During the past decade, both Bitcoin and Ethereum are up more than 21,000%.
Bitcoin has emerged as a potential long-term store of value, earning it the moniker “digital gold.”
Ethereum has a highly diversified blockchain ecosystem, with particular strength in decentralized finance (DeFi).
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During the past decade, it’s hard to find two better-performing cryptocurrencies than Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC) or Ethereum (CRYPTO: ETH). In the 10-year period since January 2016, Bitcoin is up 24,700%, while Ethereum is up 21,900%.
There’s no guarantee that these two cryptocurrencies will soar by the same amount during the next decade or two, but there are no other cryptos that I’d rather buy and hold for the long haul. Here’s why.
Since 2012, Bitcoin has never posted back-to-back losing years. In seven of those years, Bitcoin posted triple-digit percentage returns, highlighted by a towering 5,428% return in 2013. In both 2023 and 2024, the cryptocurrency posted triple-digit returns, and the conventional narrative heading into 2025 was that Bitcoin was once again going to double in price.
Bitcoin / U.S. dollar chart by TradingView
Although that didn’t happen, Bitcoin is likely to maintain its upward trajectory in the years to come. The current thinking now is that Bitcoin can hit a price of $1 million by 2030. Thinking even longer term, Michael Saylor, founder and executive chairman of Strategy, formerly known as MicroStrategy, thinks Bitcoin could hit a price of $21 million within the next two decades.
But just keep this in mind: Bitcoin is also highly cyclical, and typically follows a four-year cycle of boom and bust. Therefore, you should plan to invest in Bitcoin for a period of at least five years in order to maximize your returns. That way, even if Bitcoin has one bad year, you will more than make up for your losses in the other years.
Image source: Getty Images.
Even better, Bitcoin combines unparalleled upside potential with a fair amount of downside risk protection. For much of its history, Bitcoin has been completely uncorrelated with any other asset class, which has made it a potential safe-haven asset during times of macroeconomic uncertainty and geopolitical instability. So much so, in fact, that Bitcoin is sometimes referred to as digital gold.
Much like gold, Bitcoin tends to retain its value in the face of a sudden macroeconomic or geopolitical crisis. Simply stated, if war breaks out somewhere in the world, Bitcoin is likely to see an inflow of new money from risk-averse institutional investors.
For much of its history, Ethereum has played second fiddle to Bitcoin. Although there have been some years when Ethereum has outperformed Bitcoin — such as 2020, when Ethereum soared by 472% while Bitcoin only increased by 304% — that has been the exception rather than the norm.
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