in a recent roundtable discussion SEC chairman
Paul Atkins said that the regulator is working on policies to exempt DeFi protocols from many
of the regulatory barriers they’ve faced so far unsurprisingly a bunch of DeFi tokens rallied like
crazy as a result and this begs the question of which DeFi tokens should be on your radar and
how high could they go as a result and that’s why today we’ve picked our top five favorite DeFi
cryptos that could have your portfolio heading to the moon my name is Nick and you’re watching the
Coin Bureau now before we begin I need to make something clear i am not a financial adviser
and nothing in this video should be considered financial or investment advice this is purely
educational content meant to help you on your crypto quest and if you’re looking to maximize
your crypto gains then you have to check out the Coin Bureau deals page that’s where you’ll
find signup bonuses of up to $100,000 trading fee discounts of up to 50% and deposit cash backs
of up to 75% on the best crypto exchanges around so take advantage of these offers ASAP by
scanning this QR code or hitting the link down in the description now our first D5 crypto
pick is Uniswap’s Uni now as most of you may know UniS swap is a decentralized exchange or DEX
on Ethereum it’s EVM compatible which means it supports all ERC20 tokens and works with
key Ethereum services like MetaMask as well as many other EVM chains and layer 2 unis swap was
launched in November 2018 by Hayden Adams who was inspired by Ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin back
in 2016 Vitalic proposed the idea of an automated market maker or AMM which became the foundation
for unis swap after several funding rounds and a $100,000 grant from the Ethereum Foundation Adams
built a team to launch what is now the biggest decentralized exchange on Ethereum so how does
unis swap work well instead of using traditional order books where buyers and sellers set prices
unis swap relies on smart contracts and liquidity pools to handle token swaps and this means you
can trade tokens directly with a pool at any time rather than another trader and these pools
are created by liquidity providers who deposit equal values of two different tokens into the pool
in return they get LP tokens that represent their share of this pool providers then earn a cut of
the fees every time that a token pair is traded the real magic though is in unis swap’s pricing it
uses a simple algorithm to balance the pool when you trade one token for another you’re adding one
asset and removing the other changing the ratio between the two the algorithm then updates this
price based on the new ratio so prices rise and fall with demand pretty neat right now over the
years UniS swap has undergone several iterations unis swap v1 allowed swaps between ETH and any
ERC20 token v2 expanded this to allow direct ERC20 to ERC20 trades and V3 brought in concentrated
liquidity letting liquidity providers focus their capital within a certain price range to boost
earnings and the recent launch of V4 basically optimized these previous iterations and V4 isn’t
unis swap’s only recent development either the biggest was actually its own layer 2 network a
uni chain which went live in February 2025 that same month UniS swap Labs got a major win as the
now cryptofriendly SEC closed its investigation into the DEX earlier this month June specifically
UniS swap rolled out its new smart wallet adding features that align with Ethereum’s recent
PETAR upgrade and you can learn more about Perra in this video right over here even more
recently a long-awaited proposal was revived and that is the fee switch which would redirect
part of the trading fees from liquidity providers to UNI token holders potentially supercharging
UNI’s price now for those unfamiliar UNI is UNIS swap’s governance token it has a total supply of
1 billion tokens with about 600 million currently in circulation notably 15% of UNI’s total supply
was aird dropped to early users of the unis swap platform which is widely considered to be one of
the most lucrative airdrops in crypto history yeah shout out to any of you who were lucky enough
to get this one anyways during its last major rally between September and December last year
UNI went up roughly three times to around $20 a level it could easily reach again as DeFi gains
momentum but this is a very conservative target and assuming that Ethereum can maintain its market
dominance then there’s no reason uni couldn’t beat its previous all-time high now for context Uni
hit an all-time high in March 2021 at around $45 that’s a 6x from today’s prices and would put
its market cap at over $28 billion but given the growing interest from institutional investors
it’s not unrealistic to imagine UNI hitting $100 and that’s a 13x from here and would
give Uni a market cap of roughly $63 billion now our second DeFi crypto pick is Ave a leading
platform for lending and borrowing crypto assets without KYC credit score or a centralized
intermediary it was founded in 2017 as ETH lend by Stani Kichov and rebranded to Ave in 2018
fun fact for you guys Ave means ghost in Finnish and is a nod to the project’s goal of creating
a transparent financial system ave raised $49 million across multiple funding rounds most of
which took place in 2020 and the first version of Ave launched in January 2020 while Ave is centered
around crypto lending and borrowing it also offers unique D5 products for example flash loans which
are uncolateralized rapid loans that must be repaid within the same transaction now this might
sound pointless at first but believe it or not this bit of financial wizardry opens the door to
some seriously lucrative arbitrage opportunities anyway with Ave users can lend crypto to others by
depositing it into liquidity pools borrowers can then borrow from these pools and interest rates
are determined algorithmically based on supply and demand of crypto in this pool obviously the
