How to Diversify Your Crypto Portfolio?
The crypto market is renowned for its high volatility, characterized by significant and frequent price swings. Over the past few years, this volatility has become a defining feature. For instance, the annualized volatility of Bitcoin over the past 10 years was around 80%, significantly higher than broad equity benchmarks like the S&P 500, which had an annualized volatility of below 20% during the same period. For crypto traders and investors alike, managing this volatility in their portfolios is key to achieving their investment goals.
While traders may focus on short-term price movements, investors typically have a longer-term perspective, aiming to build wealth over time. For both groups, diversification is a fundamental strategy to reduce the impact of market volatility and potentially enhance returns. By spreading investments across various cryptocurrencies and sectors, you can create a well-balanced, intelligent and diversified portfolio that's more resilient to market fluctuations.
Let’s explore some of the best practices and strategies you can use to maximise your crypto gains and minimize risk.
To Diversify or Not to Diversify
The crypto market is notoriously volatile, with prices capable of swinging wildly in short periods. By spreading investments across various digital assets, investors can reduce the impact of market volatility and safeguard their portfolios against significant losses. However, some people argue that concentrating investments into a few high-performing assets is a better strategy that can lead to substantial gains if those assets appreciate significantly. In this section, we look at some potential reasons why you should or should not diversify your crypto portfolio through a balanced, objective lens.
Reasons for Diversifying Your Crypto Portfolio
Risk Reduction:
Volatility Management: Diversifying helps to manage the inherent volatility of the crypto market. By holding a mix of digital assets with varying risk tolerance levels, you can create a more stable portfolio.
Minimized Losses: If one asset class or cryptocurrency underperforms, others may compensate, minimizing overall losses.
Enhanced Returns:
Multiple Growth Avenues: Investing in a variety of cryptocurrency with different use cases increases the chances of holding high-performing investments.
Balanced Gains: Different digital assets may perform well at different times, providing more consistent returns.
Broader Exposure:
Technological Innovation: Diversification allows investors to benefit from advancements in various sectors, such as DeFi, NFTs, and blockchain technology.
Market Leadership: Investing in leading cryptocurrencies across different categories ensures exposure to market leaders and emerging projects alike.
Reasons Against Diversifying Your Crypto Portfolio
Complexity and Management:
Increased Monitoring: A diversified crypto portfolio requires more time and effort to monitor and manage effectively.
Potential for Over-diversification: Spreading investments too thin can dilute potential returns and complicate decision-making.
Higher Transaction Costs:
Trading Fees: Multiple trades across different assets can incur higher transaction fees.
Portfolio Rebalancing: Regularly rebalancing a diversified crypto portfolio may lead to additional costs.
Market Expertise:
Knowledge Requirement: Effective diversification requires a deep understanding of various cryptocurrencies and market trends, and not every investor has the time to do proper research.
What Is Crypto Portfolio Diversification?
Diversifying your crypto portfolio is not just spreading your investments across random cryptocurrencies. Successful diversification requires a strategic approach grounded in key financial theories and an understanding of market correlations. This can be achieved by choosing your assets based on key financial theories, which ensure you pick crypto assets based on a specific set of objective rules to maintain consistent portfolio performance.
By incorporating digital assets with varying use cases and risk tolerances, you can reduce the impact of market volatility. Here’s an overview of the essential concepts to help you build an intelligent, well-balanced portfolio that aligns with your investment goals:
Key Theories for Crypto Diversification
Modern Portfolio Theory (MPT):
Developed by Harry Markowitz, MPT suggests that an optimal portfolio includes a mix of high-risk and high-return and low-risk and low-return assets based on an individual’s tolerance to risk. Although traditionally applied to financial instruments like ETFs, this can be used for crypto portfolios as well.
Application: An example of MPT would be an asset allocation that combines high-risk, high-reward crypto like emerging altcoins with more stable large-cap crypto like Bitcoin or stablecoins.
Harry Browne’s Permanent Portfolio:
The Permanent Portfolio theory suggests maintaining a portfolio split equally among four categories: stocks, bonds, cash, and gold. The idea is that each category performs well in different economic conditions, balancing the overall risk.
Application: An example of a Permanent Portfolio theory split would include volatile crypto (like altcoins), stablecoins (acting like cash), yield-generating assets (similar to bonds), and utility tokens or NFTs (analogous to gold).
