Building a cryptocurrency portfolio: The four currencies with the largest market capitalisation are

构建加密货币投资组合的核心：权重决定一切

构建加密货币投资组合归根结底在于一件事：确定每个持仓的权重。若仅选取市值最大的四种加密货币资产，你以为实现了分散化，实则不然。在过去十二个月中，比特币（Bitcoin）、以太坊（Ethereum）、索拉纳（Solana）和瑞波币（XRP）的走势几乎平行，它们之间的相关性在 0.82 至 0.90 之间。因此，仅仅持有这四种资产并不代表你承担了四种独立的风险。

本文将阐述投资者用于确定权重的衡量标准、过去一年价格数据对这四类资产的实际支持情况，以及持有期、费用和购买渠道所扮演的角色。本文不提供具体的配置建议，因为正确的比例取决于您的投资期限、收入状况和风险承受能力，而这些只有您自己最清楚。

加密货币投资组合的本质

投资组合是您的头寸及其占总价值比例的总和。关键不在于持有哪种代币列表，而在于它们的权重：两个资产按 90:10 分配与按 50:50 分配，其表现截然不同。因此，权重分配才是真正的决策点，而这一决策往往被忽视，人们只是简单地买入新闻中出现的热门资产。

What needs to be distinguished from this is "asset allocation", which is the proportion of your total wealth that cryptocurrency accounts for. Even if the internal structure is the same, people who invest 2% of their total wealth in cryptocurrencies face completely different problems than those who invest 40% of it. These two dimensions should be considered separately.

The third key variable is "investment duration". It determines whether halving market value is a paper loss that you can sit idly by or an actual loss caused by a desperate need for capital. Funds planned for use in the next few years should not be included in this calculation.

Market value is used as a measure: Bitcoin accounts for nearly 59% of the market share.

The most commonly used measure is market value, which is the price multiplied by the quantity in circulation to measure the weight of the token in the market. According to CoinGecko, as of October 2, the total market value of the entire cryptocurrency market was approximately 255.9 billion euros. Among them, Bitcoin accounted for 58.75%, Ethereum accounted for 11.29%, XRP accounted for 3.20%, and Solana accounted for 2.41%.

If you weight these four assets according to this criterion, you will get a very unbalanced allocation. On the same day, the total value of these four assets was approximately 193.6 billion euros, of which Bitcoin alone accounted for 77.7%, Ethereum accounted for 14.9%, XRP accounted for 4.2%, and Solana accounted for 3.2%. As a result, more than three-quarters of these four asset portfolios, weighted by market value, are actually positions in Bitcoin.

This is why many people have turned to "equal weight" allocations, with 25% of each asset. This variant places a higher weight on smaller assets than the market, increasing overall volatility (as shown in the retracement section below). Both measures make sense, but they can lead to completely different portfolios; if you choose neither, the result will simply be a product of your random trading history.

Core and satellite: Two roles in a portfolio

Behind the weights, there are often simpler considerations: Which position supports the portfolio and which position is just trimming? The "core" part is the part of the investment portfolio that establishes its characteristics and holds it over the long term. The "satellite" part is small, and even if it loses all of it, it will not shake the overall foundation.

This classification does not reflect the quality of the project, but only describes how much weight you give to projects with uncertain development prospects. The younger the network, the shallower the depth of transactions, and the stronger the reliance on a single team, the more suitable the asset will be for placement in a smaller "satellite" segment.

How to judge roles

There are three points to check to help determine: the depth of trading across multiple trading venues, how long the network has been operating without major interruptions, and whether prices will still attract buyers after the news hotspots have subsided. These indicators do not predict price performance, but they all reflect the risk of not being able to exit.

Price data for the past twelve months: Closeness of movement in four asset classes

We analyzed the daily euro prices of these four assets over the past 365 days and calculated the correlation of their daily yields. A correlation coefficient of 1.0 means complete synchronization, 0 means irrelevant, and-1 means complete inversion. The key to the diversification effect of a portfolio is how far the value is from 1.

• Bitcoin and Ethereum: 0.90
• Ethereum and Solana: 0.88
• Bitcoin and Solana: 0.86
• Bitcoin and XRP: 0.85
• Ethereum and XRP: 0.82
• Solana vs. XRP: 0.82

No asset pair has a correlation below 0.82. In practice, when Bitcoin underperforms, it is highly likely that the other three assets will also fall. While spreading into four assets reduces the risk of failure of a single project, it does little to reduce the risk of a decline in the entire market. We explained in detail in our article on the correlation of cryptocurrency portfolios why increasing positions has little impact on this.

During the same period, all four assets fell, with varying magnitudes: Bitcoin fell by about 27%, Ethereum by about 38%, Solana by about 48%, and XRP by about 50%. Therefore, during this window period, a four-asset portfolio with equal weights will perform worse than holding Bitcoin alone. But this is not a reason to oppose diversification, but a reminder that diversification within one asset category does not guarantee returns.

