If the goal is just to buy and hold, then you wouldn't use perps, not only because of counterparty risk but also because the funding rate is typically positive, meaning you pay (usually ~10% APR) to be long.

The point of perps is:

- Easy access to leverage. Unlike options or futures, there's no need to roll over.

- It's the easiest way to short a coin. Most of the time you even get paid the funding rate to be short.

- Trading fees are typically much lower than for spot.

- Volume and liquidity can be better for perps than for spot. The BTC/USDT perp did 10x the volume of the spot pair in the last 24h on Binance.