The Barbell Strategy:
Popularised by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, the Barbell Strategy involves allocating most of your capital to extremely safe assets and a smaller portion to highly speculative assets. This approach balances safety and potential high returns.
Application: A portfolio following The Barbell Strategy would include a large portion in stablecoins or well-established large-cap cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum, while allocating a smaller percentage to high-risk, high-reward altcoins or new ICOs.
Non-Correlated Assets
Investing in non-correlated assets is a fundamental strategy for reducing risk and the impact of market volatility. Non-correlated assets are those that do not move in tandem with each other. When one asset’s value decreases, another’s might increase, providing a balance to your portfolio.
For example, crypto assets like Bitcoin and Ethereum often move in sync, but investing in them alongside other cryptocurrency with different use cases, such as privacy coins like Horizen (ZEN)or utility tokens like Chainlink (LINK) can offer diversification. While Bitcoin and Ethereum might both react similarly to regulatory news, Horizen and Chainlink might not. By including these non-correlated assets, your portfolio can achieve greater stability as different types of crypto react to different market factors.
Low-Correlation Assets
Low-correlation assets have a minimal relationship in their price movements. By including such digital assets in your crypto portfolio, you can reduce the risk that your entire portfolio will decline simultaneously, as these assets are less likely to be affected by the same market factors.
Bitcoin is often considered a store of value and likened to “digital gold”, serving as a hedge against economic instability and inflation. With that in mind, you can consider pairing Bitcoin with other crypto assets from different sectors such as:
DeFi Tokens: Like Aave (AAVE) and Uniswap (UNI), which are linked to decentralized finance applications and might behave differently from traditional cryptocurrencies.
NFT Tokens: Such as Decentraland (MANA) or Axie Infinity (AXS), which are tied to digital collectibles and virtual worlds, offering exposure to the burgeoning NFT market.
Stablecoins: Such as USDC (USDC) or Tether (USDT), which are pegged to fiat currencies and provide stability during market turbulence.
The Holy Grail of Diversification
The "Holy Grail" of diversification represents the principle that increasing the number of assets in a portfolio, especially those with low or zero correlation, greatly reducing overall risk. The graph illustrates that as you add more assets to your portfolio, the annual portfolio standard deviation (a measure of risk) decreases. This effect is more pronounced when the assets have lower correlations.
For instance, a portfolio that includes Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), stablecoins like USDC (USDC), and DeFi tokens like Aave (AAVE) will show a much greater reduction in risk compared to a portfolio concentrated in just Bitcoin and Ethereum. This is because Bitcoin and Ethereum often move in sync, while USDC remains stable regardless of market volatility, and Aave reacts to different market factors specific to DeFi.
By diversifying with these low-correlation crypto assets, you can achieve higher returns while reducing the probability of losses, stabilising your portfolio for better performance.
Ways to Diversify Your Crypto Portfolio
Now that we've explored the pros and cons of diversification and the theoretical strategies behind it, let's delve into practical asset allocation based on different themes to enhance your crypto portfolio.
Use Cases
Investing in cryptocurrencies with different use cases ensures that your portfolio is not overly reliant on any single function or application. This ensures diversification by spreading risk across various sectors of the cryptocurrency market. Here’s a more in-depth look at how investing in cryptocurrency with different use cases can benefit your portfolio:
Bitcoin (BTC): Primarily used as a digital currency and store of value, similar to digital gold. Its primary use case is to provide a decentralized and secure way to transfer value across borders without intermediaries. Bitcoin's dominance and widespread acceptance make it a staple in most crypto portfolios.
Ethereum (ETH): The leading platform for smart contracts and decentralized applications. Its blockchain supports a wide range of applications beyond just currency, including DeFi projects, NFTs, and more. Ethereum exposes your portfolio to the rapidly growing ecosystem of decentralized services and innovations.
Horizen (ZEN): A privacy-focused blockchain platform that aims to provide a secure and decentralized infrastructure for building and deploying various applications, including privacy-preserving dApps, financial services, and secure communications.
Aave (AAVE) and Uniswap (UNI): Utility tokens that facilitate decentralized lending and trading in the DeFi space. These utility tokens in a portfolio allow an investor to participate in the burgeoning sector of financial services that operate without traditional intermediaries.
By diversifying your crypto portfolio based on a mix of use cases, you reduce the risk associated with the failure or underperformance of any single application type.
Different Blockchains
Spreading investments across multiple blockchains helps protect against risks associated with any single blockchain’s technological or regulatory issues. For instance:
Ethereum: Known for its smart contract capabilities.
