With the cryptocurrency sector's market cap at nearly $2.7 trillion, up by 30% as of Sept. 13 from its bear market bottom of $2.1 trillion at the end of June 2026, the crypto bear market is ending or perhaps even already over. Investor.gov defines a bull market as a rise of 20% or more over at least two months, a bar the sector has now cleared, though it has held above that level for only a few weeks.
Still, a new bull market could be on the way, and soon. Regardless of when a new bull market arrives, I predict that it'll be worth buying and holding Zcash (ZEC +10.68%), Solana (SOL +2.50%), and Ethereum (ETH +1.07%) now, and holding them for at least three to five years. Here's why they're worthy.
Image source: Getty Images.
1. Zcash's next big move could be to add an on-chain ecosystem
Zcash's main draw is that it offers private transactions and wallet balances for funds held in its shielded pools.
But one thing Zcash doesn't have is features like those on Solana or Ethereum that enable tokens on its chain. That is likely to change over the coming years, and it'd mark a massive increase in its value.
Zcash Shielded Assets (ZSAs) are a proposed upgrade that would allow private tokens to exist on the chain. Developing the technical infrastructure for ZSAs and auditing their privacy functionality has already been underway for a few years. But in a February 2026 Zcash Foundation governance poll, coinholders voted against implementing ZSAs, and the upgrade won't be included in the next network upgrade.
CRYPTO: ZEC
Key Data Points
Nonetheless, it's probably a matter of time until ZSAs are folded into an update and implemented. The upside for the network is simply too much to leave on the table, and that's one more reason why it'll probably be worth buying Zcash.
2. Solana pulled in $348 million of tokenized assets in just 30 days
Solana is worth buying because it's in the process of winning the race for new inflows of tokenized real-world assets (RWAs), meaning the large and growing pool of assets like stocks and bonds that hold their ownership data as tokens on a blockchain.
As of Sept. 13, it had the third-largest base of tokenized stocks, totaling $503 million, and in the previous 30 days, its total base of tokenized assets rose by 11%, reaching $4.3 billion. It will likely soon overtake its main rival, Ethereum, in the tokenized stock space, as it's consistently capturing more inflows
CRYPTO: SOL
Key Data Points
Artificial intelligence agents are arriving on the chain, too, which will also help to bolster growth.
On Aug. 20, corporate spending platform Ramp opened x402, a protocol that lets agents pay for services, to over 70,000 businesses on Solana. The typical payment via x402 was just under $0.50 in August, but Solana's fee revenue depends on the number of transactions, not their size, and each fee is tiny.
And all of that activity will benefit Solana, if it happens.
3. Ethereum may make holders richer by scaling differently than before
In terms of growth opportunities, Ethereum hosts $17.2 billion of tokenized real-world assets as of mid-September. It also supports ERC-8004, an identity standard for AI agents.
Both factors position it to compete with Solana in the same segments, though Ethereum's edge will likely be in slower-moving non-stock assets. More importantly, it's undergoing a strategic pivot that's also bullish for its long-term prospects.
CRYPTO: ETH
Key Data Points
Ethereum has long pursued a strategy of routing network activity onto Layer-2 (L2) networks, which are separate chains that settle on Ethereum. On Feb. 3, the chain's co-founder, Vitalik Buterin, said the plan was no longer sensible given the main chain's need to continue scaling up despite numerous third-party L2 networks. It's critical to realize that on the main chain, base transaction fees are burned, so more activity there can retire more coins if demand outgrows capacity, almost like a stock buyback.
There's also an Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP) in the works to cut new issuance for the benefit of holders. EIP-8363 proposes to burn part of the newly issued coins paid to network operators.
It's unclear precisely what path Ethereum will take on this front. But it's worth owning some, as the underlying technology is very likely to be adapted to the benefit of anyone who does, and perhaps soon.
