The Hook
Eric Wade’s Stansberry Innovations Report is running a promo for a crypto double feature: “The No. 1 Crypto Play for 2025” plus “A Crypto Altcoin with 10-Bagger Upside.” The pitch costs $129 for the first year and renews at $199. There is also a freebie tossed in called the “FedNow Investor Playbook.” We walk through the full story in our “Polygon Crypto: What Investors Need to Know” article.
The first thing to understand is that this is not a fresh idea. The promo article dates back to January 14, 2025, and it has been resurfaced now, in late 2026, through a fresh comment. The urgency flag on this one is low, and for good reason. A “No. 1 Crypto Play for 2025” thesis that resurfaces in late 2026 is already past its own sell-by date before a reader even clicks through.
The headline language is classic crypto tease territory: “It’s not Bitcoin, but this virtually unknown crypto (under $1) could hand you huge gains as crypto soars higher.” The phrase “virtually unknown” is doing a lot of work there, because as we’ll see, both picks turn out to be very well known tokens with large market caps.
The Big Claim
The core promise is a big round number: a “10-bagger.” That is the tease attached to the second pick, the altcoin. The first pick is framed with an even stronger superlative, “The No. 1 Crypto Play for 2025.” Not a good crypto play, not one of several, but the single best one for the whole year.
To support the claim, the promo stacks up a list of enterprise names: “It has partnerships with Dell, Google, LG, IBM, Boeing, and many others.” Then it leans hard on the environmental angle by comparing Bitcoin’s energy use to this smaller token: “A single Bitcoin transaction requires 848 kWh… This smaller crypto, however, uses only .000003 kWh per transaction.” And it caps the pitch with a speed stat: “capable of processing over 10,000 transactions per second.”
So the implied thesis is: an energy-efficient, fast, enterprise-backed coin, still cheap at under a dollar, and the top crypto opportunity of the year. The second reveal, the “10-bagger” altcoin, gets less description in the free copy. That is standard for these teases: the most exciting number is dangled just out of reach so you have to subscribe to see it.
The Mechanism
The clues are enough to name both picks, and they point squarely at crypto tokens, not at stocks.
For the first pick, the fingerprint is “under $1,” energy-efficient, 10,000-plus transactions per second, and partnerships with Dell, Google, LG, IBM, and Boeing. That combination maps to Hedera, the hashgraph-consensus distributed ledger, whose token trades under the ticker HBAR. Hedera is governed by a council that does include Google, IBM, Boeing, Dell, and LG among its members. So the partnership list is not invented; it just describes a governance structure rather than a stack of revenue-generating contracts.
For the second pick, the “altcoin with 10-bagger upside,” the reveal is Polygon, the Ethereum layer-2 scaling network. Polygon’s token rebranded from MATIC to POL, which is a small but important detail: a reader who goes hunting for “MATIC” might now land on a different ticker and get confused. Polygon’s whole pitch is about making Ethereum transactions faster and cheaper, which fits the “scaling” framing in the promo.
The “FedNow Investor Playbook” is a government-adjacency hook. FedNow is the Federal Reserve’s instant payment system. The playbook angle is that a government push into faster payments somehow lifts these tokens. It is a narrative garnish, not an investment thesis, and it does not change what the two reveals actually are.
Here is the key reality check: this is a token promo, not an equity reveal. Hedera and Polygon are protocol tokens. They do not generate earnings. They do not pay dividends. Holding HBAR or POL gives you no ownership stake in Hedera or Polygon Labs. You are buying a claim on a network’s future usage, and that is a very different thing from buying a share of a company.
The Real Pick
| Ticker | Name | What It Is | 2025 Tease Price | Current Price | Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| HBAR | Hedera | Hashgraph-consensus DLT token | ~$0.29 | ~$0.08 | Enterprise-governed network; token carries no equity claim |
| POL | Polygon (ex-MATIC) | Ethereum layer-2 scaling token | ~$0.45 | ~$0.09 | Rebranded from MATIC in 2024; token carries no equity claim |
Current prices are approximate, pulled from live crypto exchange listings as of this writing. Polygon the financial data provider does not carry these tokens, so there is no equity quote to check against. These are exchange prices and they move constantly. The 2025 tease prices are the levels the original January 2025 promo was built around, and both tokens now trade far below them.
