CoinTracker is an essential tool for anyone involved in cryptocurrency, whether you’re dabbling in digital assets or deeply immersed. This app simplifies tracking your crypto portfolio and is especially valuable during tax season. For the IRS, every crypto transaction — be it a trade, spend, or exchange — triggers a taxable event.
CoinTracker adeptly manages these complexities by automatically categorizing each transaction as a sale and a new purchase, calculated in US dollars. Ideal for users frequenting platforms like Coinbase or engaging with well-known DeFi protocols, CoinTracker is designed to streamline the often daunting process of crypto tax preparation, ensuring compliance and easing financial decision-making.
What is CoinTracker?
CoinTracker is a digital platform for tracking cryptocurrency investments. It integrates with numerous cryptocurrency exchanges and wallets to provide a comprehensive view of your portfolio in one convenient place.
Connecting your crypto wallets and exchange accounts automatically pulls in and synchronizes your transaction history. It then provides a clear and updated view of your holdings and their performance, simplifying what used to be a complicated task.
This platform is primarily used for portfolio tracking and tax compliance. It calculates real-time gains, losses, and taxes owed on your transactions, making it invaluable during tax season and for ongoing portfolio management.
| 👍Pros | 👎Cons |
| Connects with 500+ exchanges and wallets | Comprehensive features come with a higher price tag |
| User-friendly interface | Dependence on exchange integrations limits its utility |
| Integrates seamlessly with popular tax software | Tax-loss harvesting is only available with the Prime plan |
| Allows downloading IRS forms | Falls back on customer support |
CoinTracker features & benefits
CoinTracker offers a variety of functionalities aimed at simplifying the management of cryptocurrency portfolios. It simplifies the intricate tax requirements associated with crypto trading while eliminating the potential for human error and ensuring compliance with IRS regulations. Here’s a balanced look at what CoinTracker brings to the table:
Wallet tracking
CoinTracker makes it easy to monitor all your crypto wallets. With support for over 200 altcoins, including BTC, BCH, BSV, ETH, and many others, this feature ensures that every incoming or outgoing transaction is tracked meticulously. This is especially handy for those with diverse portfolios needing a real-time overview of their assets. It’s like having a personal finance manager exclusively for your digital currencies!
Multiple cost basis methods
Choosing the right accounting method for crypto transactions can significantly affect your tax calculations. CoinTracker offers five different methods:
- First In First Out (FIFO)
- Highest In First Out (HIFO)
- Last In First Out (LIFO)
- Share Pooling (AS)
- Adjusted Cost Base (ACB)
Each method has advantages, depending on your trading activity and tax situation. However, consulting with a professional tax advisor is crucial to ensure you select the method that best minimizes your tax liabilities and complies with local laws.
Auto wallet sync
CoinTracker provides an automatic wallet sync feature to save you the hassle of manually updating your portfolio. This tool tracks your existing portfolio across thousands of tokens and updates your portfolio value in real time based on market changes.
Tax form generation
Come tax season, CoinTracker proves its worth by automating the generation of necessary tax documents, such as the IRS form 8949, which is crucial for reporting capital gains. The platform provides an unrealized gains report, helping you understand potential tax liabilities before crystallizing. This proactive approach allows for strategic decisions like harvesting losses to offset gains and optimizing the taxes you owe.
Fee tracking
Investing in cryptocurrencies involves transaction fees, exchange fees, network fees, and other expenses. CoinTracker helps you keep track of these expenses, which is essential for understanding the true cost of your investments and for accurate record-keeping. Knowing how much you pay in fees can help you decide whether to switch strategies or platforms to reduce costs.
Trade reports
One of the biggest challenges in trading is maintaining an organized record of all transactions. CoinTracker excels here by offering detailed trade reports that help you analyze your buying and selling decisions.
Investment performance
Understanding your investments’ performance over time is crucial, and CoinTracker offers robust tools for tracking cost basis, detecting price history, and more. These allow you to see your Return on Investment (ROI) and other vital metrics that can guide your future investment decisions.
How does CoinTracker work?
CoinTracker serves two purposes: portfolio management and tax compliance. As a portfolio manager, it aggregates your transactions across multiple exchanges and wallets to provide a clear view of your cryptocurrency holdings. In one dashboard, you can track your investment performance, see real-time gains or losses, and get insights into market trends.
When you sign up for CoinTracker, you link your cryptocurrency wallets and exchange accounts to the platform. CoinTracker uses APIs to fetch transaction data directly from these sources, ensuring that your portfolio is always up to date without manual input. This integration allows for real-time tracking of trades, transfers, and balances across all connected services.
