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Arbitrum (CRYPTO: ARB), NEAR Protocol (CRYPTO: NEAR), and Chainlink (CRYPTO: LINK) are all on a tear right now, and they're also worth buying and holding for five years, because each turns usage into value. During the 90 days ended Oct. 7, Arbitrum skyrocketed 100%, NEAR rose 164%, and Chainlink jumped 64%
Here's why these coins could have a lot more room to run during the next five years or more and why they're worth owning despite their sharp gains already.
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On July 1, Robinhood Markets launched Robinhood Chain on technology licensed from Arbitrum. In return for that license, Robinhood sends 10% of its net protocol revenue generated by fees to Arbitrum's ecosystem, with 8% going to a treasury steered by tokenholder votes under the umbrella of the network's decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) for governance.
Those fees from Robinhood were worth 35% of the DAO's income in July, per reporting by The Block.
That money will only result in Arbitrum's token gaining value if holders approve a proposal that increases the network's capabilities or its fee revenue. Nonetheless, because the deal with Robinhood significantly expands the resources available to develop proposed new features, Arbitrum will likely be able to take on larger growth projects or ecosystem initiatives than it otherwise could.
That won't do much for the coin in the near term. But over the long term, Robinhood's efforts to promote its blockchain will mean that Arbitrum will receive even more income, giving Arbitrum the wherewithal to do a lot more than it was capable of in the past.
If you expect Robinhood to keep expanding in crypto, Arbitrum offers indirect exposure to that trend in addition to whatever else Arbitrum can cook up to build on that success for itself.
NEAR is a protocol whose main feature is its Intents system, which lets users state a goal, like swapping tokens across several blockchains, and then competing market makers work to fill the swaps necessary to accomplish the goal.
As a piece of tech, Intents are great because they beat the clunky process of manually bridging money from chain to chain, which is slow, expensive, and often nerve-wracking due to the reputation of crypto bridges as being highly vulnerable to hacking and theft. Intents had handled over $22 billion in swaps across more than 35 blockchains by the end of Q2 2026, charging a fee every time.
Since Feb. 23, NEAR has spent its Intents revenue on buying back NEAR tokens. For September, it captured $7.3 million in fees, making $1.8 million in buybacks along the way, up from no buybacks and just $712,343 in revenue for September 2025.
What's more, NEAR's price dipped 12% after a cybersecurity incident, then recovered within three days, which is dramatically faster than the norm of a few months. On Oct. 1, a bug allowed an attacker to drain $3.8 million from Intents. Happily and quite unexpectedly, the funds were then returned a day later, after NEAR's team took the highly unusual step of contacting the attacker directly, per reporting by CoinDesk.
Shrugging off the downside from a hack is impressive right now, considering that hundreds of millions have been stolen from other crypto protocols this year, much to the detriment of those holding the targeted coins.
Chainlink is a data oracle, meaning it's designed to provide data such as asset prices and economic indicators to smart contracts for execution on blockchains, earning fees from enterprises and on-chain services.
DefiLlama shows that Chainlink had $4.4 million in revenue over the 30 days through Oct. 8, all of which was spent buying back its token, by design. The Chainlink Reserve, the repository of the repurchased tokens, is expecting no withdrawals for years, so for the moment, it's just a place to take supply out of circulation.
Chainlink is betting heavily on asset tokenization, the process of recording assets like stocks and bonds as crypto tokens for management and trading on blockchains. About $38.8 billion in tokenized assets are tradeable today, and for anyone looking to interact algorithmically with or develop on-chain programs that handle those assets, the price data Chainlink sells will be widely used. For holders, that's an exciting prospect, as the market for tokenized assets is expected to expand to a few trillion dollars by 2030.
Given that Chainlink has no real competition in the oracle segment, it's an obvious buy right now, before that value arrives.
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Alex Carchidi has positions in NEAR Protocol. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Chainlink and NEAR Protocol. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
3 Surging Cryptocurrencies to Buy Now and Hold for 5 Years or More was originally published by The Motley Fool
