Building a crypto portfolio comes down above all to one thing: deciding how much weight each holding gets. Take the four largest crypto assets for that purpose and you are spreading less than you think. The daily moves of Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana and XRP ran almost in parallel over the past twelve months, with correlations between 0.82 and 0.90. Four names in a portfolio are therefore not yet four risks.

This article sets out the yardsticks investors use to weight, what a year of price data on the four actually supports, and the part played by holding periods, fees and the route you buy through. A recommendation on which split is right for you is not here: that depends on your investment horizon, your income and your capacity to bear…