Why "leave your crypto in your wallet and forget about it for 5 years and you'll be rich" isn't always a good idea

I see this mentioned fairly often, how one of the best things you can do to make big gains is, after you've bought your crypto, put it in a wallet (ideally hardware wallet) and then come back in 5 or 10 years and you'll most likely be rich.

While this would be true for the likes of Bitcoin and a few others, it's worth remembering that with some altcoins you may be required to take action else risk losing all your coins, when there is a token swap for example.

Some early adopters have lost their coins (or rather, have ended up with worthless tokens that are no longer being used for anything) due to not keeping up to date with developments with the cryptos they're holding. Below are 4 examples of holdings I have that have required holders to take action else lose their funds:

MCO was the original token for crypto.com (formerly Monaco) before a surprise announcement meant holders had to either sell their MCO or swap it for CRO as MCO was becoming obsolete.

Holders of ENG (Enigma) had to swap their token for SCRT. Those that didn't do this in the 6 month timeframe were too late.

I had to manually migrate my IOTA funds yesterday and came across a post by someone who bought in 2017 and failed to swap their tokens in time for a previous deadline, and therefore lost everything.

Neo are currently upgrading to 3.0 and users are required to manually migrate their tokens.

I almost missed out on these developments myself, so this is just a reminder to keep up to date with whatever crypto you're holding. If you decide to just hold it and forget about it you may well find yourself rich in a few years- or you may find your tokens are now obsolete and worthless. Stay up-to-date and stay safe.