CoinTracker pricing
CoinTracker offers various pricing plans tailored to different levels of trading activity and reporting needs. Here’s a detailed breakdown of each plan to help you choose the best fit for managing your cryptocurrency investments.
| Free plan | Base/Base+ | Prime/Prime+ | Ultra/Ultra+ | |
| Price (per year) | $0 | Starts at $59 | Starts at $199 | Starts at $599 |
| Transaction limit | None | 100 | 250 | 1,000 | 2,500 | 10,000 | 250,000 |
| Additional features |
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All of those mentioned for other plans +
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| Customer support | Self-serve | Standard | Priority | 24 Hour support |
CoinTracker supported crypto exchanges
CoinTracker offers expansive compatibility across the cryptocurrency exchange spectrum, supporting over 300 platforms. Key exchanges it supports include Coinbase, Binance, KuCoin, Kraken and many more.
For those using less common exchanges, it’s reassuring that CoinTracker’s support extends far beyond these names. You can find the complete list of supported exchanges on CoinTracker’s official website, ensuring you can manage all your crypto assets efficiently.
CoinTracker supported wallets
CoinTracker excels in supporting various cryptocurrency wallets, both hardware and software. These are the prominent wallets it supports:
- TrustWallet and MetaMask
- Ledger and Trezor
- eToro
- Uniswap and 1inch
- Jaxx, Casa, and Compound
CoinTracker’s integration capabilities automatically update and track transactions across these wallets, ensuring that all data remains current and accurate. This perfect sync capability removes the manual hassle of tracking investments across various platforms and wallets.
CoinTracker security measures
CoinTracker adopts a comprehensive approach to protect your assets and data. Here’s a closer look at the security measures in place:
- Self-custody: At its core, CoinTracker is a self-custodial platform, meaning it does not have access to your private keys. This feature lets you completely control your cryptocurrencies, significantly reducing the risk of unauthorized access.
- Two-Factor Authentication (2FA): CoinTracker enhances account security by supporting two-factor authentication. This added layer of security requires not just a password and username but also something that only the user has on them, typically a piece of information they should know or have immediately to hand, like a physical token.
- SSL Encryption: CoinTracker utilizes SSL (Secure Socket Layer) encryption to safeguard data transfers within the system. This technology creates a secure environment for all your transactions and personal information.
- Data Encryption: Beyond SSL, all sensitive data on CoinTracker is fully encrypted, both at rest and in transit, to prevent data breaches and ensure that your information remains secure.
CoinTracker mobile app
CoinTracker offers a comprehensive mobile app on iOS and Android designed to keep you connected with your crypto portfolio on the go. This revamped app allows users to:
- Get real-time overviews of portfolio values and recent price changes.
- Set price alerts for cryptocurrencies to be notified when targets are met.
- View detailed price movements and track both unrealized and realized gains.
Users commend the app for its speed and ease of use, emphasizing its effectiveness in providing everything needed to manage crypto investments effectively from anywhere.
Customer service
CoinTracker ensures effective support across various levels of customer needs:
- Live Chat Support: Quickly accessible via “Chatoshi,” the platform’s AI-driven chat feature provides immediate assistance and guides users through detailed documentation.
- Tiered Direct Support: Enhanced direct customer support is available to Pro, Custom, and Premium plan subscribers, and it typically responds within 24 to 48 hours.
- Extensive Online Resources: Users benefit from an in-depth resource center, which includes tutorials, FAQs, and articles to help clarify more complex issues and improve user experience.
- Priority Handling for Premium Users: High-tier plan subscribers receive priority response, ensuring quicker resolution of their queries.
CoinTracker vs. Koinly
From my experience, Koinly proved more efficient at accurately identifying obscure coins and tokens, reducing the need for manual corrections. However, this experience may vary for different users. Both CoinTracker and Koinly offer similar pricing at the entry-level, with CoinTracker providing a plan for $29 covering 100 transactions, while Koinly charges $49 for the same number of transactions.
For a detailed overview of Koinly’s features and benefits, check out this comprehensive Koinly review.
How to withdraw money from CoinTracker to bank account
CoinTracker does not handle direct financial transactions, so you cannot withdraw money directly from CoinTracker to your bank account. Instead, the platform provides comprehensive transaction reports and real-time portfolio values, which you can use to manage withdrawals directly through the exchange or wallet where your cryptocurrencies are stored.
For instance, if you need to cash out, log into the exchange that holds your crypto, sell the assets for your preferred currency, and withdraw the funds to your bank account as per the exchange’s withdrawal process.
Final thoughts
CoinTracker offers a straightforward solution for cryptocurrency enthusiasts in the complex world of crypto taxes. By automating the tedious and error-prone process of transaction tracking and tax reporting, CoinTracker simplifies the IRS filing process, even for users with frequent and varied crypto activities.
If you trade cryptocurrency on centralized exchanges like Coinbase, CoinTracker should work seamlessly for you. The app easily connects to major exchanges to retrieve transaction data for trades and staking income.
For anyone in the crypto market, CoinTracker can be pretty helpful. It aids in regulatory compliance and improves financial decision-making by offering clear insights into your crypto portfolio and tax obligations.
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