Grayscale’s Bold Crypto Picks: Avalanche & Morpho Make the Cut While XRP, ADA Get Snubbed

Grayscale just dropped its top 20 crypto selections—and the lineup is raising eyebrows. Avalanche and Morpho clinched spots, while heavyweights like XRP and Cardano got left in the cold. Here’s the breakdown.

Why These Packs Made the List

Avalanche’s scalable smart contracts and Morpho’s lending protocol innovations clearly caught Grayscale’s eye. Meanwhile, the absence of XRP and ADA suggests the fund’s betting on tech over brand recognition—or maybe they just enjoy watching crypto Twitter melt down.

The Market Reacts

Expect volatility as traders scramble to align with Grayscale’s latest play. Because nothing says 'sound investment strategy' like blindly following a fund’s picks—what could go wrong?

Final Thought: In crypto, even the 'smart money' plays favorites. Sometimes it pays off. Sometimes you’re left holding a bag of 'legacy tokens.'

Why AVAX and MORPHO were added

Grayscale said Avalanche made the cut following a noticeable increase in activity across its ecosystem.

The investment firm explained that Avalanche has seen meaningful growth in transaction volumes, which may be linked to the integration of blockchain-powered gaming titles and stablecoin usage.

While the long-term sustainability of this growth remains uncertain, the firm sees it as a promising signal of traction within the network.

On the other hand, Grayscale stated that it added DeFi lending protocol Morpho due to its rapid growth in the past year.

According to the firm, Morpho doubled its total value to over $4 billion and generated an annualized fee income approaching $100 million during the past year.

In addition, its newly launched second version aims to attract institutional players and further strengthen its position in the decentralized finance space.

Considering this, Grayscale wrote:

“Grayscale Research is optimistic about the future of on-chain lending activity, and Morpho seems well positioned to potentially capture a meaningful share of that growth (along with the other lending-related protocols on the Top 20 list, AAVE and Maple Finance).”

XRP is missing from Grayscale’s list

Notably, Grayscale’s revised list does not include several high-profile digital assets such as XRP, Cardano, BNB, and TRON.

While these assets remain among the largest by market cap, Grayscale clarified that its Top 20 list focuses on assets with strong fundamentals, upcoming catalysts, and sustainable network activity.

Meanwhile, those assets have seen significant ecosystem developments and institutional adoption this year.

For context, XRP has seen increased attention in recent months, partly due to Ripple’s enterprise partnerships and continued expansion of the XRP Ledger.

The same can be said for Cardano, which has made strides with its scaling roadmap and plans to incorporate Bitcoin within its DeFi ecosystem.

However, both assets have underperformed the broader market despite the current bullish sentiments in the industry.

CryptoSlate’s data shows that XRP has declined more than 4% since the start of the year and remains roughly 45% below its all-time high. At the same time, Cardano’s ADA has fallen over 35% in the same period and sits more than 80% below peak levels.

So, this lack of price momentum may be one reason for their continued exclusion.