CoinMarketCap tracks over 12,000 different cryptocurrencies, but which of those cryptocurrencies will be successful in the long run? My simple explanation is to follow the money. ETH and BTC receive the lion's share of institutional money, and those institutions will lobby to protect their investments. On top of that, the SEC has explicitly said that ETH and BTC are not securities.
Not advice
I think it will end up being the ones that build active and engaged communities. The number of communities that can be created is only limited to the amount of human attention there is.
I totally agree there. It was REALLY hard to narrow it down to my top three and I could have easily added at lest a dozen others that I thought had a decent shot of lasting.