Crypto projects that retain their value over the years tend to return the best gains. Bitcoin and Ethereum are prime examples of some of the best long term crypto projects that have returned roughly 3.2 million percent and 220,222 percent since they started trading.
These are impressive numbers, and while the boat may have sailed for enormous gains on Bitcoin and Ethereum, other projects show the potential for significant value appreciation over the next few months and years.
Our guide explores 10 projects with the most potential. We explore what they do, why they are important, their strengths and weaknesses, and how their operations can increase in value over time.
Here are our picks for the best crypto platforms to use to buy long term cryptos.
1. Metacade - Best Web3 Community
2. Alt Signals - Best Trading Services
3. Chancer - Best Decentralised Betting Platform
4. Ethereum - Best Smart Contract Platform
5. Bitcoin - Most Decentralised Network
6. AAVE - Best Lending Protocol
7. GMX - Best Leveraged Trading Protocol
8. Treasure - Best Gaming Infrastructure
9. Lido - Best Liquid Staking Protocol
10. Biconomy - Best Interoperable Protocol
11. Chainlink - Best Blockchain Oracle
12. Uniswap - Best Decentralised Exchange
13. Osmosis Dex - Best Interoperable Decentralised Exchange
Cryptocurrency
Category
Asset
Exchanges listed
Blockchain network
Metacade
Community
MCADE
MEXC
Ethereum
Alt Signals
Services
ASI
None yet
Chancer
Gambling
CHANCER
BSC
Layer 1
ETH
15+
Bitcoin
BTC
20+
AAVE
Lending
13+
7+
GMX
Derivatives Trading
Arbitrum, Avalanche
Treasure
Gaming Infrastructure
MAGIC
8+
Arbitrum
Lido
Liquid Staking
LDO
Binance, Coinbase
5+
Biconomy
Interoperability
BICO
10+
2+
Chainlink
Oracle
LINK
11+
Uniswap
Dex
UNI
6+
Osmosis
OSMO
3+
Cosmos
Metacade is a Web3 community platform that focuses on various participants in the crypto gaming sector, from players to builders, game bloggers, and more.
The platform provides a space for gaming fans and enthusiasts to congregate and interact. Its value is in the experience it provides for gamers outside the worlds and metaverses of individual games.
The platform is powered by the MCADE token which is used to reward users who participate in challenges, contribute to the ecosystem, and vote on proposals.
What Metacade aims to achieve has not been done on the level that the platform envisions. While some social gaming communities exist, they are usually limited to scholarship programmes and guilds, and often leave out the more social aspects of gaming.
Metacade, on the other hand, focuses heavily on the power of social interactions. The platform connects to various popular crypto games, allowing its members to access the best games from one platform.
It also leverages these integrations to maintain leaderboards of the top players across various games, fostering healthy competition among its members. Players can see which games are hot right now and plug into those communities.
Game builders aren’t left out as a review section provides them with first hand accounts of players’ experiences with their games. They can use these reviews as an information source for making improvements.
MCADE recently launched on MEXC and on decentralised exchanges like Uniswap.
Alt Signals is a company that provides trading tools and services that help traders achieve profitability by making more accurate predictions. The company already has a winning product, a trading signal bot called AltAlgo.
Now, they wish to integrate blockchain technology to enhance their offerings and build a community of traders.
Alt Signals has developed a new product called ActualizeAI, which uses artificial intelligence, natural language processing, and machine learning to make even more accurate predictions than AltAlgo.
ActualizeAI will be the basis of their new suite of services and their new token, ASI, will be the key to unlocking these services.
Users will need to hold ASI in their wallets to access the various trading bots and algorithms on the Alt Signal website. The token will also serve as a membership badge and will qualify its holders for trading challenges and other promotional campaigns.
We believe that their new products can consistently provide value to its users, and sustain the community that will be built on it.
ASI is still in pre pre-sale phase where it sells at a discount to its listing price. To participate, visit Alt Signals’ website.