Binance Smart Chain: Offers high-speed transactions and lower fees.
Solana: Celebrated for its high throughput, supporting scalable applications.
Polkadot: Focuses on interoperability, connecting multiple blockchains.
Portfolio diversification via blockchain technology ensures that your crypto investments are not overly dependent on the success of one particular blockchain.
Different Industries
Cryptocurrencies span various industries, each with unique growth drivers and risk factors. Diversifying across these sectors can buffer against industry-specific downturns. Examples include:
Finance: DeFi projects like Compound (COMP).
Gaming: NFT platforms like Axie Infinity (AXS).
Data Storage: Decentralized solutions like Filecoin (FIL).
Supply Chain: Blockchain solutions like VeChain (VET).
Investing in varied sectors can help stabilize your portfolio through the crypto market’s rapid and unpredictable economic cycles.
Asset Classes
Including different types of crypto assets in your portfolio can aid diversification by spreading risk across various asset classes. Asset classes are groups of financial instruments that exhibit similar characteristics and behave similarly in the marketplace. Each class has unique characteristics that influence risk and return, contributing to a more balanced portfolio. Here’s a more detailed explanation of what asset classes are and how different examples fit into these categories:
Cryptocurrencies: Bitcoin (BTC). Bitcoin is the first and most widely recognized cryptocurrency. It primarily serves as a store of value and medium of exchange. Bitcoin's value is influenced by its scarcity (capped supply of 21 million coins), growing institutional adoption, and its role as a hedge against inflation. The risk associated with Bitcoin is relatively lower compared to other cryptocurrencies due to its established position in the market and higher liquidity, which can lead to more stable returns.
Utility Tokens: Basic Attention Token (BAT). BAT is used within the Brave browser ecosystem to reward users for their attention to advertisements and to compensate content creators. It aims to disrupt the traditional advertising industry by creating a more efficient, direct connection between advertisers, publishers, and users. BAT’s value is influenced by the adoption of the Brave browser and its advertising model. The risk is moderate, as its success depends on the widespread acceptance of the Brave ecosystem, but it offers substantial returns if the platform gains market share.
Stablecoins: USDC (USDC). Stablecoins are cryptocurrencies designed to maintain a stable value by being pegged to a reserve asset like the US dollar. USDC offers stability in the volatile crypto market, making it an attractive option for traders looking to park their funds without exposure to price swings. The value of USDC is directly tied to the US dollar, making it low-risk with minimal returns. It is widely used for trading, lending, and earning interest within the crypto ecosystem.
NFTs: Digital art and collectibles. NFTs represent ownership of unique digital assets such as art, music, and virtual real estate. Unlike cryptocurrencies, which are fungible (each unit is identical), NFTs are unique and cannot be exchanged on a one-to-one basis. The value of NFTs is influenced by their scarcity, the reputation of the creator, and market demand within the digital art community. NFTs carry high risk due to their speculative nature and potential for market volatility, but they also offer the potential for substantial returns if the asset appreciates significantly in value.
Each asset class has different risk and return characteristics, contributing to a more balanced portfolio.
Market Leaders
Investing in leading cryptocurrencies by market capitalization ensures that a portion of your portfolio is allocated to the most established and widely recognized digital assets. Examples include:
Bitcoin (BTC): Large-cap leader and widely recognised.
Ethereum (ETH): Second largest, with robust smart contract capabilities.
Binance Coin (BNB): Major exchange token with multiple use cases.
These market leaders provide a strong foundation for your crypto portfolio due to their proven track records and substantial market presence.
Geographical Location
Diversifying based on regional exposure can mitigate risks associated with regulatory changes and economic conditions specific to one region. This strategy helps spread your investments across different regulatory and economic environments, reducing the impact of region-specific risks. Some regions to consider include:
North America: This region often benefits from relatively clear regulatory frameworks and significant market adoption, providing stability and technological advancements.
Asia: A major hub for cryptocurrency innovation and adoption, Asia offers exposure to rapidly growing markets, especially in blockchain gaming and DeFi.
Europe: Known for regulatory compliance and innovative use cases, European projects offer robust and unique use cases.
Latin America: Emerging as a significant player in the cryptocurrency space, particularly in regions with economic instability, Latin American projects are driven by necessity rather than speculation, offering unique growth opportunities.
