Beyond Bitcoin and Ethereum: Inside the Institutional Battle for Crypto’s Elusive Number Four

For most retail traders, crypto is a constantly shifting leaderboard: today it is memes, tomorrow gaming, next week some new layer 1. Professional money does not work that way. When pensions, sovereign funds or banks think about digital assets, they think in tiers — which assets are core, which are satellite risk, and which are simply too early.

That is why recent comments from Anthony Bassili, president of Coinbase Asset Management, hit a nerve. In an interview at The Bridge conference in New York, Bassili said that institutional investors are remarkably aligned on what their first crypto portfolio should look like: start with Bitcoin, then add Ethereum. Solana “might” be the third asset on that list. After Solana, however, he described a “very wide gap” and stressed that there is still no clear candidate for the fourth slot in institutional portfolios, even as XRP and others make headline-grabbing moves.

Coming from one of the largest institutional crypto platforms, that hierarchy is more than a casual opinion. It is a snapshot of how hundreds of billions of dollars are actually being deployed. And it reveals a deeper reality: while the market loves to talk about “the next big altcoin,” the bar for becoming a strategic asset in institutional portfolios is far higher than simply having an ETF ticker or a strong community.

1. The “must own” layer: why Bitcoin and Ethereum are non-negotiable

The first part of Bassili’s ranking is unsurprising: Bitcoin and Ethereum dominate institutional balance sheets. Surveys from Coinbase Institutional and other large providers show that BTC and ETH account for the overwhelming majority of digital-asset exposure among professional allocators, both in spot holdings and in ETF form. For many, owning anything else in size without first owning those two would be like buying small-cap equities before owning the S&P 500.

There are good reasons for that conservatism:

• Macro thesis and narrative clarity. Bitcoin has a simple, macro-friendly story: a scarce, programmatic asset that behaves like a high-volatility version of digital gold. It fits naturally into conversations about inflation, fiscal deficits and currency debasement. Ethereum, in contrast, is the default settlement layer for stablecoins, DeFi and tokenization; it can be modeled as a kind of “internet base layer” with fee-derived revenues.
• Regulatory comfort. In the United States and several other jurisdictions, Bitcoin and Ethereum enjoy relatively clear treatment from regulators and courts. This does not remove all risk, but it drastically lowers the legal friction for launching products, building risk models and allocating client capital.
• Liquidity and market structure. BTC and ETH trade around the clock on deep venues, have regulated futures markets, and now support multiple spot ETFs and ETPs. That depth allows institutions to move in size with tighter spreads and less slippage, and it simplifies hedging.
• Data and tooling. The analytics ecosystem for BTC and ETH is miles ahead of most other assets. From on-chain metrics to derivatives positioning and ETF flow dashboards, risk teams have a rich set of inputs to monitor exposure.

Put bluntly: Bitcoin and Ethereum are no longer “altcoins” in the eyes of large allocators. They are the foundational layer of any serious digital-asset program, the same way Treasuries and broad equity indices anchor a traditional portfolio. The interesting debates happen on top of that base, not instead of it.

2. Solana as the “offense” slot: the tentative third pillar

Where things get more contentious is slot number three. Here, Bassili has been unusually candid: if institutions are going to add a third large asset after BTC and ETH, Solana is “maybe” that asset. It is not a done deal, but it is ahead of the pack.

From an institutional lens, the Solana story has three pillars:

• Throughput and user experience. Solana’s high transaction capacity and low fees make it an obvious candidate for consumer-facing applications: payments, trading, gaming, and high-frequency DeFi strategies. For allocators who believe that blockchains will eventually carry mainstream traffic, Solana offers a clear “high-performance L1” bet.
• Market traction and ETFs. Over the past year, Solana has climbed into the top tier of crypto assets by market capitalization and trading volume. The approval of Solana-based ETFs in several jurisdictions, together with corporate treasury strategies that explicitly hold SOL, gives institutions packaging options beyond spot exchange accounts.
• Ecosystem depth. A thriving DeFi and NFT ecosystem, active developer community and strong venture backing give some comfort that Solana is more than a single-cycle meme. For allocators, this translates into a perception of ongoing optionality: if the on-chain economy grows, SOL accrues value through fees and staking.