Chancer is a decentralised prediction platform that allows users to create markets, set rules, and determine the rewards for various predictions. Its decentralised infrastructure allows it to offer peer-to-peer bets that does not rely on third-parties.
Chancer allows anyone to create predictive markets from any event that has a single trackable outcome. These markets can have custom rules, reward tiers, and can accommodate multiple participants.
The creators of these markets, called market makers, can create predictions on sports, entertainment, politics, and even video games.
Chancer takes betting further by integrating live streaming and social betting features that allow users to stream personal events, like a video game session, while others bet on the event as it unfolds.
The Chancer ecosystem is powered by the CHANCER token. Market makers and community members must hold CHANCER in their wallets to be able to create and participate in markets.
The token is approaching its pre-sale phase, but has a total supply of 1.5 billion units, 975 million of which will be available when the pre-sale begins.
When the token is launched, holders will also be able to profit from staking and running nodes. CHANCER will be launched on the Binance Smart Chain.
To participate in the pre-sale, visit the Chancer website and follow the onscreen instructions.
Ethereum is a household name in the world of crypto. The pioneer smart contract network has been around since 2013 and has survived multiple market cycles because of its fundamental contributions to the proliferation of crypto technology and its importance to the industry.
Ethereum is a general purpose blockchain network that powers tens of thousands of decentralised applications, spanning from DeFi apps, to games, and entire metaverses. It has a total value of about $32 billion locked in its many decentralised finance applications, and even more in other non-finance related protocols.
Ethereum has long term potential because its operating system, the Ethereum Virtual Machine is one of the most widely used in the industry. New blockchain networks adopt this system when creating their own technology.
Secondly, Ethereum is one of the most decentralised blockchains after Bitcoin with more than 9,000 nodes around the world working to secure the network.
Thanks to the recent Shapella upgrade, the network now processes a theoretical 100,000 transactions per second and is expected to become faster as time goes on.
In the last bull market, the network’s native token, ETH, reached a high of $4,000, and that was when the network experienced scalability issues and high transaction costs that excluded several retail participants.
Now that these issues are being addressed, the network is expected to grow exponentially. ETH trades at $2,100 as of writing after reaching a 52-week high of $3,000 in April 2022 and low of $995 in June 2022.
You can buy Ethereum on exchanges like Binance. To learn more, you can read our Ethereum review.
The pioneer cryptocurrency has come a long way but still has a long way to go. As the most decentralised, secure, provably limited, and censorship resistant network, Bitcoin has earned its moniker as “Digital Gold”.
The network has over 10,000 full nodes spread around the world that work to keep it secure and decentralised. The nodes are compensated with Bitcoin for processing transactions, a process known as crypto mining.
Bitcoin has a total supply of 21 million coins, 19.3 million of which have already been mined. However, thanks to events like the Bitcoin halving, which is when the network slashes the mining reward in half every four years, the remaining Bitcoin will not be mined until the year 2140.
Several analysts have projected that Bitcoin will reach a price as high as $250,000, with the most extreme prediction placing the crypto at $1,000,000 per coin. Whether these predictions come to pass, the fact remains that several retail and institutional players invest in Bitcoin because of its long term prospects.
Also, several projects are beginning to build layer 2 solutions to bring smart contract functionality to the blockchain in a bid to stimulate decentralised financial activities on the network.
You can buy Bitcoin on exchanges like eToro. To learn more, read our Bitcoin review.
Aave is the premiere lending protocol across four blockchain networks, although the money market protocol operates across 7 total blockchains. This protocol facilitates lending between crypto holders.
The premise is simple: you deposit collateral, vis-a-vis crypto, into a supply pool and borrow against the market value of the collateral. You are charged interest on the amount borrowed which is calculated daily but displayed yearly and is based on the utilisation of the specific pool you borrow from.
Provided you don’t borrow more than 75% of your collateral’s market value, you should be safe. If not, your position may get liquidated.
Investors could add tokens to the supply pool to lend out to others and earn returns for doing so.
