2 Cryptocurrencies to Buy Before the Next Bull Run

Crypto markets run on gyrating cycles of wild exuberance and inconsolable despair, and if you can manage it, buying during the despair phases can be a good way to position yourself for success. Right now, sentiment about the sector is quite sour, and the vast majority of assets are still priced well below their 2025 highs. So it's time to load up on the coins that might be the leaders during the next bull run, whenever that occurs.

Two cryptocurrencies stand out in particular. Ethereum (CRYPTO: ETH) is battle-tested, relatively inexpensive, indispensable to the crypto sector as a whole, and, as a cherry on top, it's also increasingly attractive to financial institutions. Zcash (CRYPTO: ZEC), in contrast, is a risky privacy-focused protocol that's clearing hurdle after hurdle. Here's why each deserves a look and perhaps an investment.

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Ethereum is crypto's home for capital

Ethereum's price is about $2,100 as of mid-May, 57% below its all-time high of nearly $4,946 set in August 2025. That kind of tumble scares off most investors, but it also suggests we're currently in a window when this asset's fundamentals diverge sharply from popular sentiment, creating an opportunity.

Ethereum today has the largest decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem of any blockchain by far, with about $43 billion in capital locked in its protocols, more than six times the next-closest competitor, Solana. Furthermore, it has $165 billion in stablecoin capital on its chain, much more than any of its many rivals, and nearly half of the $323 billion in stablecoin value that exists. It's also the biggest and most important venue for trading or managing tokenized real-world assets (RWAs), which are crypto ownership rights of things like stocks or bonds; nearly $19 billion in tokenized assets are currently tradeable on the network, and again, none of its competitors come anywhere close.

In other words, Ethereum is still by default the place in crypto where investors park their capital. That makes the coin valuable today, and it also means that when crypto bounces back, it will be perfectly positioned to capture the returning capital inflows, boosting its price in the process.

Zcash is a riskier bet with real tailwinds

Zcash has been around for almost as long as Ethereum, but it hasn't gotten much in the way of traction until very recently.

It's a privacy coin that uses most of Bitcoin's supply policies, plus a special type of cryptographic proofs called zk-SNARKs that let the network verify a transaction without revealing the sender, receiver, or amount being exchanged. It's highly volatile and carries risks that Ethereum does not, but a series of developments in late 2025 and early 2026 have shifted its trajectory into being something worth owning.

The coin experienced a halving of its mining reward in November 2025, setting the stage for it to experience a supply squeeze. Then, on Jan. 15, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) formally closed its nearly two-year investigation into the Zcash Foundation without recommending enforcement action. That removed the project's largest regulatory overhang. In March, the Zcash Open Development Lab (ZODL), the coin's newly reorganized core developer team, closed a $25 million seed funding round backed by venture capitalists like a16z and Winklevoss Capital, not to mention Coinbase Ventures.

The capital raised will be used for protocol development. During the past 12 months, the coin's price has increased more than 1,200%, but that could be just the start, considering that it's going to be getting a host of new features in the next couple of years, according to its developer roadmap.

But this is not a coin that should be a core holding. Regulators have forced exchanges to delist privacy coins in the past, and they might do so again. Still, as long as investors are eager to gain privacy for their crypto transactions, Zcash is going to be in demand, and that means it's already positioned to be a leader during the next bull run.

Alex Carchidi has positions in Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, and Zcash. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.