more demand the higher the interest rates will be and of course the interest rate is paid from the
borrowers to the lenders to borrow crypto on Ave users must overcolateralize their loans which
basically means depositing an amount of crypto that’s worth more than the crypto they seek to
borrow and this keeps the platform solvent as this collateral can be liquidated i.e sold if the loan
is not repaid or if the value of the collateral falls below a certain threshold borrowers can
choose between stable or variable interest rates depending on their risk tolerance and the
market outlook ave has consistently been one of the most used defy protocols at the start of the
year net deposits surpassed 2021 levels hitting over $33 billion by May this year Ave reached
more than $40 billion in total value locked the highest ever for any D5 protocol notably this
growth came from new user deposits and not just from asset price increase which often drives
most of TVL growth the next step for RV is the launch of V4 now unlike the current V3 model V4
will introduce a unified liquidity pool to boost capital efficiency letting users manage assets
more flexibly without disrupting the main pool it will also bring better gas efficiency improved
liquidations and deeper integration of Ave’s go stable coin for more flexible borrowing you’ll
have to uh dy there and this ties into Ave’s own native token also called Ave ave tokens allow
holders to vote on governance proposals can be used to reduce fees on the Ave protocol and can be
staked to help secure the protocol in return for a portion of protocol fees following a dramatic
downturn in Q1 this year Ave is rebounding and may soon retest the $400 mark from this last
rally its all-time high of $670 set in May 2021 would mean a 2.5x gain from today’s current
prices and if Ave keeps growing it’s possible A could rally as high as $1,000 translating to a 4x
gain and a $16 billion market cap not bad at all now our third DeFi crypto pick for today is Sky
formerly known as Maker Dao until it rebranded in September last year like Ave Maker Dow is a
borrowing and lending protocol that utilized D the well-known decentralized stable coin which
has now since also been rebranded to USDS the reason for the rebrand was to illustrate Skye’s
endgame which is to further decentralize the maker protocol into independent subdows which are now
called stars each with their own governance token but utilizing Sky framework anyhow Maker Dow was
founded in 2015 by Rune Christensen and it raised $55 million across multiple funding rounds between
2017 and 2019 make a DA’s D stable coin launched in December 2017 now to understand how sky works
we first need to look at maker’s original design when maker first launched die in 2017 users could
deposit only ETH as collateral to mint i.e borrow D by 2019 Maker DAO expanded to accept any ERC20
token as collateral provided it was approved by MKR token holders via a governance vote then in
May 2023 founder Run Christensen unveiled a major fivephase overhaul of the Maker DA protocol phase
one was to create a new unified brand and launch the Sky and USDS tokens and note that at the
time of shooting phase one is the only phase to have been fully executed so far as for the other
four phases that are yet to be completed phase two involves launching the first six subdows which are
basically small independent entities with their own governance tokens and treasuries do recall
that subdows were later rebranded to Sky Stars phase three involves launching governance and AI
tools to help monitor and improve the protocol while phase four will create a governance
participation incentive wherein users can stake governance tokens and delegate their voting
power for various token rewards and finally phase 5 involves launching a brand new blockchain now
in case it wasn’t already clear the Sky protocol is moving towards the same two token structure
it had before as Maker DAO only this time with Sky and USDS rather than MKR and die and yes Sky
is the upgraded version of MKR the protocol’s former governance token holders of Sky can vote
on various upgrades and parameters and shape the direction of the ecosystem because one MKR can be
converted to 24,000 Sky tokens this theoretically allows for greater participation and as a result
more decentralized governance structures sky can be staked through the Sky staking engine to earn
additional Sky rewards with payouts tied to the protocol’s performance and this performance-based
model helps align community incentives with the long-term growth of the ecosystem the USDS stable
coin meanwhile continues on from its predecessor DI in that it’s backed by a mix of crypto assets
usds also supports multi-chain interoperability now there are 28.5 billion Sky tokens in total
with 21.3 billion in circulation at the time of shooting as for USDS 7.1 billion tokens
have been minted into circulation now make’s MKR token reached a market cap of over $5.2
billion in the previous cycle specifically in 2021 at the time of shooting Sky has a market
cap of $1.7 billion and a price of $8.4 per token logically this means that Sky’s market
cap could theoretically go up by three times from here given it’s a price of around 25 cents to
match the highs MKR did in the previous 2021 cycle the thing is Skye’s low price tag could actually
help push its price even higher as investors would assume that a lower price tag would mean it could
rally even more and the imminent passing of stable coin regulations could also put it more on the
radar of regular investors with $1 as a logical target this would give it a market cap of around
$23 billion roughly a 12 times gain from today’s current prices okay our fourth DeFi crypto pick is
GTO a liquid staking and MEV capturing protocol on the Salana blockchain gto was founded in 2021 by
Lucas Brutder and Zana Shawani the GTO platform itself went live in 2022 now the project has
