Tracking my Portfolio
I bought my first crypto coins about three years ago. I’d originally looked into this new thing people were referring to as crypto currency about four or maybe five years back, but given up when I simply couldn’t work out how you actually managed to buy any coins. I suppose if I’d been interested enough then I would have persisted and eventually worked out how to buy some coins, but I wasn’t, so I didn’t.
Even then, when I did buy twenty pounds worth of Ethereum, I soon moved on, still not yet sufficiently interested to explore much further. A couple of years later I returned to the land of the blockchain to find my Ethereum coins had gone up in value very nicely indeed. But, more importantly, I also found things had moved on and there was a great deal more to explore, which is what I’ve been doing ever since. As my knowledge grew so I started buying a wider range of coins and tokens and my portfolio grew.
However, I never bothered to give any thought to tracking what I’d bought and for how much, let alone keeping numbers that allowed me to see how well I was doing from a financial perspective. In large part this was because I was more interested in the projects than anything else and things seemed to be moving faster and faster every day. I also didn’t need to think about tax implications because my investments were so tiny even a ten-fold gain wasn’t going to end up with me having a tax liability.
The trouble was, I soon found myself wanting a single place to go to know what coins I’d bought and to know how I was doing financially. Never mind, I told myself, I’ll backtrack, check my purchase records on the exchanges I use and start putting the numbers together. Surely that would be a simple task.
Well, how wrong could I have been? For starters, the exchanges don’t give me anyway of knowing what I paid per coin in fiat terms and, in some cases, what I paid overall for my coins. All they show me is how many coins I bought. Then I realised that in some cases I’ve swapped one coin for another, invariably outside of any centralised exchange. But wait, there was more to take into account because I’ve also staked some coins and earned a few more coins in the process. I’ve also used coins on many projects for what they’re there for in the first place, to spend.
So, what I thought would be a simple task has turned out to be all but impossible. I do now have a spreadsheet with some numbers on it but, to be honest, it is nothing more than a rough indicator of what I hold. I have started keeping a note of how much fiat I’ve paid out but still face the same problems with swapping and spending coins and earning through staking. These things I simply haven’t been able to work out how to track accurately in fiat terms.
Being a neat and tidy person this state of affairs is a tad frustrating, but I’ve had to tell myself to relax. It also occurred to me that my thinking might be all wrong. Surely the whole idea here is to move away from fiat currencies to a new, more credible, decentralised world. If that is the case, then trying to convert things back to the world of fiat currencies is always going to be a near impossible thing to do. If that’s the case then no wonder tracking my portfolio has been so difficult to do.
What do you do to keep track of these things? Are there solutions out there I just haven’t encountered yet? Tip top recommendations would be much appreciated.
Until tomorrow…
Renaissance Man
Why this Diary?
I thought it might be an interesting exercise, as much for myself as anyone else, to keep a diary of my interests and activities in the land of the blockchain and all things crypto, so I’m going to give it a go at writing a short diary entry each day for the current month, November 2021. It will give me something to look back on and assess and it might offer up some entertainment and topics of interest to anyone who happens to read it.
The Usual Disclaimer
Please don’t take any of the above as financial or investment advice. It is intended to be nothing other than a little entertainment and information sharing. Always, but always, do your own research before committing your money to anything.