Does the Math Check Out?
No, and this is where the teardown gets simple. These are tokens, not companies. There is no earnings estimate, no cash flow, no book value, and no revenue multiple. There is nothing to discount. A “10-bagger” target for a token is a number you can write on a slide, but it has no mathematical anchor, because there is no denominator that can grow tenfold.
The honest way to think about a token is as a bet on network adoption and future demand for the token itself. That is a faith-based exercise more than an analytical one. Stock Gumshoe tracks Stansberry’s crypto record in something it calls the “Crypto Capital Hall of Fame,” and it shows three of Stansberry’s five crypto picks sitting 90% or more below their all-time highs. That is the pattern this “No. 1 Crypto Play” is being slotted into.
Then there is the stale-price problem. The tease prices, roughly $0.29 for HBAR and $0.45 for POL, date from late 2024 and early 2025. Fast forward to late 2026, and HBAR trades around $0.08 while POL trades around $0.09. Both are well below the levels the original promo was built around. A reader who bought at the tease level is not sitting on a 10-bagger; they are sitting on a drawdown of roughly 70% to 80%. The promo that resurfaces now offers no updated price accountability, which is exactly the kind of thing a skeptical reader should flag first.
To be fair to the technical claims: Hedera’s enterprise partnerships are real in the sense that Google, IBM, Boeing, Dell, and LG are genuine council members. Hashgraph consensus is a legitimate technical design. And the energy-efficiency comparison against Bitcoin’s proof-of-work is directionally accurate, because Hedera’s approach uses a tiny fraction of the energy per transaction. None of that, though, makes a token a good buy at any price, and none of it supports a “10-bagger” number.
The Verdict
Treat these as speculative tokens, not investments. If you want crypto exposure, the more defensible route is the boring one: a small position in Bitcoin or Ethereum, sized so you can afford to lose it. HBAR and POL are legacy smart-contract and distributed-ledger plays that have lost mindshare to newer chains. The “10-bagger upside” framing is a marketing number with no accountability. The “No. 1 Crypto Play for 2025” was already stale when it was written, and it is more stale now. Ignore the superlative, skip the upsell, and if you must look at these networks, treat them as a hobby allocation rather than a thesis. For more on that, see our “What Is HBAR Crypto: What You Need to Know” piece.
What They Got Right
- The enterprise names are real. Google, IBM, Boeing, Dell, and LG are actual members of the Hedera Governing Council, so the “partnerships” list is not fabricated, even if the word “partnership” overstates a council seat.
- The energy-efficiency claim is directionally fair. Hashgraph consensus uses a fraction of the energy of Bitcoin’s proof-of-work, and framing an altcoin against Bitcoin’s roughly 848 kWh per transaction is a legitimate comparison rather than a lie.
- The technical specs are roughly accurate. Hedera does process on the order of 10,000 transactions per second, and the token did trade under $1 at the time of the tease, so the “under $1” and “10,000 TPS” claims check out.
- The FedNow angle points at a real theme. Institutions and governments are genuinely exploring faster payment rails and distributed ledger technology, so the direction of the narrative is not fantasy, even if the connection to these specific tokens is thin.
What They Got Wrong
- It sells tokens as if they were stocks. HBAR and POL carry no earnings, no ownership rights, and no cash flow, so the entire “10-bagger” and “No. 1 play” framing rests on a category error.
- “Virtually unknown” is misleading. Hedera and Polygon are both top-100 tokens by market cap. These are not hidden gems waiting to be discovered; they are established, heavily covered assets.
- The prices are stale and the tease has no accountability. Teased around $0.29 and $0.45 in early 2025, both tokens now trade far below those levels, and the resurfaced promo offers no updated numbers.
- “10-bagger upside” is unfalsifiable. With no earnings model, there is no way to be wrong in a checkable way, which is the signature of a marketing claim rather than an analysis.
- The “partnership” language overstates reality. Council membership is not the same as a signed commercial deal, and the promo leans on that ambiguity to sound bigger than it is.
Compliance Disclaimer
This is not financial advice. NewsletterVetter has no position in any stock mentioned.
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