AAVE is the third largest DeFi application in the entire crypto industry with a total value locked of $6.5 billion and a market capitalisation of $1.19 billion. Its tokenomics is quite solid with a total supply of 16 million tokens, 14 million of which are already in circulation.
Borrowing on AAVE can be cheaper than obtaining a traditional loan, and it definitely is easier. Rates are usually well below 10%, sometimes even below 2%, based on market volatility and pool utilisation.
As the protocol expands to other blockchains, its TVL could grow exponentially and be reflected in the price of its tokens.
AAVE trades at $83 as of writing with a 52-week high of $186 in April 2022 and a low of $46 in June 2022. To learn more, read our AAVE review. You can buy AAVE on exchange like eToro
GMX is a protocol that allows users to trade crypto derivatives, called perpetuals, which are like Futures contracts that never expire (thus the term perpetual) in a decentralised manner.
Before GMX, most crypto perpetual trading was done on centralised exchanges like Bnance and FTX. However, since the fall of FTX, crypto-savvy traders have sought decentralised exchanges with futures offerings. GMX is one of such solutions and is a market leader in that regard.
Built on the snappy Arbitrum network (and now extended to the Avalanche network), GMX allows you to trade ETH, BTC, LINK, and UNI with up to 50x leverage. This means that you can deploy capital that is 50 times more than your deposit.
You can also open both long and short positions from a decentralised protocol that does not, at any point, have custody of your tokens.
GMX charges a borrow fee for leveraged positions that is expressed as a percentage per hour (i.e., 0.001%/h) and allows you to set market, limit, and trigger orders.
The protocol currently has 230,000 users and has processed a total of $107 billion, $128 million of which it has earned as trading fees. A portion of all revenue is distributed to GMX stakers at a current yield of 4.76% per year.
GMX has one of the highest staking percentages, with about 78% of all GMX in existence currently being staked.
The protocol has a total value locked of $687 million and market capitalisation of $759 million. Its token, GMX, has a maximum supply of 13 million tokens, 8.6 million of which are in existence and circulation.
GMX trades at $88 as of writing with a 52-week low of $13 in June 2022 (it is at its 52-week high as of writing).
You can buy GMX on exchanges like Binance.
Treasure is a gaming infrastructure project built on the Arbitrum network. It is a protocol that helps game developers to easily build games by providing a base layer for development, a marketplace for in-game items, and a Dex for in-game currency.
Treasure’s real appeal is its interoperability across games. Using this protocol, game developers can collaborate with one another to create player stories that span multiple games.
In-game items like weapons, tools, NFTs, and even avatars can easily be moved within games, enabling an ecosystem of interconnected games, richer lores, and deep liquidity for the Dex, called MagicSwap.
So far, Treasure has a total marketplace volume of $271 million across 10+ games with a player community that is 100,000+ strong. Its native token, MAGIC, is held by at least 344,000 unique wallets.
MAGIC has a total supply of 350 million tokens, 213 million of which are already in circulation. This places its market capitalisation at $295.37 million. The token trades at $1.53 as of writing with a 52-week high of $2.21 in April 2022 and a 52-week low of $0.22 in July the same year.
You can buy MAGIC on exchanges like Binance.
Lido is the leading liquid staking protocol which was originally built on the Ethereum blockchain, but has expanded to four other blockchain networks. With Lido, you can stake Ethereum’s ETH. Polygon’s MATIC, and Solana’s SOL for a yearly return while protecting the respective networks.
Lido is important because the crypto industry has pretty much moved to proof-of-stake (PoS) blockchains which require node operators to lock up funds (usually the blockchain’s native coin) as an incentive to act honourably.
These locked coins are usually removed from the ecosystem, decreasing the total supply which could otherwise be used for more profitable DeFi activities. However, securing the blockchain is also paramount.
Liquid staking protocols issue proxy tokens, called staking derivatives, that are backed by the value of the staked coins. These derivatives can be used across the blockchain for trading and DeFi activities while the real coins remain staked to secure the blockchain.