That said, Bassili’s hesitation matters. Calling Solana “maybe” the third pillar is very different from saying it has already secured that role. Solana is still navigating questions around decentralization, historical outages and concentration of infrastructure providers. For conservative institutions, those are not trivial details; they directly affect how much risk capital gets allocated and under what constraints.

In practice, Solana today often fills what might be called the “offense slot” in institutional crypto portfolios: the highest-conviction, high-beta position after BTC and ETH, sized meaningfully smaller but big enough to matter if the thesis plays out.

3. XRP: a serious ecosystem with a perception gap

If this were only a popularity contest, XRP would look like an obvious candidate for the fourth pillar. It has one of the longest histories in the space, a large and vocal community, and sustained attention from banks and payment providers. In 2025, Ripple — the company closely associated with the XRP Ledger — has been on an acquisition spree to deepen its institutional stack.

Over the last two years, Ripple has acquired or agreed to acquire multiple regulated custody and wallet providers, including Metaco, Standard Custody and Palisade, building out an enterprise-grade custody platform aimed at fintechs, corporates and crypto-native firms. It is also buying prime broker Hidden Road in a multibillion-dollar deal to control more of the institutional liquidity stack and integrate XRP and its RLUSD stablecoin into cross-margin and collateral workflows. In parallel, Ripple purchased stablecoin infrastructure firm Rail to accelerate RLUSD’s growth after new stablecoin legislation in the United States.

On the product side, the XRP ecosystem has picked up momentum:

• Stablecoin. RLUSD, Ripple’s U.S. dollar-backed stablecoin, has passed the billion-dollar mark in circulating supply less than a year after launch, with usage split between Ethereum and the XRP Ledger and pilot programs extending into African payments corridors.
• Capital markets vehicles. The first U.S. spot XRP ETF, launched by Canary Capital, recorded the largest first-day trading volume of any ETF debut this year, signalling pent-up appetite for regulated XRP exposure. In parallel, Evernorth, a Ripple-backed treasury company, is going public via a SPAC to build what it markets as the world’s largest institutional XRP hoard.
• DeFi and lending. Ripple has announced a lending protocol and deeper stablecoin integration aimed at enhancing XRP Ledger liquidity and making it more attractive for institutional structured products.

From the outside, this looks exactly like the kind of infrastructure build-out institutions say they want: regulated custody, an enterprise-grade stablecoin, tradable wrappers, and a focused effort to make XRP a serious liquidity asset. So why does Bassili still describe a “very wide gap” between Solana and XRP in investor positioning?

Part of the answer lies in history. Years of legal overhang from the SEC’s enforcement case against Ripple made many institutions reluctant to treat XRP as a core holding. Even though key issues have been resolved and regulatory attitudes have softened, risk committees move slowly. It takes time for a token with that kind of baggage to be re-underwritten as a strategic asset rather than a headline risk.

Another part is usage mix. XRP may be gaining infrastructure, but a significant share of its on-ledger volume is still dominated by a relatively narrow set of cross-border payment and treasury flows. For risk teams that like diversified, organic demand across DeFi, NFTs and consumer apps, that concentration can be a concern. In contrast, Solana’s activity patterns look more like a generalized execution layer for a wide range of on-chain behaviors.

The net result is an odd disconnect: by traditional metrics — acquisitions, ETF launches, regulated custody — XRP is behaving exactly like an asset trying to become a top-4 institutional pillar. In the minds of many allocators, however, it is still a “qualified maybe” rather than a default choice.

4. Why the “number four” slot is still empty

Bassili’s most important point may not be about any single token, but about the shape of the curve. After Bitcoin, Ethereum and “maybe” Solana, he says the market becomes much less certain about what should come next. That uncertainty is not an accident; it reflects how institutions think about risk ladders and opportunity cost.

