If I Had $4,500 to Invest in Crypto, Here's What I'd Buy Today

In crypto, almost everything is on sale at the moment. Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC) is 40% below its all-time high set in October 2025, Ethereum (CRYPTO: ETH) is 55% off its August 2025 peak, and Zcash (CRYPTO: ZEC) has pulled back sharply from its highs as well. The crypto market's fear and greed gauge has been lodged in "fear" for weeks, with geopolitical tensions and spiking oil prices keeping investors on edge.

Usually where there's fear, there's opportunity. Therefore, if I were allocating $4,500 in crypto right now, I'd put $3,000 in Bitcoin, $1,000 in Ethereum, and $500 in Zcash. Here's why.

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Turbulence isn't an excuse to give up on fundamentals

Bitcoin deserves the largest slice of most crypto portfolios because it's the safest asset in a domain that tends to be highly volatile even when things are generally calm elsewhere.

About 95% of its maximum supply of 21 million coins has already been mined and is in circulation. Corporate treasuries currently hold more than 1.2 million bitcoins and are absorbing the public float at record speed, and the total net inflows to Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) recently hit $58.7 billion, or equal to 741,920 coins. And the next halving in 2028 will cut new issuance from mining in half again. So allocating a big portion to Bitcoin makes sense because with so many buyers competing to secure some of its supply, its price is likely to be higher in the future than it is today.

Ethereum, on the other hand, earns the $1,000 allocation.

It's a bet on the smart contract platform that still anchors the entire crypto sector's ecosystem of decentralized finance (DeFi) projects as well as a bet on the network with the biggest pool of tokenized real-world assets (RWAs), which are tokens representing the ownership of assets like stocks, bonds -- even art. More than that, the bet is on the chain's ability to continue to transform itself to stay relevant as the place where a lot of technological and business innovation and experimentation occurs in crypto.

Still, it's a lot riskier than Bitcoin, as it's subject to competitive forces exerted by other networks vying for the same markets, specifically Solana, which is why Ethereum warrants a smaller allocation.

Size more speculative positions appropriately

The remaining $500 of the $4,500 goes to Zcash. It's a small amount because Zcash is substantially riskier than the other two, and its odds of survival are unclear over the long term.

Zcash is a privacy-focused coin that uses a cryptographic technique called zk-SNARKs to enable fully encrypted and private transactions on a public blockchain. Its privacy features are optional, and there's a function to provide a limited disclosure of transaction information to a specific third party for cases in which it's legally obligated. Zcash shares Bitcoin's 21 million coin cap, so scarcity is also part of its narrative as a store of value.

The idea here is that people will always need some form of financial privacy, and crypto is a place where that need is likely to be expressed the most strongly, because at this point everyone is using fully public blockchains that aren't private in any way.

But privacy coins face increasingly stiff regulatory headwinds globally, and if governments decide encrypted transactions are incompatible with anti-money-laundering (AML) requirements, investors' access to Zcash is likely to be limited. So this isn't a coin to bet the farm on, and a small allocation is the most that it deserves until it has demonstrated that its regulatory problems can be addressed somehow.

Zcash has the potential to reprice quickly if conditions suddenly turn in its favor, but otherwise its growth journey might be a slog due to its similarities with Bitcoin's slowly constricting supply policy. If you ultimately decide to buy some or all of these coins using the proposed allocation sizing, be advised that you need to commit to holding for at least three years or more to benefit.

Alex Carchidi has positions in Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, and Zcash. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.