By spreading your investments across these diverse regulatory and economic environments, you can better protect your portfolio from region-specific risks.
Growth Potential
Diversifying your crypto portfolio by including both high-growth and stable assets ensures that your portfolio can benefit from upside potential while maintaining a solid foundation. Examples include:
Bitcoin (BTC): As the most established cryptocurrency, Bitcoin serves as a store of value and hedge against economic instability.
Ethereum (ETH): With its robust smart contract capabilities, Ethereum is a cornerstone of the decentralized application ecosystem and has shown consistent growth.
Polkadot (DOT) and Cardano (ADA): Significant growth prospects due to advanced features and active development communities.
Chainlink (LINK): Leading in the oracle space, crucial for integrating real-world data into smart contracts.
Solana (SOL): Rapid adoption and scalability, making it a promising asset for future growth.
By pairing high-growth assets like Polkadot and Chainlink with stable large-cap digital assets like Bitcoin and Ethereum, you can ensure that your crypto portfolio can benefit from technological advancements and market trends without being overly exposed to volatility.
Yield Generation
Diversifying your crypto portfolio by considering assets with different types of yield generation is a strategic way to create additional income streams. Yield farming involves leveraging various decentralized finance (DeFi) platforms to earn rewards, interest, or other incentives. Here’s an example of different yield farming strategies:
Staking Rewards: Provides relatively stable returns with lower risk. (Ethereum 2.0, Tezos)
Liquidity Mining: Offers higher rewards but with increased exposure to market volatility. (Uniswap, SushiSwap)
Lending and Borrowing: Balances risk with predictable interest income. (Compound, Aave)
Yield Optimisation: Maximizes returns through automated, strategic asset allocation. (Yearn Finance)
Incorporating a variety of yield-generating strategies can boost your portfolio’s performance while providing steady returns, even if one method is not doing well.
Time
Diversifying by investment horizon helps balance short-term gains with long-term stability. For instance:
Short-term: High-volatility assets suitable for quick trades.
Long-term: Established cryptos like Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) for holding.
This approach ensures that you can benefit from immediate opportunities while building a stable foundation for future growth.
Risk Level
Balancing risk with different asset types is crucial for maintaining a resilient crypto portfolio. By diversifying across various risk levels, you can protect your portfolio from losses while still capturing growth opportunities. Take for instance, a portfolio that combines emerging crypto projects and stablecoins:
Emerging Crypto Projects: These are high risk but high reward (e.g., new ICOs). New ICOs and projects offer the potential for significant returns but come with high risk due to their unproven nature and market volatility.
Stablecoins: These provide low-risk and stable value (e.g., USDC, USDT). Stablecoins offer stability by being pegged to the US dollar, providing a safe haven during market turbulence and ensuring liquidity.
Diversifying across different risk levels mitigates overall portfolio risk by balancing high-risk and low-risk assets. In this example, the investor could potentially benefit from potential high returns from emerging projects while the asset allocation into stablecoins protects against the downside of any potential losses.
Fundamental Strategies for Risk Diversification
Having explored various themes to diversify your crypto portfolio based on use cases, it’s equally important to understand the fundamental strategies that guide the actual execution of your diversification. These strategies act as essential guidelines, ensuring that your portfolio remains balanced, resilient, and aligned with your investment goals.
Determine Your Trading Goals
Are you willing to buy and hold? Or do you want to jump on short-term opportunities to capitalize on market swings? Clearly defining your crypto trading goals will help you select the right asset allocation for your desired results.
Short-Term Goals: Focus on high-volatility assets that offer quick gains.
Long-Term Goals: Established cryptocurrencies with strong long-term growth potential.
How Much Market Research Are You Willing to Do?
Consider how much market research you are willing to commit to when diversifying your crypto portfolio. If you prefer not to constantly monitor the market, focus on established and stable cryptocurrencies to avoid being caught off guard by sudden price changes. Types of market research you might have to do include:
Market Trends: Identify prevailing market conditions and upcoming trends, potentially using tools like X (formerly Twitter) to gauge community sentiment and follow expert opinions.
Whitepapers: Evaluate the technology and vision behind each project.
Industry News: Stay updated with regulatory changes, technological advancements, and market sentiments.
Reflect on Your Ideal Asset Allocation
Proper asset allocation is crucial for balancing risk and returns in your crypto portfolio. Reflect on your risk tolerance and investment horizon to determine the best mix of assets.
