Top 5 altcoins that FBS says will explode in 2025
"Altcoin season" is a period when capital from Bitcoin is transferred to other cryptocurrencies, producing large price increases that last several months for most altcoins. Historically, altcoins have lagged behind Bitcoin's strong appreciation. As Bitcoin's price stabilizes or consolidates after a peak, investors seek higher returns in potential altcoins. According to Tangem's report, "the rise in the interseasonal index indicates a shift in attention from Bitcoin to altcoins." By 2025, a combination of several factors—improving liquidity conditions and potential regulatory clarity—could set the stage for such a cycle.
Hedera Hashgraph (HBAR)
It is a strong contender for the crown of distributed ledger technology, abandoning traditional blockchain architecture in favor of its own hashgraph consensus protocol. Unlike energy-intensive proof-of-work or probabilistic proof-of-stake systems, Hedera's "gossip-on-gossip" approach offers deterministic integrity, extremely high throughput, and ultra-low energy consumption. In practice, Hedera typically processes over 10,000 transactions per second for fractions of a cent, with a completion time of less than a second. The main reason to take Hedera seriously is its governance, widely recognized as probably one of the most institutionally robust of any major cryptocurrency.
Ripple (XRP)
After several years of litigation, XRP entered 2025 with much greater regulatory clarity. In July 2023, a US judge ruled that XRP, when traded for sale to the general public on exchanges, was not a security, and in early 2025, the SEC dropped its appeal of this ruling. This decision effectively ended a major controversy that had plagued the XRP market. With its regulatory issues already behind it, this could favor XRP among institutional traders and exchanges.
Meanwhile, practical applications and real-world collaborations are on the horizon. Ripple's flagship product is RippleNet (and its on-demand liquidity product), which uses XRP as an intermediary currency for cross-border payments. "The value of XRP is that it speeds up cross-border payments, making them simpler, cheaper, and more transparent." By executing transactions almost immediately on the XRP Ledger, RippleNet reduces reliance on slow SWIFT (correspondent service) transfers that take several days. For example, SBI Remit (a major Japanese money transfer company) uses RippleNet to send low-cost funds to several Asian markets. Mastercard published a report in May 2025 referring to XRP as an "intermediary currency," noting that SBI Remit uses XRP for instant money transfers.
Other recent joint ventures highlight XRP's versatility: in early 2025, Unicambio, a Portuguese fintech company, partnered with Ripple to offer near-instant payments from Portugal to Brazil. Latin American and Asian banking institutions are conducting ongoing pilots with Ripple's ODL Rails for USD-MXN and USD-INR transfers. From a technical perspective, advances in interoperability (e.g., new cross-network protocols) could make XRP a ready-to-use settlement system across different blockchains.
Avalanche (AVAX)
Avalanche is a permissionless smart contract platform that offers near-instant finality and modularity. Technically, Avalanche consists of three chains (X, P, and C) capable of executing smart contracts, creating assets, and allowing any user to create subnets (parameterizable blockchains) designed to run specific applications. The Avalanche main chain can finalize transactions in less than a second with thousands of validators operating simultaneously. These validators use Avalanche’s Snowman consensus technology, which combines ATM security with extremely high throughput. In practice, Avalanche can process thousands of transactions per second, a significant advancement compared to traditional blockchain networks.
New network releases (Avalanche 9000 roadmap) aim for greater scalability and fee reduction. For example, Avalanche's ACP-125 release will reduce base fees by over 97%, further reducing the cost of on-chain transactions. Avalanche's approach, which offers virtually unlimited scalability with subnets and high data transfer speeds, is intended to attract projects that require customizable blockchain logic or high bandwidth (gaming, finance, private networks).
Algorand (ALGO)
Algorand is a pure proof-of-stake blockchain, purpose-built for scalability, speed, and security. Its consensus protocol completes block processing in under 4.5 seconds and achieves a throughput of approximately 6,000 transactions per second, far exceeding Ethereum's current 15-30 transactions per second. Transaction fees are always minimal and fractions of a cent, and the cryptographic protocol design includes quantum-resistant components designed to future-proof the network. The result is a high-performance blockchain capable of supporting large-scale enterprise applications, microtransactions, and frequent use in a cost-effective and sustainable manner.
One of Algorand's key features is its emphasis on formal verification, supply chain compliance software, and robust Layer 1 capabilities. Atomic swaps and regular Algorand Assets (ASA) are natively supported on the network, enabling the issuance and exchange of tokens, NFTs, and other assets without the need for additional wrappers or protocols. Algorand has also pioneered national cryptocurrency initiatives. In 2023, the Marshall Islands used Algorand to launch SOV, the first government-sanctioned national cryptocurrency. The Algorand network also collaborates with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and several central banks on pilot programs.
The Algorand ecosystem continues to expand with projects focused on developers, green finance, and DeFi. DeFi applications, such as Algofi (lending and borrowing) and Yieldly (fees and rewards), form the core infrastructure of any network, though their implementation on Algorand is limited compared to Ethereum or Solana. The energy-efficient and carbon-reducing Algorand network has also become a preferred choice for projects focused on ESG initiatives, such as green NFTs and carbon lending platforms. The flexibility of the TEAL smart contract language and the Algorand Virtual Machine (AVM) allow developers to build complex dApps, though the developer community has historically lagged behind larger competitors. However, recent development programs and improvements to developer tools are closing this gap.
Chainlink (LINK )
Unlike other cryptocurrencies, Chainlink is not a smart contract platform, but the hidden engine that powers them. As a decentralized oracle network, Chainlink is the most important link between the blockchain and the real world. Chainlink provides smart contracts with essential off-chain data: market data, weather events, sports scores, and even random numbers thanks to verifiable random functions (VRFs). The impact is enormous. Chainlink has become the oracle of choice for the entire DeFi ecosystem: its data powers lending platforms, decentralized exchanges, derivatives protocols, and more. Without Chainlink, most of DeFi wouldn't be possible.
Chainlink’s popularity has grown thanks to its ongoing integration. Nearly all of the major blockchains that enable DeFi ( Ethereum , BNB Chain , Polygon , Avalanche ) use Chainlink to provide accurate data to their protocols. Beyond cryptocurrencies, Chainlink has also attracted the attention of corporate giants. Google Cloud, Oracle, and Société Générale have all studied its infrastructure.
But Chainlink isn't standing still. A major breakthrough was the launch of the Chainlink Interconnect Protocol (CCIP) in early 2024. Chainlink no longer just transmitted information, but became a bridge. With CCIP, developers can securely send tokens and messages between chains. Circle USDC can now travel between networks based on CCIP. Since its introduction, CCIP's popularity has surged: the number of cross-network transactions on CCIP saw a 900% volume increase in just one quarter. The implications of this are enormous: Chainlink is now at the center of multi-chain liquidity. As more protocols adopt CCIP, Chainlink is quickly becoming the cornerstone of an interoperable blockchain economy.