CoinTracker raises $1.5M to make tracking cryptocurrency investments easy
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
Thanks for a great service. I used it for my taxes this year.
That said, it isn't perfect. I marked several transactions as transfers but it didn't change my cap gains numbers. I added it up manually and the numbers don't seem to add up. Then I checked back later and looks like those numbers are updated later. But why? And by how much time?
I find the design of Cointracker to be quite good, personally. It seems clean, simple, and easy to understand.
(I have no connection to Cointracker other than as a user.)
> Be civil. Don't say things you wouldn't say face-to-face. Don't be snarky. Comments should get more civil and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.
https://www.irs.gov/instructions/i8949#idm140253115164448 see Exception 2
My statement had 390 pages.
I had something like 50k+ transactions last year. Cointracking wouldn’t create a 8949 for me because their servers couldn’t handle a dataset that large, but they could create a capital gains CSV file that was super easy for my acccountant to sum up a few columns and make the 8949. That said, their very high transaction count plans are $1000+, which seems insane. Through a bug they had interfacing with HitBtc I was able to get the CSV for free, but next year I doubt I’ll use this service at that high price.
I just hate to add another point of vulnerability into an area that is no doubt being heavily targeted by hacking groups
One of the golden rules in crypto is to never disclose your holdings to anyone on the internet, yet people are using these apps without a second thought!
† Not affiliated in any way.
I hope more startups picked up this way.
On the stock market (which we consider a more legitimate investment), share price is entirely driven by perception and the amount of buyers vs sellers. This resembles cryptocurrencies as well.
The difference, however, is that there is an underlying company you're betting on with a stock, and buyers often believe that a company will have more buyers in the future due to the company's performance and its actual returns.
Cryptocurrencies are a much more volatile, short-term investment with virtually no regulations, and there's very rarely an underlying bet aside from "this sounds good and will sound good to other people too."
I think when people say there are 'no regulations' it communicates an idea that theft, fraud and/or violating contracts are not prosecutable. Maybe that's my own flawed interpretation but I believe that's how it comes across to the average person.
As long as we're trying to rehabilitate financial terms, cryptocurrencies don't have "market caps". Stocks do, because they represent companies which could plausibly be purchased in one go for something near that number. But currencies and commodities don't have market caps, because buying up an entire currency a) doesn't make any sense (the value of a currency is in its continued circulation), and b) would wildly distort the price if even a fraction of the total were purchased.
The fact that cryptocurrency markets aren't regulated -- and, in fact, are frequently manipulated by schemes that would be illegal in any other marketplace -- doesn't help, either...
Besides that, the distinction between speculation and investment is not as clear as you say.
By your definition, there is no such thing as "investing in art" - only "art speculation".
The definition of investment/speculation I prefer is whether the asset purchase is based on economic reasoning, or emotional reasoning. The latter is people buying "because the charts are growing", or "because the market is hot but will be hotter", or using technical analysis voodoo.
If you have a basis for your purchase price that is not connected to historic price charts, you're an investor.
Investing in art happens all the time. Movie companies do it reliably when they create or purchase films with the hope of generating both economic value (that is, enjoyment) and long-term profit. Music companies do it when they give a band money to make a new album. Touring art shows could also be seen as an investment where they acquire assets and then generate value (that is, viewership) with them. But yes, buying and storing paintings in hopes they will be worth more later is speculation.
Investing is about looking at the fundamental value of something, its economic productivity. Speculation is betting on fluctuation. If I put my retirement money in an index fund, I am indeed thinking about the future in a way that could be called speculative. But in the financial world, speculation has a specific meaning that is distinct from investing:
You think cryptocurrencies are not investments because they aren't economic producers. Cryptocurrency is not an economic producer, because currency is not an economic producer. It is an economic enabler though, and currencies have intrinsic values related to their various properties that affect how they enable economies: backed by gold, backed by government trust, backed by cryptography, identity and trust in the controller of money supply, anonymity vs transparent identity, transaction speed, liquidity, legal legitimacy, etc.
