2 Cryptocurrencies to Buy Before the Next Bull Run

Ethereum is highlighted as trading around $2,100, about 57% below its nearly $4,946 all-time high, but remains the dominant hub for DeFi with roughly $43 billion in capital locked, $165 billion in stablecoin capital, and nearly $19 billion in tokenized real-world assets. Zcash is framed as a higher-risk but improving privacy coin, helped by the SEC closing its investigation without action, a November 2025 halving, and a $25 million seed round backed by a16z, Winklevoss Capital, and Coinbase Ventures. The article is broadly constructive on crypto positioning, but it is opinion-driven rather than a direct market-moving catalyst.

Analysis

The setup is less about a broad crypto beta call and more about a rotation toward the protocol-level assets that intermediate liquidity and privacy. If risk appetite improves, capital should concentrate in the networks that already sit at the center of settlement, which favors ETH because it is the most obvious “index” on-chain rather than the highest-beta token. That makes the trade asymmetric: downside is capped by already-depressed positioning, while upside comes from reflexive capital migration back into the deepest venue for stablecoins, DeFi collateral, and tokenized assets.

The bigger second-order effect is that ETH’s leadership would likely pull activity away from smaller L1/L2 ecosystems that rely on subsidized activity and narrative momentum. A sustained bid in ETH also tends to reprice adjacent infrastructure — custody, staking, and tokenization rails — before it fully translates into retail enthusiasm. The main risk is that macro liquidity stays tight and crypto remains a funding-market trade rather than a fundamentals trade; in that case ETH can grind higher slowly while alt exposure gets punished.

Zcash is a different kind of expression: it is a supply-shock plus policy optionality trade, not a quality compounder. The market is likely underestimating how quickly a privacy coin can rerate when regulatory fear recedes and float tightens, but the same mechanism cuts both ways because access can disappear abruptly if exchanges reclassify privacy assets. The move is probably more than a tactical squeeze but less than a core allocation; that argues for trading it as a convex event-driven position rather than a buy-and-hold anchor.

The contrarian miss is that the market may be over-discounting ETH’s maturity and underpricing its role as the reserve asset of crypto collateral. Meanwhile, ZEC’s recent strength may be interpreted as pure momentum, when the more durable driver is scarcity plus renewed legitimacy around privacy use cases. If crypto breadth improves over the next 3-6 months, ETH should be the cleaner institutional expression and ZEC the higher-volatility satellite.

Key Decisions for Investors

• Overweight ETH vs. the broader crypto basket on a 3-6 month horizon; use ETH as the core long because it should capture the next wave of capital inflows before smaller ecosystems do.
• Pair trade: long ETH / short a basket of weaker alt proxies or thin-liquidity L1s for a relative-value expression if crypto beta returns; target 15-25% spread capture with lower directional risk.
• Trade ZEC as a convex event-driven position only: size small, use call spreads or a tight-risk spot allocation over 1-3 months to capture supply squeeze upside while limiting delisting risk.
• Avoid treating ZEC as a core portfolio holding; if exchange access tightens or regulators re-open privacy scrutiny, expect a fast 30-50% drawdown even in a constructive tape.
• If ETH fails to reclaim leadership after a market bounce, fade the move in high-beta alts instead of ETH; that would indicate capital is still avoiding the chain with the deepest real demand.