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Bitcoin and Ethereum could still be great long-term investments.
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Many cryptocurrencies skyrocketed during the buying frenzy for speculative investments in 2020 and 2021. That rally was fueled by near-zero interest rates, stimulus checks, social media buzz, and commission-free trading platforms. But in 2022 and 2023, many of those tokens crashed as interest rates rose and a new crypto winter began.
Over the past year and a half, investors have gradually pivoted back toward cryptocurrencies as interest rates declined and President Donald Trump's crypto-friendly administration took the helm. So if you're still bullish on cryptocurrencies, it might be a great time to go shopping again.
Image source: Getty Images.
You shouldn't stake your life savings in cryptocurrencies, but it might be smart to set aside a modest $1,000 in a few tokens that could soar over the next few decades. I'd personally stick with the two largest cryptocurrencies -- Bitcoin (BTC 0.04%) and Ethereum (ETH 0.04%) -- instead of the smaller and more speculative meme coins.
Bitcoin, the world's most valuable cryptocurrency, still has plenty of upside potential for a few simple reasons. First, it's still mined with an energy-intensive proof-of-work (PoW) consensus mechanism, which becomes more costly every four years with each "halving" that cuts its mining rewards in half. Its maximum supply is also capped at 21 million tokens. Nearly 19.9 million of those Bitcoins have already been mined, and the final token is expected to be mined in 2140. There isn't much room for long-term inflation in this model.
Bitcoin's increasingly difficult mining process, scarcity, and deflationary nature make it more comparable to gold, silver, and other physical assets than many other cryptocurrencies. That makes it a potential hedge against inflation and the devaluation of fiat currencies.
Bitcoin's first spot price exchange-traded funds (ETFs), which were approved in January 2024, made it easier for retail and institutional investors to invest in the coin without a crypto wallet. Big companies like MicroStrategy (MSTR 0.01%) continued to accumulate Bitcoin, the Trump administration recently established a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve, and inflation-wracked countries like El Salvador and Central African Republic even adopted Bitcoin as a national currency for a while. All of those developments supported the notion that Bitcoin was becoming "digital gold."
So even though Bitcoin might seem pricey right now at roughly $110,000, it could have even more upside potential. Standard Chartered's analysts expect its price to climb to $500,000 by 2028, while Ark Invest's Cathie Wood sees it flying as high as $1.5 million by 2030. You should take those bullish estimates with a grain of salt, but Bitcoin could remain the best "blue chip" cryptocurrency to buy and hold for the next few decades.
Ether, the native token of the Ethereum blockchain, is the world's second most valuable cryptocurrency. It was originally a PoW token that was mined like Bitcoin, but it transitioned to the more energy-efficient proof-of-stake (PoS) mechanism in "The Merge" in 2022.
As a PoS token, Ether can no longer be mined. Instead, its investors "stake" their tokens on the blockchain to earn interest-like rewards. Ethereum's PoS blockchain also supports smart contracts, which can be used to develop decentralized apps (dApps) and other crypto assets. Its declining or rising network activity can either make it inflationary or deflationary, respectively, and it currently has a circulating supply of roughly 120.7 million tokens.
Ether is usually valued by the growth of its developer ecosystem and its transaction speeds instead of the scarcity of its tokens. Its core Level-1 blockchain is slower than PoS blockchains like Cardano, but it's assisted by faster Level-2 protocols that process the transactions off-chain before returning them to the Level-1 layer.
Ether's first spot price ETFs were also approved last year, but they only held the tokens in cold storage without passing on the staking rewards (about 3% to 5% annually) to their investors. That made the ETFs less appealing than Ether itself, but the next batch of ETFs might add those rewards.
Ethereum's next upgrade, "The Verge," will further improve its security features and lower its hardware requirements so it can run on smaller devices like smartphones. It's also expected to reduce its Layer-2 fees with "danksharding" upgrades to clear more space for fresh data.
At about $2,600, Ethereum still trades well below its all-time highs. But Cathie Wood predicts it could climb as high as $166,000 by 2032, and big institutional investors like BlackRock are still accumulating the token. Therefore, this developer-oriented token could still be a great investment for the next few decades.