TL;DR
Just like you’ll never need every card to win a match. You don’t need every shiny coin in your wallet to win the Crypto Pokémon game. Because the truth is, you never want to catch ’em all. Just a small, confident team of tokens is all that’s needed to let anyone lean into quality over quantity. Letting time do all the work and compounding do the heavy lifting.
Crypto always feels like a never-ending booster box, new packs, new art, new rares, and the fear of missing any secret hits. That noise is fun, but it can burn your stack if you treat collecting like gambling. The smarter approach is the same one Pokémon collectors use for long-term sets: pick a handful that actually matter, learn them, and build around them with intention. This report turns that idea into an adventure. Mapping five iconic Pokémon archetypes into a small roster of crypto assets that carry similar energy in the market. It’s playful on the surface, and serious in its philosophy. You don’t have to catch them all; you only need the right few, and to understand why they belong in your binder.
Charizard – The Reserve Asset
Charizard is the card that defines the hobby, the one grail that keeps its crown through every reprint. That’s Bitcoin’s role in crypto. Scarcity, brand, security, and network effect: Bitcoin is the base layer that the rest of the market prices around. It doesn’t need complex features to justify its existence; it needs to keep doing the one thing it already does best. Storing value outside the reach of policy and politics.
You don’t trade Charizard lightly, you size it with respect, and you hold it through noise. Bitcoin asks for the same temperament. It carries the deepest liquidity, the broadest ownership, the most robust infrastructure, miners, derivatives, and custody. When fear spikes, capital flees back to the asset with the longest memory, and that reflex keeps Bitcoin’s position intact.
If you only chose one card for a decade-long binder, you’d pick the one everyone unanimously agrees is timeless. That’s Bitcoin. It anchors the set, it anchors the story, and it anchors the rest of our choices. Everything else, even the most exciting evolutions, works better when this foundation is solid.
Pikachu – Adoption & Usage
Ethereum
Pikachu is the mascot, the face that brings people into the world, friendly, adaptable, always present. Ethereum fills that role for crypto. It’s the platform that turned static money into programmable money, where onchain standards form, developers test ideas, communities gather, and where culture keeps renewing itself. From token standards to rollups to restaking ideas, Ethereum tends to be where the future gets prototyped first, then scaled.
Ethereum bridges narratives and keeps optionality open. You can lean into the chain directly, or you can lean into Layer 2s that settle on it and still capture the core of its ecosystem. If you care about the arc of onchain applications over a decade, you keep this Pikachu on the team, because it evolves with the meta and rarely sits out a season.
Solana
Pikachu, being speed and charm, is the quick strike partner that carries a match with momentum. That’s Solana’s energy. It courts real-time use cases, trading front ends, consumer apps, games, and it ships with conviction. The result is a chain that keeps producing…
Head of Research Jesse is a passionate seeker of truth who enjoys educating others about Bitcoin. As a free thinker and 2nd amendment advocate, Jesse believes each individual has the right to monetary freedom. “The swarm is headed towards us” -Satoshi Nakamoto
