Sebastian Marquez, 28, and his wife, Julia Marquez, 26, have never held jobs that pay over six figures, yet their combined net worth is just over $1 million.
That’s largely due to cryptocurrency investments in bitcoin and ethereum worth about $400,000 in U.S. dollars as of Sept. 30, according to documents reviewed by CNBC Make It. The couple is based in Strathroy, Ontario.
However, “looking back at it, I most likely wouldn’t have made that investment,” Sebastian says, citing the volatile nature of cryptocurrencies. “I was very worried about that investment to begin with.”
In 2019, Sebastian, who made money in his early 20s from flipping houses and working retail at Walmart, says he invested around 10% of his net worth — around $25,000 — in crypto.
Since then, bitcoin’s value in Canadian dollars has grown by around 2,000% and ethereum’s has grown by around 2,500%. But it could have just as easily gone the other way, he says.
“It was a gamble that we had taken at the time, and it’s definitely paid off, fortunately,” he says. Today, the couple, who combined their finances in 2020, prefer to put about 15% of their monthly income into investments with more predictable returns like index funds, Sebastian says.
Keep crypto to 5% of your portfolio, expert says
Sebastian’s more cautious outlook mirrors expert advice. Investors should think twice before taking out significant stakes in cryptocurrencies, says Patrick Huey, certified financial planner and owner of Victory Independent Planning in Portland, Oregon.
That’s for a number of reasons, Huey says: Cryptocurrencies are less reliable than stocks because there’s no underlying asset involved, they don’t generate dividends, their value “fluctuates wildly” and they’re rarely used for their original purpose as a digital currency.
In the U.S., 42% of Gen Z investors aged 18 to 27 said they owned some amount of crypto, according to a 2025 report by market research firm YouGov that surveyed 13,000 investors who said they were likely to invest in the next year. Only 11% of Gen Z investors reported owning an exchange-traded fund and just 26% said they own stock.
It’s fine to “dabble” in investments like crypto and meme stocks, but you should keep it to less than 5% of your investment portfolio due to their uncertain nature, says Jaime Bosse, a certified financial planner and senior advisor at CGN Advisors in Manhattan, Kansas.
As for Sebastian and Julia, the couple has no plans to buy more crypto but will hold onto what they already own for the “foreseeable future,” Sebastian says.
“One thing that I wish I could have done a little sooner was definitely invest in index funds,” Sebastian says. “However, with that being said, I’m very happy with where things have ended up.”
All amounts are in U.S. dollars, converted from Canadian Dollars at the OANDA exchange rate of 1 CAD to 0.71824 USD on Sept. 30, 2025.
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