These protocols became popular when Ethereum began its move to a PoS blockchain and required that a substantial amount of ETH be staked.
Liquid staking is not going away anytime soon as it has proven to be capital efficient and sustainable, and Lido leads the industry with a market capitalisation of $2.2 billion and a total value locked of $12.75 billion.
Lido is also the largest protocol in crypto by TVL and, unless something fundamental occurs, like a black swan event, we don’t see that changing anytime soon.
The protocol’s native token, LDO, has a total supply of 1 billion tokens, 870 million of which are already in circulation. It trades at $2.55 as of writing with 52-week highs and lows of $3.66 in April 2022 and $0.44 in July the same year.
You can buy Lido on exchanges like Coinbase.
Biconomy is an interoperability protocol that allows developers to create chainless applications that can connect to any blockchain it needs to operate as smoothly as regular applications.
The major problem that Biconomy solves is one of interoperability and user experience. Decentralised applications are not known to have the smoothest user experience. Some are downright complicated, involving several steps which could result in a loss of funds for inexperienced users, especially when cross-chain transfers are involved.
However, with Biconomy, developers can build applications that are composed of modules that do not live on only one blockchain. These modules can connect and make calls to several blockchains.
This creates a seamless experience where users do not have to worry about or track which blockchain they are on, just like end users do not track which servers host the services they enjoy.
The Biconomy ecosystem is powered by the BICO token, which has a total supply of 1 billion units, 490.28 million of which are already in circulation. It trades at $0.42 as of writing with 52-week highs and lows of $1.46 in April 2022 and $0.26 in November of the same year.
You can buy BICO on Exchanges like eToro.
Chainlink is a decentralised blockchain agnostic oracle provider. It is the leading provider of off-chain data with a growing use case as the crypto industry integrates closely with the real one.
Blockchain Oracles are services that get verifiably accurate off-chain data and bring it on-chain. They are necessary because blockchain networks are isolated systems that would otherwise be closed off from the rest of the world.
The importance of off-chain data is most evident in decentralised finance protocols and products like synthetics which track the price of real world securities like stocks and tokenised assets.
As cryptocurrency and blockchain-based assets further integrate with real word assets, the need for oracles will intensify.
A new type of stablecoin which uses oracles to transport real world reserve data is slowly rising to prominence. If this type of stablecoin is accepted, then Chainlink would have found another quintessential use case for its services.
The Chainlink network of decentralised oracles is powered by the native token, LINK, which has a total supply of 1 billion units, 517 million of which are already in circulation. The token is used to pay for its data services. As long as its services are needed, its token will retain value.
LINK trades at $8 as of writing with 52-week highs and lows at $14.04 in April 2022 and $5.47 in December of the same year. You can buy LINK on an exchange like eToro.
To learn more, read our Chainlink review.
Uniswap is a decentralised exchange with a market capitalisation of $4.6 billion as of writing, a multichain presence, a total traded volume of 41.4 trillion, and integrations with over 300 other decentralised applications.
The leading decentralised exchange is the fifth largest dapp with a total locked value of $4.41 billion. It is the go-to place for swapping between the 100+ listed tokens at low fees and with minimum slippage.
We love Uniswap because we don’t think that it is going away anytime soon. The exchange has been able to grow beyond the Ethereum mainnet to other networks like Arbitrum, Polygon, Optimism, Binance Smart Chain, and Celo.
It also has an NFT integration that allows you to track collections across various marketplaces. Its dashboard displays the prices of your favourite collections across various NFT marketplaces.
Its integrations also include fiat onramps like Banxa that allow you to buy crypto with fiat within Uniswap, which is useful for users who do not wish to create accounts with conventional exchanges.
As Ethereum scales and more participants enter the industry, Unsiwap, which has already won the trust of crypto users, whales, and institutions, will be in a prime position to grow.
The Dex’s native token, UNI, is used for governance purposes. While it does not have as much utility as some others, the value of the exchange is bound to rub off on the token.
