Why you should use a cryptocurrency portfolio tracker

If you have invested in a variety of cryptocurrencies, it is probably wise to use a cryptocurrency portfolio tracker to keep tabs on your performance.

However, this isn’t always fun, especially in a bear market. Indeed, a cryptocurrency portfolio tracker can turn into the friend you love to hate. Despite this, they are valuable tools if you are interested in a variety of altcoins as well as Bitcoin to help you keep track of your portfolio’s performance.

Types of cryptocurrency portfolio tracker

There are a variety of cryptocurrency portfolio trackers available for free on the market. Most come in the form of apps that can be downloaded for free on your phone.

One of the most popular is Blockfolio. With Blockfolio, you can enter your cryptocurrency holdings and it will provide a live feed of the dollar and BTC value of your portfolio. There are other apps including Delta or a plethora of websites that will also provide similar services.

Some of the more advanced apps might require you to pay a small fee for their advanced metrics. These will include graphs and pie charts, and some even provide tax calculations for you as well, although whether these tax calculations are available for every jurisdiction is unlikely.

Of course, if you are more of a ‘do it yourself’ kind of person who values their security, you can also manually keep track of your portfolio. Whilst this is certainly more time consuming, there are benefits.

By keeping track manually, you will spend more time researching and the knowledge you gather on prices will be easier to remember. Whereas apps might alert you and help you see price changes quickly, there is a certain pleasure in manually updating your own portfolio.

Your portfolio in a bull market

As one can imagine, using your cryptocurrency portfolio tracker in a bull run can be a lot of fun. Each day you can wake up and see how much money you are making. There is a certain addictive quality when you first enter cryptocurrencies and everything is going well.

The excitement you get when a random bag you have been holding suddenly comes to life is akin to winning the jackpot on a slot machine. Trading many altcoins is very similar to gambling at a casino due to the high level of risk coupled with the possibility of large returns.

Using a cryptocurrency portfolio tracker in a bull market is fun and easy. However, the same cannot be said when the bear market rears its teeth.

Your portfolio in a bear market

If you bought some cryptocurrency in January 2018, the last thing you probably feel like doing is checking your cryptocurrency portfolio tracker. Seeing your hard-earned money slowly diminish as each day passes by can be extremely painful.

Whilst this can dampen your mood, there are extremely valuable lessons that you can learn. Your portfolio tracker can help you with this with its simple tools. Even in a bull market, you may be up in dollar terms, but if you have less BTC value than when you started, it would suggest that your altcoin investments were not as profitable than if you had merely stuck with investing in BTC.

Many new cryptocurrency traders miss this key point. Whilst their eyes are on the dollar value of their portfolio, keeping track of the Bitcoin value is just as important. Whilst BTC’s market dominance has dropped considerably in recent years, it is still the most important coin in the world of cryptocurrencies.

Whilst you may not want to look at your portfolio in a bear market, it is important that you do – whether that be to cut your losses or to learn from your mistakes.

Conclusion

If you are only interested in investing in Bitcoin, then a cryptocurrency portfolio tracker is probably unnecessary. If however you plan to play the risky game and invest in a variety of cryptocurrencies, then a portfolio tracker can be extremely useful to track your performance.

Whilst they may not be fun to look at when you are losing all your money, they are still an extremely useful tool that many cryptocurrency traders might require. Using a tracker even in the painful times can provide valuable lessons that you can use in the future and help you enjoy the good times even more!