High-Risk Assets: Allocate a portion to high-reward, high-risk assets like emerging altcoins for potentially more gains.
Stable Assets: Considering large-cap stablecoins and established cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) to provide a safety net and stability.
Spread Across Different Sectors
Diversify your investments across various sectors within the crypto space to mitigate sector-specific risks.
DeFi: Consider decentralized finance projects like Aave (AAVE) and Uniswap (UNI).
NFTs: Research NFT-related tokens like Decentraland (MANA) and Axie Infinity (AXS).
Data Storage: Evaluate the benefits of projects like Filecoin (FIL).
Gaming: Exploring blockchain gaming platforms like Enjin Coin (ENJ) and Gala Games (GALA) can offer exposure to the growing gaming sector.
Supply Chain: Consider including blockchain solutions for supply chain management like VeChain (VET).
Oracles: Look into projects like Chainlink (LINK) that provide real-world data to smart contracts.
Privacy Coins: Examine privacy-focused cryptocurrencies like Horizen (ZEN).
Stablecoins: Consider stablecoins like USDC (USDC) and Tether (USDT) for low-risk, stable value.
Store of Value: Look into including established cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin (BTC), which is often referred to as digital gold.
Smart Contract Platforms: Examine platforms that enable decentralized applications, such as Ethereum (ETH) and Cardano (ADA).
Interoperability: Consider projects like Polkadot (DOT) and Cosmos (ATOM) that focus on connecting different blockchains.
Enterprise Solutions: Explore projects like Stellar (XLM) and Ripple (XRP), which aim to improve financial systems and cross-border transactions.
Decentralized Identity: Research and look into projects focused on digital identity solutions like Civic (CVC) and SelfKey (KEY).
Some popular sector combinations you can consider for diversification include:
Store of Value, Smart Contracts, Oracles, DeFi, and Stablecoins:
Examples: Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), Chainlink (LINK), Aave (AAVE), and USDC (USDC).
Why it works: This combination can potentially provide a robust portfolio with Bitcoin as a store of value and Ethereum as a leading platform for smart contracts. Chainlink adds the benefit of real-world data integration, while Aave offers exposure to the growing DeFi sector. USDC provides stability and liquidity, helping to balance the portfolio.
Store of Value, Interoperability, Supply Chain, Gaming, and Stablecoins:
Examples: Bitcoin (BTC), Polkadot (DOT), VeChain (VET), Enjin Coin (ENJ), and Tether (USDT).
Why it works: This mix includes Bitcoin for stability and Polkadot for blockchain interoperability. VeChain offers growth potential in supply chain management, and Enjin Coin taps into the booming blockchain gaming industry. Tether, as a stablecoin, provides a safety net against market volatility.
Smart Contracts, Interoperability, Data Storage, NFTs, and Stablecoins:
Examples: Ethereum (ETH), Cosmos (ATOM), Filecoin (FIL), Decentraland (MANA), and USDC (USDC).
Why it works: Ethereum anchors this combination with its robust smart contract capabilities. Cosmos enhances the portfolio with blockchain interoperability. Filecoin offers a unique value proposition in decentralized data storage, while Decentraland provides exposure to the NFT and virtual world sectors. USDC is included for its stability and liquidity.
Avoid Over-Concentration
Avoid putting too much of your capital into a single asset or sector. Over-concentration can lead to greater losses for your crypto portfolio if that particular investment underperforms.
Diversified Holdings: Ensure no single asset makes up more than a certain percentage of your portfolio. A general recommendation is to limit any single cryptocurrency to no more than 10-20% of your total portfolio value. This helps prevent any one asset from having a disproportionate impact on your overall portfolio performance.
Sector Balance: Maintain a balanced exposure to multiple sectors.
Regularly Review and Rebalance Your Crypto Portfolio
Regularly reviewing and rebalancing your crypto portfolio ensures that it remains aligned with your investment goals and risk tolerance. Over time, market conditions and personal circumstances can cause your portfolio to deviate from your desired asset allocation.
Periodic Reviews: Set regular intervals (e.g., quarterly) to review your portfolio’s performance.
Rebalancing: Adjust the allocation of assets to maintain your desired risk level and investment strategy.
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Disclaimer: This material is for information purposes only and does not constitute financial advice. Flipster makes no recommendations or guarantees in respect of any digital asset, product, or service. Trading digital assets and digital asset derivatives comes with significant risk of loss due to its high price volatility, and is not suitable for all investors.