In the traditional world, a portfolio might ladder from government bonds to investment-grade credit, to broad equities, to small caps, and then to private markets. Each step up the ladder requires a clear reward for taking on more volatility, illiquidity or idiosyncratic risk. Crypto is developing its own version of that ladder, but the rungs after the big three are still wobbly.

Consider the candidates that often get mentioned for a “core alt” slot:

• Alternative layer 1s. Networks like Avalanche, Aptos, Sui and others all argue they can match or beat Solana on performance or developer experience. But cycles of speculative capital rotation have left many of them with shallow, mercenary liquidity and boom-bust histories that make risk committees cautious.
• Infrastructure tokens. Assets like Chainlink, which powers oracle infrastructure across multiple chains, or tokens tied to restaking and data-availability projects, have clear roles in the stack. Yet their tokenomics and revenue-sharing models can be complex, making them harder to underwrite as clean “beta” positions.
• Scaling and L2 ecosystems. Some institutional investors are leaning toward baskets of rollups or L2 tokens rather than a single “fourth pillar,” on the theory that Ethereum plus its scaling layer offers better risk diversification than a bet on any one competing L1.

Overlay all of this with regulatory patchwork, fast-moving technology and the fact that most institutions are still in the early innings of their digital-asset journey, and it is not surprising that there is no consensus on a fourth must-own asset. Many prefer to express their “altcoin risk” through diversified indices, actively managed funds or venture funds rather than making a concentrated bet on one ticker.

5. Four-token thinking as a portfolio framework

Despite the lack of consensus, the notion of “four critical tokens” is still a useful mental model — not as a list of tickers, but as a way of organizing different roles in a professional portfolio.

One way to formalize that is:

• Slot 1 – Macro reserve (Bitcoin). This is the asset tied to macro narratives: debasement, digital gold, long-term store of value. It sits closest to the “alternative money” bucket in traditional asset allocation.
• Slot 2 – Settlement and compute (Ethereum). This covers the execution layer that powers stablecoins, tokenization and DeFi. ETH sits at the intersection of infrastructure and “growth equity”-like exposure to on-chain activity.
• Slot 3 – High-performance execution (currently Solana’s to lose). This is the bet that a faster, cheaper base layer will capture specific categories of activity that do not fit neatly on Ethereum mainnet, even in an L2 world.
• Slot 4 – Strategic optionality. This is the truly contested seat: an asset that offers differentiated utility — whether that is high-velocity cross-border liquidity (XRP), real-world asset connectivity, data infrastructure, or something else — and can justify a structural allocation rather than a tactical trade.

Seen through that lens, the question is not “which four coins should everyone buy,” but “which asset, if any, deserves to be treated as strategic optionality alongside the big three.” Bassili’s point is that, as of today, many institutional investors do not have a clear answer to that question — even if XRP, Chainlink, alternative L1s and others are all building toward it.

6. What tokens have to prove to become truly “institutional"

The gulf between being a top-10 coin by market cap and being a default holding for pensions and insurers is wide. To bridge it, tokens competing for that fourth slot need to check more boxes than retail narratives usually emphasize.

At a minimum, they need:

• Durable, non-reflexive demand. Institutions look for activity that does not vanish when yields in DeFi drop or when incentives turn off. For XRP, that means payment flows and lending that stand on their own economics; for other contenders, it might mean enterprise adoption, tokenization volume or infrastructure fees with clear end-users.
• Regulatory and legal clarity. The faster a token moves from “we hope this is fine” to “this has survived court and regulator scrutiny,” the easier it becomes to underwrite. XRP’s post-litigation trajectory is an example of how long that process can take, even with a positive outcome.
• Deep, resilient liquidity. Allocators want to see tight spreads, robust derivatives markets and, increasingly, ETF or ETP wrappers. The debut of the XRP spot ETF with record first-day volume is a step in the right direction, but investors will be watching whether that interest persists beyond launch week.
• Understandable economics. Complex staking schemes, opaque treasury policies or rapidly shifting tokenomics are red flags. A credible fourth pillar needs a revenue and value-capture model that can be explained on a single slide to an investment committee.