completed two funding rounds and has raised $12.1 million and in December 2023 the JTO token was
launched via one of the most lucrative airdrops of that year gto’s value lies in two key innovations
liquid staking and MEV capture with liquid staking users can deposit soul and in return can receive
GTO staked soul or GTO soul and use this GTO soul for other DeFi opportunities whilst also earning
staking rewards the other core part of GTO’s architecture is its maximal extractable value or
MEV tools basically GTO uses special bots that will target and act on arbitrage opportunities
to take additional profits and these profits are then split between validators bot operators and
other participants the added bonus is that this balances prices across different exchanges now
as some of you will have noticed this is pretty similar to what Lido Finance offers on Ethereum
well you’re not wrong but the key thing here is that GTO has the first mover advantage on Salana
since it was first introduced Ajito’s TVL has seen exponential growth by May last year Ajito
became the largest protocol on Salana with $1.4 4 billion in TVL with around 10 million soul
staked at the time which is roughly 38% of Salana’s defy TVL by November GTO became the first
protocol on Salana to reach $3 billion in TVL and it peaked at nearly 4 billion in January 2025
going forward JTO’s CEO has said that the project is actively open sourcing its core infrastructure
in order to increase transparency and foster community participation the long-term plan is
to create a unified MEV ecosystem on Salana that is transparent auditable and accessible to
all stakeholders moving away from a zero someum competitive environment toward one that fosters
growth through collaboration now on top of liquid staking and ME opportunities GTO’s JTO can be used
for voting on governance proposals and can even provide holders with the opportunity to access
exclusive GTO community events it has a maximum supply of 1 billion tokens with about a third of
that currently in circulation jto’s last major rally was at the tail end of 2024 when it hit a
price of $4.34 in December jto currently faces a lot of resistance at around $3 however if it can
break above this level then it could be on track to reach its previous all-time high of around $5.5
roughly 2.5 times from today’s prices and this would give JTO a market cap of around $1.9 billion
however chances are that JTO holders are watching $10 as a potential target and this would translate
to a market cap of roughly $3.4 billion and a 4x gain or more from here now our fifth and
final DeFi crypto pick for today is Radium an AMM deck on Salana radium was founded in 2020 by a
pseudonmous developer under the name Alpha Ray who is just one of the several pseudonmous developers
who are working on the project despite this opacity Radium raised around $33 million across
three different funding rounds radium currently uses AMM V4 also known as the hybrid AMM which the
project describes as being the most battle tested and distributed program on Salana and that’s
because AMMv4 once shared liquidity with a DEX called Serum which became defunct following the
collapse of FTX radium then switched to sharing liquidity with a community-led fork of Serum
called Open Book but it did stop sharing this liquidity after launching Radium V3 in midmay 2024
today Radium no longer shares liquidity with any other protocol and its liquidity pools serve as
traditional AMMs now Radium features a super easy to use interface with swaps charts liquidity pools
perpetuals and more on top of that users can earn yield by providing liquidity and earning trading
fees as well as yield farming and staking notably liquidity providers are rewarded in the protocol’s
native Ray token radium’s unique approach has helped it to quickly become one of the largest
dexes on Salana having processed hundreds of billions of dollars worth of cumulative trading
volume naturally Radium has implemented a buyback and burn mechanism to incentivize long-term
holding of the native Ray token and this reduces the overall supply of Ry over time helping
to support the token’s price the protocol also features a launchpad for new tokens called
Accelerator which has seen such strong demand that it’s not uncommon to have oversubscribed token
launches in fact during the memecoin mania that drove Salana’s demand through the roof Radium even
surpassed Uniswap in monthly trading volumes and this was largely driven by the crazy activity
seen on Pump fun which contributed massively to Radium’s revenue however in April this year
Pumpfund launched its own decks called Pump Swap and ditched Radium as a result Radium created
Launchl which aims to compete with Pump fun’s memecoin shenanigans so then what about Radium’s
native token Ray well Ry serves as the protocol’s governance token and can be staked either for
staking rewards or to receive IDO allocations ray has a maximum supply of 555 million tokens
with just over 267 million in circulation the protocol has over $1.7 billion in TVL which is
down significantly from its peak of just under $3 billion when Ry hit its previous all-time high of
around $17 back in September 2021 if Rey is able to reach this level again this would translate to
a seven times gain from today and would give Ry a market cap of roughly $4.5 billion and if bullish
momentum continues we wouldn’t be surprised to see a push even further possibly around $50 and
this would give it a market cap of around $13.4 billion and would mean a 20x gain from today’s
prices not too shabby of course these estimates are exactly that they’re just guesses no one at
the bureau has a crystal ball which is why it’s vital to do your own research and if you want more
guidance on your journey to the moon check out the Coin Bureau Trading channel right over here and
don’t forget to subscribe to this channel right over here that’s me for now thank you guys very
much for watching and I will see you again soon
