3 No-Brainer Cryptocurrency Picks to Deploy $1,000 Into Immediately

Digital assets surge while traditional finance scrambles to catch up.

Forget waiting for Wall Street's permission—these three cryptocurrencies represent foundational bets on the future of finance.

Ethereum: The DeFi Backbone

Smart contracts continue eating traditional legal agreements—and Ethereum remains the dominant platform. Institutional adoption accelerates while the network upgrades keep coming.

BNB: The Ecosystem Play

Binance's native token powers the world's largest crypto exchange ecosystem. From trading fees to launchpad access, BNB captures value across multiple revenue streams while traditional brokers nickel-and-dime customers.

Solana: The Speed Demon

Processing transactions at speeds that make legacy payment networks look dial-up. Solana's scalability addresses blockchain's biggest bottleneck—proving sometimes the best innovation comes from outside the banking establishment.

While financial advisors debate allocation percentages, these assets demonstrate real-world utility today. The $1,000 question isn't whether to invest in crypto—it's which projects will lead the next market cycle.

Image source: Getty Images.

1. Broadcom

Whilegets most of the attention,(AVGO -0.04%) is also becoming one of the most important players in the artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure buildout. The company made its name in networking components, which help data centers quickly MOVE massive amounts of data, but its biggest growth driver now is its custom chip business.

Companies like,, and ByteDance have turned to Broadcom to design application-specific integrated circuits, or ASICs, to lower their AI infrastructure costs. Combined, Broadcom sees these three customers as a potential $60 billion to $90 billion opportunity by fiscal year 2027. The company is set to deliver only about $63 billion in revenue in fiscal 2025, so this opportunity is massive.

Broadcom has already proven it can deliver with Alphabet's Tensor Processing Units, which now help power some of its cloud computing business. It also recently announced that a fourth major customer, believed to be OpenAI, has placed a $10 billion order for next year. OpenAI is planning a huge data center buildout with, so this is huge news. Meanwhile, it has also been working withon its own AI chips.

Broadcom has won a lot of major customers, and with the market shifting toward inference, where total cost of ownership is vital, the opportunity in front of it with custom chips that can save costs is just massive.

2. GitLab

(GTLB -1.29%) has evolved from a development, security, and operations (DevSecOps) solution into a full software development lifecycle solution platform that lets developers write, test, secure, and deploy code all in one place. At the same time, it's turned to AI to help automate processes and save time for developers with its new Duo AI agent. William Blair analysts estimate that developers spend only about 20% of their time actually coding, so helping coders become more productive in other areas is a big selling point.

While AI was originally viewed as a potential headwind, thus far, it has just increased the pace of software creation. In fact, GitLab's growth has been driven by existing customers increasing the number of coders who have access to its platform. This could be seen in its strong 121% dollar-based net retention last quarter, with management saying most of the increase came from seat expansions.

Meanwhile, the company is already planning for a future where there may be fewer coders by introducing a hybrid seat-plus-usage model. This should help it capture more of the value it is now providing to its customers and protect it from any customer workforce reductions.

Given the importance of its platform, GitLab looks like a long-term winner.

3. Pinterest

(PINS -0.11%) has been steadily transforming its business from an online vision board into a platform where users can both find inspiration and shop. The company has built a multimodal AI model, which it is using to power visual search and help improve personalization. Users can also now click on items inside images and buy similar products directly.

As you can imagine, this is much more attractive to advertisers than its original platform. Advertisers are also benefiting from the company's AI push. Its Performance+ product automates campaign creation, targeting, and bidding, making it easier and more cost-effective for brands to advertise on its platform.

Despite this, Pinterest's average revenue per user (ARPU) continues to lag peers, especially in international markets. However, it has been seeing solid ARPU growth, and there is still a long runway ahead to close the gap with competitors. It also continues to attract more younger users, who are often viewed as more valuable to advertisers.

All in all, Pinterest looks well-positioned over the next few years as it begins to benefit from its platform improvements.