Wall Street is seemingly all in on crypto, with public companies pouring trillions of dollars into digital tokens. And it’s not just Bitcoin. Public companies and hedge funds are increasingly into Ethereum, Solana and other lesser-known digital assets (collectively referred to as “altcoins”).
Publicly traded firms hold more than $100 billion in Ethereum and $10 billion in other digital currencies, and they are rapidly buying more as they diversify their portfolios into tokens that provide greater upside potential, new yield generation opportunities, and additional utility beyond store-of-value.
With more than 37 million unique cryptocurrency tokens in existence, deciphering which tokens are worth the investment is a daunting challenge, but savvy asset managers—and investors hoping to jump the trend—will prioritize the tokens that have strong fundamentals, high yield potential and clear utility.
Institutional Buyers Look for Strong Fundamentals and Yield Potential
First and foremost, institutional buyers need tokens with strong fundamentals. They look for ample liquidity that allows them to buy or sell large positions without moving the market, and they value sensible tokenomics that prevent runaway inflation while tying the asset’s worth directly to real network usage. Regulatory clarity and well-established custody processes are equally important, giving finance, audit and compliance teams the confidence to operate smoothly
Institutional investors then evaluate blockchains for staying power: an active developer base, mature governance, enterprise-grade security and incentives that keep developers and infrastructure providers committed over the long term.
Next they turn attention to income: How can they generate the highest returns on their holdings? Many rotate into assets with attractive, near-term staking rewards rather than relying on passive price appreciation. Solana has emerged as an early favorite because it pairs deep markets with straightforward staking, allowing treasury teams to earn yield while maintaining exposure to a high-throughput network. Recent moves by firms such as BitGo, BIT Mining and Upexi reflect a broader race to accumulate and stake SOL.
Wise Fund Managers Seek Ecosystems With Clear Product-Market Fit
For many institutional asset managers, this is where the calculus ends. Crypto treasury strategies are just another financial tool: a way to balance leverage, optimize tax and debt positions, and tactically time entries and exits. In that view, tokens function like any other asset: liquid, tradable and ripe for arbitrage.
But others see it differently. For them, investing in crypto isn’t like trading the dollar against the euro, it’s more like investing in the internet in 1995. These asset managers view crypto as the foundational infrastructure for a new class of applications. They’re not purely leveraging crypto for financial arbitrage, they’re also making long-term bets on which protocols will become the base layer for everything from payments and AI to data marketplaces and on-chain finance.
For instance, an asset manager evaluating Avalanche (AVAX) might factor in how its modular “appchain” architecture has been popular with institutions and major brands such as Visa, FIFA and Konomi because it allows them to finely tune a custom appchain (mini-blockchain) to their exact needs.
When considering an investment in TON, they might dig into the network’s tight integration with Telegram—a billion-user distribution channel—and how it might propel the network’s “mini in-chat apps” to widespread success.
This metric—let’s call it “potential for widespread adoption”—doesn’t show up clearly in tokenomics or other hard data, and spotting it takes deep industry experience. As the market matures, evaluating tokenomics, liquidity and other straightforward metrics will become automated and commoditized. What will set firms apart is the ability to recognize this potential before it’s obvious.
Chains Asset Managers Are Choosing Today Will Define Next Decade
As institutional money becomes the dominant force in these markets, the traits that define a “good” token will increasingly be filtered through the priorities of corporate treasurers and asset managers. That means liquidity screens, yield modeling and product-market fit analyses will shape protocol roadmaps as much as any whitepaper.
Where asset managers choose to allocate capital today will have an outsized influence on which ecosystems succeed long-term: The projects receiving billion-dollar infusement from Wall Street will be primed for success, while the rest may struggle to stay relevant.
For fund managers, this is an immense responsibility: They now hold the reins to steer crypto’s development and must ensure that, in the rush to monetize the technology, they don’t whittle it down into irrelevance, erasing their holdings.
For builders, this is both an opportunity and a warning: The protocols that can speak the language of institutional capital without losing sight of crypto’s native advantages will claim an outsized stake. Those that can’t may find that, in a trillion-dollar market, being technically brilliant but strategically misaligned is just another way to get left behind.
Budd White is the Chief Strategy Officer of Avalanche Treasury Company, a strategic digital asset treasury (DAT) focused on the Avalanche ecosystem.