As of mid-September, stocks linked to artificial intelligence (AI) have been trading at a high premium for months. For example, Arm Holdings, which provides products and services to AI companies, traded at 120 times forward earnings as of Sept. 18, 432% above the semiconductor industry's median. That rich multiple is doubtlessly a bet that there will continue to be big expenditures on data centers in the name of furnishing AI companies with more computing power to train and run their large language models. That bet could well pay off -- or fall flat, and leave investors with some brutal losses.
For those who prefer to invest in assets with less obvious signs of being expensive, there are at least two cryptocurrencies worth buying instead of AI stocks. Zcash (ZEC +5.14%) and Solana (SOL +8.68%) are both good alternatives right now.
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Zcash's largest corporate holder wants to accumulate even more
Zcash is a privacy coin that's based on Bitcoin, with a maximum supply that's capped at 21 million coins, and a suite of features that let users keep key details like a payment's sender, recipient, and amount away from prying eyes, inside one of the network's shielded pools.
In the past, privacy coins, including Zcash as well as its biggest competitor Monero, have faced a difficult path to adoption, as regulators have pressured crypto exchanges to delist them because privacy features get in the way of compliance checks. To get around that obstacle, Zcash now has a feature that allows selective disclosure of information. A holder can hand a viewing key to an auditor, exchange, or regulator, who can then read that address's history without letting anyone else know.
So far, that limited concession regarding privacy has enabled Zcash to get a foothold in the world of regulated assets.
There's a spot Zcash exchange-traded fund (ETF) trading now, and it reported more than $500 million in assets as of Sept. 8. What's more, there's a digital asset treasury (DAT) company, Cypherpunk Technologies, which currently holds 323,394 ZEC, or 1.9% of the coin's circulating supply, and it says it wants to ultimately hold 5%. It's also operating a mining fleet that's responsible for 18% of the network's mining power, and funded by a $33.3 million equity deal with Winklevoss Capital.
CRYPTO: ZEC
Key Data Points
Between its mining and purchasing activities, as well as the purchasing activities of the ETF, there are now a few different forces exerting pressure on the coin's supply. Over the long run, its Bitcoin-like supply policy could create significant scarcity, driving the price upward, and that's before even accounting for organic demand from investors who would rather not broadcast their balances or counterparties.
And, unlike buying an AI stock, investors don't need to bet on other resources like computing power remaining scarce forever for Zcash to succeed.
Solana is turning its tokenized stocks into growth for holders
For Solana, one big driver of its next leg of growth is almost certainly going to be tokenized assets, specifically tokenized stocks.
Tokenized stocks are just claims to the shares of real companies, which are issued as crypto tokens; institutional investors are increasingly opting to manage their capital using tokenized assets because of their convenience when it comes to transferring or trading. Supply of those assets parked on Solana totaled $448 million on Sept. 18, and the chain has been home to between 85% and 95% of on-chain equity trading volume in 2026 so far, beating out all other blockchains by a wide margin. The price of the coin is up by 60% during the past three months alone, thanks in part to that tokenized value onboarding to the network.
CRYPTO: SOL
Key Data Points
The second big driver is the arrival of AI agents on Solana, which could spur tremendous growth in its ecosystem by driving economic activity as the agents conduct business with each other and with humans over the coming years.
Solana recently adopted the x402 standard, which is a protocol that enables any website to charge a fee for access to specific pages or information, and the network has already handled more than 35 million such payments. Against that, the cumulative volume of those payments is barely above $10 million, which means that there's a lot of room for the agent economy to grow over time as agents do more useful things.
If the AI companies end up succeeding and making more sophisticated software, that will benefit Solana directly, but investors won't need to take the pricey risk on their stocks to get it.