The best historic analogy for the investment profile of the cryptocurrency craze right now is war bonds. With war bonds, you are investing in the success of the nation issuing them. Failure of that nation means default. Success means that bond is convertible to national currency that has a liquid marketable value. Right now the utility of those cryptocurrencies is low: transaction volumes are low, liquidity is low, acceptance is low. But by speculating on cryptocurrencies, you are betting on their future utility, with the caveat that most will likely fail and be completely worthless in the long run. Yes, it's speculative...just like every other investment out there.
Betting on any currency is speculation, not investment. And although currencies may be useful, that doesn't mean that buying more currency than you need for practical purposes is going to turn you a profit.
Indeed, the opposite often applies. A good currency has low volatilty and is easily exchanged for other things. The US dollar has been a great currency for decades, but buying lots of dollars wouldn't have made you rich, because dollars are not productive assets. They just sit there. No serious investor parks lots of money for long periods in currencies; it's better to buy productive assets (e.g., stock index shares) in that currency.
If Bitcoin ever becomes a good currency, it too will be a bad choice for speculation. A financial company with Bitcoin infrastructure might be a good investment. But Bitcoin's high volatility, which makes it great for speculation, will have to vanish if it ever becomes a decent currency.
If Ethereum is a go-to place to do equity crowdfunding in the future, and we estimate the volume of such operations at $120B a year, then - assuming it takes a month from the moment someone buys ETH to invest in an ETO, to the moment a startup sells it for a fiat money, Ethereum's market cap will need to be at least $10B to fulfil that need, and that would be a cap bottom then.
On top of that, there will be other uses, and of course speculation/hype factor, which you can count in as well.
Now, with the advent of stable coins, it's possible that most of the ETOs won't be funded using Eth, but a dollar derivative (e.g. MakerDAO), or a token represented by a locked-up asset (e.g. Digix). Right now MakerDAO uses Eth as a backing, so it doesn't change the math, but if the Digix model proves successful, it affect this calculations.
Another line of reasoning for Eth is that you have transaction fees, and here again you can easily calculate the money velocity, and a potential volume flowing through the system.
Finally, when PoS arrives, Eth will yield de facto dividends - that's planned to happen within a year, although it has been postponed a few times already.
For other cryptocurrencies - MakerDAO, Digix, or Ocean have economies that can be calculated in a similar way. A plenty of other ones to.
Now, if you say that there is a low chance of such projects being successful - keep in mind that all these projects aim high. If there is 1% probability that BananaCoin will really help people grow bananas, it will deserve a $100M valuation, since it will be worth $10B in case of success.
Oh oh, in case of some projects, if not most, their book to equity rate is very high by Wall Street's standards. Golem may seem overpriced with their $200M valuation (that is - you believe they either have <1% of success, or their target market cap is <$10B), until you realise they have around $100M-$150M in assets after their ICO. That's a lot of money they can spend to deliver the value.
There are many strong arguments as to why that's a bad bet, but that's the bet IMO.
When you buy stocks what exactly do you buy? Some stake in a company? Nonsense. You're just hoping that company will do well and your stock will appreciate.
Sure you can invest in commodities like oil or gold. Does that mean that an oil tank will be delivered to you door? No. You're just creating a virtual position with that commodity, hoping to close it later at a better price.
Same with crypto currencies.
In places where you can move money easily, and the local currency is stable and generally usable, then it's basically a trading commodity like gold or oil.
BTW whats the purpose of having your own token? What is it used for?
In fact, the best tracker is the one where the price of the coins I am holding increases.
Please optimize for that one single metric, coin tracker creators :)
There's going to be many players in this space across geographies and more.
Godspeed to them all.
I wrote my own cryptocurrency portfolio management tool https://tulips.flurdy.io to replace a complicated a spreadsheet I used before.
Still needs plenty of polish and still beta, but Tulips works for me.
I see what you did there
Much like we accept that most people say 'USB' when they mean memory stick, or when someone says the word 'microwave' we assume they are talking about the metal oven that cooks their food.
That's a crypto investment that has nothing to do with blockchainiacs.