My Top 3 Cryptocurrencies for May 2026
Key Points
The U.S. government may be announcing some important news relating to Bitcoin soon.
Solana's upcoming update will build on its large lead in transaction throughput.
Zcash just raised money, and it has some powerful backers, too.
- 10 stocks we like better than Bitcoin ›
Between global geopolitical and market turbulence and the possibility of passing major legislation such as the Clarity Act, May has been a wild month for crypto. It'll probably continue to be.
Against that backdrop, three cryptocurrencies in particular have my attention this month. Here's what I'm watching and why.
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1. Bitcoin
The U.S. holds around 328,000 Bitcoins (CRYPTO: BTC), worth about $25 billion, leaving 1.6% of the coin's circulating supply controlled by one sovereign nation. That means when the government has something to say about what it's doing with Bitcoin, it pays to listen closely.
On May 6, White House advisor Patrick Witt told the audience at the Consensus Miami crypto conference that a major update on the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve (SBR) is coming "in the next few weeks." Congress still hasn't codified the reserve into law, and it might never. Presently, there is no third-party-verifiable evidence that the SBR is implemented or functioning at all, though it does appear to be the case that the government has not sold any Bitcoin it's seized recently, so it's almost certainly storing it somehow.
A positive announcement about the SBR with more information about whether it's actually operating could pull the coin's price back toward six figures from its current levels near $80,000, so pay close attention when the update drops.
2. Solana
Solana (CRYPTO: SOL) has had a difficult 2026. The total value locked (TVL), the capital deposited into decentralized finance (DeFi) applications on its chain, has dropped from its 2025 peak of $13.1 billion to reach $5.5 billion.
Nonetheless, there's a bright spot, as the chain's upcoming Alpenglow upgrade went live on a test network on May 11. It could launch as soon as Q3 of this year, and it aims to substantially boost Solana's already sector-leading speed and throughput.
If Alpenglow provides the performance improvements Solana's developers are banking on, it could be a draw for financial institutions looking to transition some of their operations to blockchains for easier management. That could inspire more capital to migrate to Solana, making Q3 a potential inflection point if the testing goes well.
3. Zcash
In January, the entire engineering team of Zcash's (CRYPTO: ZEC) original developer, the Electric Coin Company (ECC), resigned over an internal governance dispute. The privacy coin is now up by 127% in the last three months.
What could have been a fatal pitfall became a catalyst, as the departing developer team formed a new organization called Zodl and went on to raise $25 million from high-profile investors, including firms like Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) and Winklevoss Capital, among others, in early March.
That money will go toward recruiting new talent and building out the coin's development road map, with new information likely to surface soon. The price level to watch is around $880, as that's the coin's prior all-time high, which it set in 2018, and it isn't too far from the coin's price of $551.
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Alex Carchidi has positions in Bitcoin, Solana, and Zcash. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Bitcoin and Solana. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
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