UNI has a total supply of 1 billion tokens, 753 million of which are already in circulation. It trades at $46.33 as of writing with 52-week highs and lows of $9.54 in April 2022 and $3.61 in June 2022.
You can buy UNI on exchanges like OKX. To learn more, read our Uniswap review
Osmosis is a liquidity protocol on the Cosmos ecosystem of blockchains. It is called the interchain liquidity lab because it holds liquidity pools for various independent blockchains within Cosmos.
It also provides infrastructure for others to build decentralised applications that help manage and provide liquidity across several blockchains. Its premier application, Osmosis Dex is an automated market maker and decentralised exchange that allows people to swap coins.
Osmosis has immense potential as the largest interchain Dex because it solves the problem of interoperable decentralised finance. By providing pools for several blockchains, it creates deep liquidity markets, while other Dexes usually fragment markets when expanding to other chains.
Liquidity providers also benefit from Osmosis as they can consolidate their funds into pools that receive the combined volumes from several different blockchain users, leading to more volumes and higher revenues.
The Osmosis Dex has a total locked value of $185 million and a market capitalisation of $494 million. Its native coin, OSMO, has a maximum supply of 1 billion units, 566 million of which are already in circulation.
OSMO trades at $0.87 as of writing with 52-week highs and lows of $0.58 in April 2022 and $0.68 in January 2023. You can buy OSMO on exchanges like Binance.
Cryptocurrencies have proven to be highly profitable if you choose the right projects and hold on long enough. Projects like Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Uniswap have returned immense gains over the years.
Furthermore, the world is becoming more digital, and digital ledger technology is powering new ways of doing business and carrying out finance. As such, new types of digital assets are being created.
The projects we have listed capture value across various sectors of the crypto space. They are the leaders in their various categories and have strong tokenomics, value offerings, and display potential to grow exponentially as the crypto sector gains mainstream adoption.
Technically speaking, there are no long term and short term crypto projects. All crypto projects usually present a long term plan for growth and sustainability. However, not all projects survive. In truth, many of them die out within the first five years.
The categorisations of long and short term are used by investors to gauge which projects are more likely to survive. Hence, long term projects are crypto protocols, blockchains, infrastructure, and decentralised applications that have good long term prospects.
They usually have a track record of delivering value to users which, in the crypto space, means tens of thousands of daily active users and the ability to generate profits for all stakeholders (i.e. miners, liquidity providers, etc).
Most importantly, they are projects that have growing adoption, which involves solving real problems in sustainable ways. For example, Bitcoin is the first provable digitally scarce resource. This is important because it makes it an asset that one can hold.
Ethereum runs the most used operating system in crypto. As long as there are decentralised applications to be run, there will be a need for a system to run them.
Short term projects, on the other hand, offer products/services that are more of band aids than sustainable solutions. Many of them ride on popular trends, achieve massive success very quickly, and then fade just as fast.
Memecoins are a good example of this. Most memecoins achieve astronomical growth within the first few weeks and months of their release, often increasing their value by 100x or 1000x. But once the hype fades, they crash, losing almost 100% of their value, never to rise again.
No crypto project is guaranteed to be a profitable long term investment, no matter how sound they seem. However, there are some common characteristics that most long term projects share. We discuss them below.
All long term crypto projects proffer sustainable solutions to the real problems. While it's easy to focus on the solution, you should also consider the problem. Innovative solutions to small insignificant problems end up being just as small and insignificant.
Over the years of our time in crypto, we’ve seen that projects that create sustainable solutions to the issues of liquidity management, secure scaling, yield generation, and decentralised trading/exchange tend to perform well.
Real world application is another good indicator of long term performance. If a project can fill in a need that is not exclusive to the crypto industry, then it has a much better chance of being around for the long haul.
A good example of this is Ripple. Despite their overly drawn out case with the United State’s SEC, their global instant settlement system is sorely needed in international trade and finance.
The goal of all crypto is mainstream adoption, to replace legacy systems with more efficient, decentralised ones. Projects that achieve this live longer and perform better.
