If you had a time travel machine, wouldn’t you take a chance to tell yourself to buy some Bitcoin in 2012? Now imagine this article is a message to you from yourself living in 2032. What 10 cryptocurrencies should you buy and hold for the next 10 years?
Crypto isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.
Bitcoin is up for $100,000 by the end of 2022, experts say.
Ether might get as high as $20,000 or even $30,000, some of them expect.
Some of the Metaverse coins you’ve probably never heard of are experiencing 1000% price hikes.
If you stay on the sidelines of the crypto progress now, in 10 years you will be kicking yourself as hard as possible.
Wise men say life is a long chain of wasted opportunities.
Let’s make sure crypto isn’t becoming one of the links in that chain.
We are going to discuss 10 cryptocurrencies you should buy right now. Not for trading, but to hold them for long.
10 cryptocurrencies to buy and hold for the next 10 years
Our list of 10 cryptocurrencies to buy and hold contains some very obvious items, like Bitcoin. But please be patient. The list surprise you more than once, that’s for sure.
Bitcoin
OK, so we begin with the cryptocurrency that is a default choice for every crypto investor.
Bitcoin revolutionized the world of finance and was the first digital currency to gain recognition. Bitcoin is the largest cryptocurrency in the world by market capitalization as of today and has been at the top since the rise of cryptocurrencies.
Regardless of its volatility, Bitcoin is the most credible, recognized, and accepted cryptocurrency across the globe which makes it a suitable candidate for long crypto positions.
As of March 2022, Bitcoin has a market cap of more than $800 billion and is trading at above $47,000 per coin.
Of course, Bitcoin is highly volatile. Last November it attained an all-time high of $68,990, after which it dipped down to trading a little above $32,000 on February 24 – the day when Russian started its invasion of Ukraine.
When in doubt, zoom out. That’s a famous saying that should be a rule of thumb for every crypto investor.
Bitcoin is recovering from all the losses in winter and spring 2022. It is predicted to reach $100,000 by the end of the year. And many analysts say Bitcoin might rise as high as $200,000 within the next five years, driven by limited supply – you remember that the number of Bitcoins out there is finite, right? – and go even higher within the next 10 years.
Yes, Bitcoin is an obvious choice if you want to buy and hold some crypto. And it will be for many years.
Ethereum
Ether (ETH), a native token of Ethereum blockchain, has lived in the shadow of Bitcoin for many years.
Then a couple of things happened.
At first, Ethereum became the most profitable crypto for casual miners who do not own special mining hardware and mine with gaming GPUs.
Then Ethereum became a basis for many DeFi platforms and NFT industry.
At the moment of writing it is the second-largest cryptocurrency in the world by market cap and boasts a market capitalization of $358 billion. The Ethereum blockchain network employs smart contracts in its decentralized applications and achieves consensus via proof-of-work.
There is a thing known as Ethereum 2.0 (switching to Proof-of-Stake consensus mechanism), which is going to happen in summer 2022 and promises increased network bandwidth and reduced gas costs.
Ethereum 2.0 will eliminate mining and switch all the transaction validations to so called stakers. Those users who stake their ETH and take part in the validation process will earn Ethereum as passive income.
Experts say Ethereum is going to gain even more adoption in the corporate world after the Merge. And it will finally distinguish itself from Bitcoin once and for all.
Cardano
Cardano is an open-source and decentralized blockchain network that achieves consensus via proof-of-stake. So it’s in some way already something that Ether is trying to achieve now.
Of course, Cardano is not that big. But it is developing so fast, that to omit it while choosing your long term investments, would be a mistake.
Cardano is unique because of its mission to decentralize finance in Africa and other developing countries. Other cryptocurrencies are much less active in this regard.
As of March 2022, Cardano is the eighth biggest cryptocurrency by market capitalization and boasts a market cap of $32.77 billion. The network’s native token is ADA.
What makes Cardano unique is it focuses on decentralized applications and blockchain solutions rather than on coin itself.
Cardano blockchain offers extremely fast and secure network solutions for dApps. According to many industry experts, Cardano in perspective might become more popular than Ethereum. In the upcoming era of the Metaverse which signifies a new shift in the global economy, Cardano might be a real revolution. So ADA is one of the cryptocurrencies to buy and hold till your kids grow up.
Solana
Solana has a native token SOL, and you should definitely buy some if you are looking for a long term investment.
As of March 2022, Solana has a market capitalization of $29.59 billion and has 320 million tokens in circulation.
In terms of technology Solana is one of the most revolutionary products in the blockchain industry.
It is an open-source project that offers smart contract functionality. Solana achieves consensus via proof-of-stake and offers faster transactions due to its unique approach towards adding timestamps to blocks.
The network boasts being one of the fastest blockchain networks in the industry. Solana has currently set a record for validating 65,000 transactions per second. That is a fantastic result, as it is 20-30 times faster than Visa or Mastercard systems.
The Solana network is dubbed as the ‘Ethereum Killer’ because of its scalability and speed advantages over its competitors.
It is gradually becoming a very popular solution for NFTs, once again thanks to Solana network’s ability to transact at faster speeds than Ethereum and charge significantly less “gas” fees.
A wide variety of decentralized networks can be built on top of Solana that cover decentralized finance, decentralized crypto exchanges, NFTs, crypto gaming, and many more.
Binance Coin
Binance Coin, or BNB, was developed by the Binance crypto-exchange in 2017.
It was built on top of the Ethereum blockchain network initially, but later switched to Binance’s own blockchain.