Volatility and retracement: Down 52% to 73% from peak

权重问题的另一半在于您希望承受多大的波动。同样的每日数据显示，过去十二个月的年化波动率约为：比特币 45%，以太坊 63%，索拉纳 67%，XRP 67%。

更具象的是每种资产年内相对于自身峰值的最大回撤。比特币一度低于高点 52%，以太坊 66%，XRP 67%，索拉纳 73%。如果比市场权重更重地配置这三种较小资产，您正是在买入这些更深幅度的回撤。

这些数据是投资组合问题中最冷静的一部分，因为它们不承诺未来。它们描述的是正常年份发生的情况，而非可能发生的最坏情况。因此，您投入的资金规模是您拥有的最有效的杠杆，比任何细调股份比例都更有效。

完全损失的可能性依然存在

对于每一种加密货币资产，完全损失都是可能的：可能源于网络故障、交易平台倒闭、监管政策或项目被放弃。投资组合中的任何份额都无法消除这种风险，没有任何权重分配能让其消失。

一类资产内部分散能实现什么

分散化针对的是单一名称风险，而非市场风险。当某个网络出现严重故障或团队解散时，只会打击一个头寸，而不是全部。这正是拆分的目的，也是为什么即使在 0.85 的相关性下它仍然有效的原因。

In the face of market downturns, decentralization does not help, which is more common in the cryptocurrency space. Anyone who wants to reduce the volatility of total wealth should do so by adjusting the proportion of cryptocurrencies in their total wealth and introducing asset classes with different behavioral patterns. Within the cryptocurrency sector, decentralization protects stock-picking luck rather than market risk.

This leads to an uncomfortable but useful insight: having more currencies does not make your portfolio safer, it only makes it more difficult to monitor. Tracking ten positions with a correlation of as high as 0.8 is not only time-consuming and costly, but also has no significant advantage over three positions.

Savings plan or one-time buy: Two paths to opening a position

Opening a position is also about "how to do it." Lump-sum purchase is to invest the entire amount at a single price. A regular Savings plan allocates the amount over multiple dates and averages the entry price; when the price fluctuates, you buy more units at a low price and fewer units at a high price.

Savings plans remove timing issues from decision-making, which is their real advantage. It does not prevent prices from falling: if you invest monthly in a declining market for a year, you will still end up losing money, but the average price is different. Which providers offer cryptocurrency savings plans and their costs, please refer to our comparison of Bitcoin savings plans.

Savings plans have a practical side effect when it comes to weight allocation: because each payment is allocated with the same key, the share is automatically closer to your target ratio. For one-time purchases, the weights will deviate as the price fluctuates, and the deviations will be most serious where the fluctuations are greatest.

Fees, spreads and choice of trading platform

Fees directly affect the results and are part of the known beforehand. Three points need to be distinguished: the stated transaction fee for each transaction, the spread between the bid and ask prices (usually not shown as a fee), and the cost of deposits and withdrawals. For small frequent purchases, the impact of the spread is greater than the percentage cost on the quotation sheet.

There is also the issue of token custody. EU-licensed platforms are subject to regulatory rules that neither prevent price losses nor exclude default risks, but make the framework clearer. The settings of each provider can be found in our Exchange Comparison.

The third point involves "trusteeship". Tokens stored on trading platforms are easy to trade, but rely on the continued presence of the provider. The tokens stored in your own hands are in your control, and the responsibility for security lies with you. For large and long-term holdings, this is the core trade-off behind weighing the issue of weights.

Holding Period and Taxation: Conditions for Rebalancing Trigger

Each reallocation is a taxable event and includes redemption from one token to another. According to Article 23 of the German Income Tax Law, income from private disposal is exempt from tax after being held for more than one year; if it is within one year, the portion above the total income exemption threshold for that year will be subject to tax. The threshold applies to the sum of such earnings over a year, rather than individual tokens.

This means that people who frequently adjust shares will continue to trigger taxable events and disrupt the holding period that has already run. Therefore, a_target_ratio that requires minimal adjustments is not only more convenient, but often cheaper.

In addition, record-keeping obligations apply. For each purchase, sale and exchange, you need to record the date, quantity and euro equivalent amount, otherwise you cannot prove the holding period later. These documents are also the basis for cryptocurrency tax reforms that are expected to change the system from 2027.

Frequency of portfolio adjustment

When prices fluctuate, shares will shift. If Bitcoin gains more than other assets, its weight will increase, resulting in a more concentrated portfolio than planned. Restoring it to target weights is called "rebalancing."

There are two common triggers. Calendar triggers are checked at fixed intervals, such as once a year. The threshold trigger only intervenes when the weight deviates from a set range, for example, one-fifth of the target value. When prices fluctuate, threshold triggers generate fewer transactions than short-term calendar triggers.

The order is important: determine the target weights and triggers first, and then perform the action. If you rebalance without a defined target ratio, you are following the price chart and tending to buy assets that have just risen. Since each adjustment incurs fees and holding period losses, the principle here is usually that less is more.

Four common mistakes in building a cryptocurrency portfolio

1. Confusion of quantity and dispersion: Twenty positions are all attached to the overall market and are essentially just one position divided into twenty parts.
2. Short-term capital investment: Invest funds that must be realized in the short term in order to sell when the value is halved.
3. Lack of records: This only appears when tax returns, and purchase data before that year is nowhere to be found.
4. Continuously adjusts to the news: This incurs expenses and disrupts the holding period without significantly changing the risk of the portfolio.

What these four mistakes have in common is that they can be avoided in advance and cause financial damage afterwards. None of them have anything to do with the choice of tokens.

Building a cryptocurrency portfolio: Summary of highlights

Over the past year, the four largest cryptocurrencies by market capitalisation have moved almost simultaneously (correlation 0.82 to 0.90), with retractions ranging from 52% to 73% of the peak. Weight allocation is more important than selection, and the scale of invested funds is more important than weight allocation. Regardless of your ratio, the following three steps always apply:

1. Set metrics before purchasing. Make the decision between market capitalization weighting and equal weighting, write down the target share and fix the adjustment trigger.
2. Compare costs and locations in advance. Transaction fees, price spreads, and deposit and withdrawal costs determine the residual value of each investment.
3. Match the custody method to the investment term. Assets intended to be held for the long term should be kept in your own cold wallet rather than on a trading platform.

(As of October 2, 2026. This article does not constitute investment advice. Price and fee structures are subject to change; please check terms with your provider before purchasing.)