The crypto market is one of the most volatile markets and has experienced a lot of extreme ups and downs throughout the years. The longest and biggest fall in the market happened between January and December 2018, when the market went down by approximately 90%.
In May 2021, it experienced the biggest surge, with many cryptocurrencies reaching their all-time highs. That brought the market to $2.5 trillion, but it experienced another 50% drop in July.
In November, it experienced another surge of about $3 trillion but experienced another drop at the beginning of this year. The cryptocurrency market is currently at $2 trillion, meaning it hasn’t fully recovered its all-time high value.
This volatility makes it difficult for people to know what cryptocurrencies to buy, when, and how long to hold on to them. However, if you are an investor, buying these two cryptocurrencies and holding them for the next decade could upgrade your portfolio.
Bitcoin
Bitcoin was the first cryptocurrency to make headlines, and it remains one of the most popular, stable, and valuable ones. It is the most mentioned on most social media platforms and accounts for almost 40% of the market value with a market cap of $775 billion.
When many people think of cryptocurrency, they think of Bitcoin, and most people compare other coins with it first before investing. Its popularity has seen it adopted by big companies like Tesla and PayPal as payment options and countries like El Salvador as a legal currency.
The hash rate of all Bitcoin miners is significantly higher than that of other blockchains, meaning that it is the most secure. Bitcoin’s source code limits the cryptocurrency to 21 million coins, meaning it’s a finite asset.
That scarcity makes it more valuable because an increase in the demand for finite assets causes an increase in their prices.
Among cryptocurrency investors are institutional managers with assets worth trillions, who invest mostly in Bitcoin. These factors make investors and experts believe that Bitcoin’s price and value will continue to be high.
Chainlink
Smart contracts are at the center of decentralized finance (DeFi) and decentralized apps (dApps). They, however, exist on blockchains, making their supply in the real world limited because blockchains cannot communicate with real-world systems.
Chainlink, a decentralized oracle network, is the solution to the short supply because it is a connection between real-world systems and blockchain. It allows people to bring real-world data into blockchains while maintaining its decentralized nature.
To do this, node operators (people running software and hardware) must stake LINK tokens in the cryptocurrency running chainlink. When smart contracts request data from a platform, a node operator bids on the job, then chainlink protocols choose the right number of oracles.
After gathering the data, the protocol reconciles it to get accurate results, then pays the node operator in LINK.
LINK is also a finite asset, with only one billion tokens in distribution. Therefore, as demand for real-world data continues for smart contracts, the demand for chainlink oracles should also rise. That, in turn, increases demand for the LINK token, causing a price increase.
Conclusion
Apart from mining, another way to get cryptocurrency is by buying. To learn how to buy any cryptocurrency, for example, Polkadot, you can learn on platforms like OKX.com. You can also learn more about the crypto you want to buy to help make more informed decisions.
Also Read: A Guide To Earnings Cryptocurrency
