How much bitcoin should I buy? It depends on your investing goals — Quartz

Should you buy bitcoin? If not, why not? And if so, how much?

The answer is probably none if your investing aim is to finance basic things like retirement or build a buffer in case you lose your job. But there are some good reasons to invest in bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies, and your reasoning determines how much you should own. Here are some target allocations based on investing goals:

You want some extra risk to spice things up

Investing in bitcoin is speculative. It may surge or it may crash. There are many risky assets out there but bitcoin is exciting because it’s the next big thing (maybe). It adds an element of risk to your portfolio, and sometimes risk can pay off.

Some argue bitcoin is valuable because it is uncorrelated with the stock market, so it adds some diversification and reduces risk. There are reasons to be skeptical of this argument. A reliable measure of correlation takes decades of data, and bitcoin has only been around since 2009. Like the US stock market,…