Translated by: Blockchain Plain Talk

The bull market is back (at least for now).

But the question is, which Altcoins are most likely to be the best performers?

In the 2021 bull market, almost every random Token was surging. However, things have changed since then.

Millions of new Altcoins have been launched, and now choosing which Token to buy has become particularly important to make money.

In this article, I want to share my cryptocurrency investment list and the key points I look for in projects.

1. Narrative Market Fit and High Attention

Think about the best-performing Tokens in the past 12 months.

Some examples include HYPE, VIRTUAL, and MEME.

Do they all have strong fundamentals? Some Tokens like HYPE do, but most of the top performers listed below clearly do not.

Source: Coingecko 2024 Cryptocurrency Largest Increase Article

But they have one thing in common: high social media attention and a group of passionate believers who constantly promote these Tokens on X platform.

Moreover, most of the best-performing Tokens are associated with a strong narrative:

• VIRTUAL: Price surged during the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) narrative
• MEME: Significant increase during the hot meme trend in Q4 2024 and early Q1 2025

My advice is: Find the current popular narrative, and then look for Tokens related to that narrative with the most active X community.

2. Growth Metrics

Although in a bull market, attention (unfortunately) matters far more than fundamentals, the good news is that some projects have both high attention and product-market fit (PMF).

If you can find projects with both, it could be a great investment opportunity. Especially if the product's metrics have recently shown explosive growth.

For example, the stablecoin protocol Ethena has grown its total value locked (TVL) by 50% in the past 30 days. At the same time, it has been widely discussed on the X platform.

The result? Ethena's Token $ENA has risen 154% in the past month.

By discovering early projects with growing metrics (such as TVL/revenue/fee growth) and decent X platform attention, you can make a lot of money.

My primary tool for discovering the fastest-growing projects is defillama.

3. Reasonable Token Economics

If you plan to buy a Token and hold it for just a few days, Token economics isn't that important. But for medium to long-term investments, it's completely different.

For example, TIA has dropped over 90% in the past 17 months because early investors' massive selling pressure after each Token unlock caused price declines.

Therefore, it's crucial to review Token economics before purchasing a Token.

When researching Tokens, I pay attention to the following points:

• Tokens Upcoming for Unlock

You can use Tokenomist to check the Token economics and upcoming unlocks for many popular Tokens.

Generally, I hope the circulating supply is at least 30% of the total supply, with an annual Token issuance (inflation rate) between 20-35%.

Additionally, if there's a large Token unlock recently (for example, more than 20% of the current circulating supply), I choose not to buy that Token.

• Token Utility

I always ask myself two questions:

• Will the Token I want to buy benefit from the protocol's success?
• Why would someone buy it at a higher price than me?

Revenue sharing mechanisms or Token buybacks are what I consider the best Token utility.

That said, while strong Token utility is a big plus, it's not mandatory. I've seen many Tokens with almost no utility perform extremely well.

4. Community-Centered Philosophy

Whether a project is community-centered is more important now than ever before.

More and more people are no longer willing to invest in boring, personality-less brands—they want to support teams that truly care about the community.

This is also one reason why Tokens like HYPE and PENGU have performed so well recently.

A few signs that a crypto project is community-centered:

• Conducted large-scale airdrops
• Team consistently low-key promises and over-delivers
• Team-led marketing—the team is very active on X platform and frequently interacts with the community
• Most of the Token supply is allocated to the community

These are the main factors I look for in Tokens.

Another important factor that might drive Token prices up is: upcoming major catalysts not yet priced by the market.

This could include protocol upgrades, Token economics improvements, or new product launches that could significantly increase the project's revenue.

Summary

Nevertheless, remember one thing: A good asset is still a bad investment if the price is not right.

Wait for the right opportunity and don't act impulsively due to FOMO.

Article link: https://www.hellobtc.com/kp/du/08/5993.html

Source: https://www.thedefinvestor.com/p/what-to-look-for-in-altcoins