Take Bitcoin, for example, it’s blockchain is old and clunky but it remains the premiere crypto because of its decentralised nature, but mostly because institutions have adopted it as “digital gold”.
It is usually the first point of contact for institutions looking to add crypto to their balance sheet. This is a level of adoption that is keeping it afloat and accepted as the leading crypto.
We mention tokenomics because a project could have fantastic technology but still be financially ruined by bad tokenomics. When there are too many tokens, projects come off as scammy.
The way the tokens integrate with the project ecosystem is also important. A token is meant to be a vehicle for capturing and transporting value within an ecosystem, and between various ecosystems.
To achieve this, tokens must be carefully designed. Considerations for inflation and scarcity must be factored in, depending on the project.
While there is no best tokenomics model, look out for projects that have tokens “just to have them”. Always ask if the tokens play a vital role in the growth and operations of their ecosystems.
Cryptocurrencies, being digital assets, offer a way to diversify your portfolio. As crypto becomes more mainstream, crypto assets will become a bigger part of an asset class, if it doesn’t become an asset class itself.
By investing in crypto, you add another asset that could grow exponentially and also protect your portfolio from possibly declining sectors and assets.
Crypto assets (aside NFTs) are highly liquid, and because of their decentralised nature, you can easily sell them when you need cash. You can also move them across wallets and borders to where you need them the most.
In the long term, crypto assets that perform well beat inflation, some by ten and hundred folds. Bitcoin is often called an inflation hedge and has been used by institutions to protect their cash against inflation.
Cryptos like Ethereum have achieved impressive returns over the years. While it is volatile and can fall significantly, its price history has proven that if you hold on long enough, you can make a lot of money, compared to what you put in.
You can buy long term cryptos on cryptocurrency exchanges. Our top pick is eToro, but you can use any that is secure and convenient. To get started:
Go to the eToro website and create an account by clicking on the Start investing icon. You can download the mobile app from the Play Store/App Store and click on Sign up. Fill out the form with your full name, email address, and password.
Verify your account by setting up your profile and submitting KYC documents like a valid government ID and proof of residence document like a utility bill.
Once your account has been verified, click on Deposit funds on the left pane of the page. Available payment options will be displayed. Choose a convenient method and set the amount you’d like to deposit.
Once your account is funded, search for any of the cryptos mentioned in the Discover tab. An interface like the one below should load. You can then set your parameters and buy.
We explored the best long term crypto projects and chose Ethereum as our top choice because of its positions as the leading smart contract platform and the largest ecosystem in the industry. It has laid a quintessential foundation for all of crypto and is the most widely used operating system, even being adopted on new chains.
We believe that Ethereum has room for immense growth as the crypto industry garners mainstream adoption. However, Ethereum has already returned some astronomical gains and we do not see it returning yields in the 10,000% range.
Projects that are primed to make impressive returns include Biconomy, Lido, and Osmosis.
If you wish to invest in crypto, you can do so using a crypto exchange like eToro.
The projects covered in this guide were chosen through rigorous research and reviews. We paid attention to security, transparency, reputation, tokenomics, competitive edge, and long term prospects.
The tokens listed are the best we found in the various categories we listed them. For example, we listed Chainlink as the best blockchain oracle because it is the most used and respected provider of off-chain data in the industry.
Check out our why trust us and how we test pages for more information on our testing process.
The best long term crypto on our list is Ethereum because it powers so much of the crypto industry. It is an essential layer, one that we do not see going away anytime soon.
We cannot say which cryptos will be around in 10 years. However, we have noticed that Bitcoin and Ethereum have been around for years.
We cannot say where crypto will be in 10 years, but blockchain technology is quickly gaining mass adoption, so we expect that it may become part of our everyday lives.
It depends on your goals. Cardano is not historically known to return impressive gains.
This depends on the area or problem you are looking at as various crypto projects solve different problems. The more essential the problem, the more potential the crypto that solves it has.