$1,000CAD bought in BTC, ETH...and some loose altcoin change (Sep 1, 2017).
The Coin Movement quest is well and truly underway - I can now confirm that this is the last time my bank account is debited for a fiat to digital currency purchase, for the foreseeable future. The market has been bleeding since Friday and instantly knocked the portfolio for 20% of its value! Let’s jot that down as a minor scratch, rather than a more serious flesh wound.
Bitcoin hit a new all-time high of $5,000USD on September 1, but dipped by (approx.) $400USD on the same day. It was around this date/time that I bought $500CAD of Bitcoin (BTC) and simultaneously $250CAD worth of Ethereum (ETH). These coinbase transactions as seen below (Fig. 1-4), paired with a further $250CAD worth of Ethereum purchased on August 31, 2017 brings the grand total of the fiat investment to almost $1,000CAD($998.32 to be exact).
(
So there – the buy-in has been done now. Entry into the market is difficult to time, but in the interest of getting this show on the road, we needed to get started sooner rather than later.
Coinbase charge fees for their transactions. It’s a large part of how they make money. The overall transaction fees for the four separate coin purchases totalled $38.32CAD. This automatically puts our portfolio on the back foot. I've decided to throw in the remnants of my Bittrex exchange wallet balances to slightly negate these initial fees. Consider it a donation to the movement. It also helps clean things up a bit since now everything in my Bittrex account belongs to The Coin Movement. The loose change is represented by WAVES, XRP and BCC valued at roughly $20USD at time of writing. I bought a small amount of ETH:NEO not only to suppress my short term bearish feelings towards the market and the price of ETH but because I am mulling over the idea of getting involved in an upcoming ICO, which requires NEO (bad idea!) to participate. All the current Bittrex balances can be seen below (Fig. 5).
(
How are we going to track our portfolio balance on top of all this trading activity? I've been playing around with a few digital portfolio managers, none of which I've used in the past. It would therefore be unfair for me to recommend any platforms ahead of others at this point because I haven't had enough user time to pass firm judgements.
I’ve decided to track our portfolio using 3 different methods, in a bid to help increase the accuracy of our valuations. Please see the chosen methods below.
Self-made Google Docs Tracking Tool.
Click the link above and see for yourself (Fig. 6). Feel free to copy, edit and tailor for your own holdings.
(
You can reach out to me directly if you have any suggestions or comments on how to improve, or if you'd like my input on how to personalise your very own template. The tracking document I created is directly linked to coinmarketcap.com price index and updates every 20 minutes to show current asset values. Bare in mind that this document is a work in progress with the functions being pretty basic. Additional tracking and analytical features will be added at a later date.
Altpocket is a young startup from Sweden still finding their feet and working tirelessly to create a reliable investment portfolio tracker with various social integration features. The founders previously worked on an E-learning platform but shifted their focus in May 2017 because of a market demand in cryptocurrency. They recently hit 10,000 users which is an admirable achievement. The user interface is clean, friendly and not unlike a social media profile (Fig.7) - this ties in nicely with my needs.
(
It’s possible to link a profile on Altpocket to currency exchange activity and investments. While this is limited to Poloniex and Bittrex for now, part of their ambitious roadmap is to have integration options for all major currency exchanges and online wallets.
(
Unfortunately, the ‘My Investments’ tab(Fig.8) with Altpocket needs a lot of work which is understandable since the site is still in BETA stage. There are a plethora of bugs associated with the Bittrex import tool and the accuracy and features of the portfolio require plenty of fixes. I`m willing to be patient because there is so much potential in this free product. For the moment the profile will solely represent our ‘Hodl’ value. The portfolio will not change and thus the assets attached to the profile represent our initial BTC and ETH buy-in amounts. Altpocket will be a nice comparison tool against future Altcoin trades because we can keep track of what our portfolio would have been worth had no trading activity occurred. I may use Altpocket for tracking everything in the future if their developers make the investment features more reliable. You can create your own profile here and see for yourself. The potential is real. If they can nail the investment functionality soon then I'm in!
This tracking tool is app based and offers ‘complete cryptocurrency management’, according to their website. Transactions must be inputted manually (Fig.8). The app has some excellent built in features such as, a total portfolio value v time tab that visually represents the percentage increase/decrease of the overall portfolio on a line graph. (Fig.9)
(
You can also create price alerts specifically for the exchange of your choice. Best of all, it's free and available to download for mac and android. I look forward to utilizing Blockfolio and hope it lives up to the hype.
No matter what any reviewers or bloggers say about an altcoin, a product or a service take their opinions with a pinch of salt. Test the waters on your own, exercise due diligence and reach your own conclusions about the advantages/disadvantages.
Thanks for reading. Remember it's no longer my portfolio – it’s our portfolio because early readers are going to be sharing a portion of my profits. I have yet to announce the intricacies of how this will happen because I'm putting all my time and energy into getting the site and social media aspects of The Coin Movement up and running first.
Stay tuned!
Cathal - The Coin Movement