Well, Binance itself does not need recommendations. It’s the world’s largest crypto exchange, based on daily trading volume.
No wonder, BNB attracts a lot of interest. As of March 2022, BNB is the fourth-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, reaching $66 billion. BNB is worth $474 at the time of writing.
Experts predict that BNB would reach approximately $700 by the first quarter of 2023, and in the next five years will be trading above $2,000. That makes BNB one of the cryptocurrencies to buy and hold.
One of the reasons for that kind of optimism is that Binance’s own token is quite advanced in terms of technology.
BNB supports smart contracts and achieves consensus through a unique Proof-of-Stake authority (PoSA) mechanism, which is a hybrid of Proof-of-Stake and Proof-of-Authority mechanisms.
Polygon
Many blockchain analysts adore Polygon’s technological excellence.
Polygon is a blockchain network that solves the blockchain trilemma of security, scalability, and decentralization.
The Polygon network achieves consensus via Proof-of-Stake, but it does so by using a series of side-chains that allow for the main chain to stay free and therefore promote faster and more scalable transactions.
Thus it leaves Ethereum far behind in terms of speed and scalability.
At the same time the Polygon network has an Ethereum Virtual Machine, EVM, which allows it to be compatible with Ethereum-based applications.
As for speed, the Polygon network is already capable of 65,000 transactions per second matching the record of Solana. But Polygon developers claim the ability to reach millions of transactions as the number of nodes grows.
MATIC is the native cryptocurrency of the network.
And as of March 2022, Polygon boasts a market cap of $11 billion. Just like with Bitcoin, the number of available MATIC tokens is finite. Only 10 billion tokens will be released. 7.69 billion of them are already in circulation.
Scarcity will be a factor driving to price increase when MATIC becomes more attractive to investors.
And bullish trends about Polygon are quickly pushed by the rumors that Visa and PayPal are looking at Polygon as the future platform to enter the crypto world.
Avalanche
As smart contracts are becoming more popular in the world of decentralized finance, more and more attention is paid to the blockchain networks that provide unique functionality in this field.
Avalanche is an open-source proof of stake blockchain network that offers smart contract functionality. The network’s native token is AVAX.
Despite using the same consensus mechanism as Ethereum, Avalanche is faster in terms of transaction speed.
The thing is that Avalanche uses subsampled voting to validate blocks on the blockchain. As a result Avalanche can process 4,500 transactions per second. The scalability and ease to use make Avalanche a popular blockchain to use for NFTs.
Just a couple of weeks ago, in the middle of March 2022, the Avalanche foundation announced that it will be financing the development of the Avalanche Multiverse with a capital of $290 million. The Multiverse will be working on Web3 gaming projects and NFTs.
At the time of writing, Avalanche had a market cap of $23 billion. AVAX is definitely one of those cryptocurrencies to buy and hold for the next decade or so.
Chainlink
Well, Chainlink is a different animal.
Chainlink is a decentralized blockchain network built on Ethereum.
Chainlink makes use of smart contracts to gather data from off-net sources, real-world data and brings it onto the blockchain in a tamper-proof manner.
To achieve this Chainlink network uses so-called oracles. An oracle is a computer program thar facilitates the transfer of secured data from off-chain sources to on-chain smart contracts.
Chainlink is collaborating with Cardano to develop smart contracts for Cardano’s decentralized finance applications. It’s an example of the enormous potential Chainlink has, being able to add some unique features to existing blockchain networks.
Its native token is LINK. At the time of writing Chainlink can boast a market capitalization of $7.2 billion. LINK maximus supply is limited at 1 billion tokens. 467 million are already in circulation.
Once again, as LINK gets popular – and there is no doubt about that – the scarcity and limited offer will push its value up.
The Sandbox
Now it’s time to mention the Metaverse.
The Sandbox was developed in 2011 by Pixowl as a mobile game rival to Minecraft.
The game was a huge success. In 2018, the founders of Pixowl decided to deploy the game on a blockchain that would give users a 3D open-world metaverse environment. It was long before Mark Zuckerberg even thought of that word, by the way.
The game was released in 2020 and gave users an immersive experience where they could create, buy, and sell digital assets in the form of non-fungible tokens in the game.
That’s when SAND, the native token of The Sandbox, appeared and started to gain popularity.
SAND has a maximum total supply fixed at 3 billion tokens. As of March 2022, The Sandbox has a market cap of $3.60 billion.
The Sandbox is one of the first iterations of the Metaverse concept. And it might be one of the most definitive technologies of the decade. So SAND with its limited supply might be a truly effective long term crypto investment.
Polkadot
It would be a crime to omit this unique blockchain from our list of cryptocurrencies to buy and hold for the next 10 years.
Polkadot is a layer-zero blockchain.
It will support 100 parachains on its platform, allowing distinct blockchains to be able to communicate with each other.
Polkadot is a Proof-of-Stake blockchain which seeks to be a scalable solution for smart contract blockchains. It has a native token called DOT. And it’s definitely a cryptocurrency to buy and hold.
Polkadot has a market cap of $21 billion. Many investors claim Polkadot is well ahead of its time. Few years from now when DeFi apps start to require interoperations on a massive scale, that’s when Polkadot will achieve its true recognition. So buy some DOT now until the prices begin to skyrocket.
Sources: Insider Monkey, Benzinga
Disclaimer: The opinion expressed here is not investment advice – it is provided for informational purposes only. It does not necessarily reflect the opinion of cryptolife.report. Every investment involves risk, so you should always perform your own research prior to making important decisions. We do not recommend investing money you cannot afford to lose.
