calls an early step toward deeper integration down the line. Two More High-Conviction Picks Altcoin Daily also flagged Bittensor (CRYPTO: TAO), noting Grayscale filed for a spot Bittensor ETF late last year that hasn’t been approved, drawing a comparison to Bitcoin’s pre-ETF setup. Hyperliquid as measured by Hyperliquid Strategies (NASDAQ:PURR) rounds out the list as a platform built specifically for high-throughput trading of financial assets on-chain, unlike Solana’s general-purpose design. Where the Broader Market Could Head Next Crypto’s total market cap grew from under $1 trillion in 2017 to $2.8 trillion by late 2021, then topped out near $4.2 trillion last cycle. Altcoin Daily’s bear case for the next cycle sits around $6 trillion, with a base case of $10 to $12 trillion. Under that scenario, Bitcoin could take 50% to 70% of total market share, implying a price range of $180,000 to $250,000, with altcoins absorbing the rest. Photo via Shutterstock Read Also: XRP Beats Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana in ETF Flows: Can Price Follow?