Ripple’s recent acquisitions and product launches can be read as an attempt to tick those boxes as quickly as possible: institutional custody, a regulated stablecoin, a deepening capital-markets stack and explicit strategies to make XRP a core liquidity instrument. Other projects are pursuing their own versions of that playbook.

The point is that none of this is guaranteed. The hierarchy Bassili describes is not a law of nature; it is a moving equilibrium between technology, regulation and market structure. Over the next cycle, the fourth slot might be filled by XRP, by a different L1, by a data or restaking token, or even by a diversified basket that becomes the de facto standard. For now, all of those possibilities remain open.

7. How professional investors can use this hierarchy

For a professional news and analysis outlet, the value in Bassili’s comments is not to anoint winners, but to give readers a realistic map of how large allocators are actually thinking.

Some practical implications for portfolio construction teams:

• Treat BTC and ETH as separate decisions. Lumping them under a generic “crypto” bucket obscures the fact that they respond to different drivers and play different roles in a portfolio. Many institutions are already implementing distinct risk budgets for “macro digital asset” (BTC) and “infrastructure digital asset” (ETH).
• Be explicit about the purpose of Solana-sized bets. If SOL (or any other L1) is in the “offense” slot, its sizing, risk limits and performance benchmarks should reflect that. It is neither a hedge nor a cash surrogate; it is a growth asset whose risk-adjusted contribution has to be monitored aggressively.
• Define a framework for the “strategic optionality” slot. Instead of chasing narratives, build a scoring model: legal clarity, liquidity depth, on-chain usage, off-chain infrastructure, and quality of counterparties. Use that model to compare XRP against other top contenders and to justify why any one asset deserves to be elevated from trading book to strategic book.
• Use wrappers intelligently. For many institutions, exposure to would-be fourth pillars will come first via ETFs, ETPs or managed funds rather than direct spot holdings. Evaluating the quality, liquidity and tracking of those wrappers becomes as important as the underlying token.

Ultimately, the message from Coinbase Asset Management’s vantage point is not that there will only ever be three serious assets. It is that, as of late 2025, the gap between the big three and everything else is still wide enough that calling anything “the fourth pillar” is premature.

Conclusion: a hierarchy still under construction

The crypto market loves clean narratives: four coins every institution must own, three chains that matter, one token to rule them all. The reality inside investment committees is messier. Bitcoin and Ethereum have graduated into strategic, near-mandatory holdings for any serious digital-asset program. Solana has emerged as the leading candidate for the offensive, high-beta slot at number three, but still carries debate.

Beyond that, there is only contested territory. XRP has spent the last two years doing exactly what textbooks say you should do to become institutional: build custody, launch a regulated stablecoin, secure ETF exposure, acquire prime brokerage and stablecoin infrastructure, and nurture a treasury ecosystem around your token. Other projects are building their own bridges between crypto-native tech and traditional market structure.

Yet from Bassili’s seat at Coinbase Asset Management, the view is still that there is no universally accepted number four. What exists instead is a growing list of serious candidates, each with strengths and unresolved risks, and a set of allocators who are slowly, methodically testing how those assets behave through a full macro cycle.

For a professional audience, that ambiguity is not a bug; it is the investment opportunity. The question over the next few years is not whether there will be a fourth pillar, but which combination of technology, regulation and real-world usage will earn that asset a permanent slot next to Bitcoin, Ethereum and whichever “maybe” survives to be number three.

Until that picture becomes clearer, the smartest approach is probably the least glamorous: recognize the hierarchy as it exists, size bets accordingly, and treat every candidate for the fourth slot not as destiny, but as a thesis that still has to be proved in the hardest arena of all — institutional risk committees.