Alex MunkachyCoinTracking.info In Brief
With over 300,000 users and a development history dating back to 2013, CoinTracking.info is one of the largest and most popular crypto trackers on the market. Its basic features are free to use, but you have to sign up for a paid account to take full advantage of CoinTracking.info’s tax form calculator. Paid subscribers can export a variety of tax forms, including IRS form 8949 and others.
Read on to learn everything you need to know about CoinTracking.info before you create your account.
Pros
- First version was released in 2013. Most cryptocurrency trackers came out last year, but the creators of CoinTracking.info have been working on it for several years.
- Free version is available. If you don’t need the tax form generation features, just use CoinTracking.info like a basic portfolio tracker for free.
- Excellent compatibility. CoinTracking.info works with all the major cryptocurrencies, crypto exchanges and most crypto wallets.
- Advanced charts. Various widgets display a timeline of all your trades and candlestick/line charts. You can either compare your balances across several exchanges or view the total value of your portfolio at a glance.
- Historical data. CoinTracking pulls up historical data related whatever coin you want to analyze. This allows you to calculate the correct cost basis figures and generate accurate tax reports.
Cons
- Subscription plans are somewhat pricey. The Pro upgrade is reasonably priced, but the Unlimited version of CoinTracking.info is expensive.
What is CoinTracking.info?
CoinTracking.info is a comprehensive cryptocurrency tracker that also generates tax forms.
CEO and founder Dario Kachel talked about his company’s origin story in an interview with Crypts News.
“I am from Munich, Germany and started getting into cryptocurrencies since 2012. Shortly after my first trades, I realized the difficulty of tracking coins and gains across multiple exchanges. That is why I created an Excel spreadsheet to track my coins like probably most people did at this time.”
After becoming frustrated with his Excel spreadsheet’s limitations, Kachel set out to design an alternative way to do his taxes by creating a script that automatically crunched all the necessary numbers. Getting the job done wasn’t easy. According to Kachel, the development process required hundreds of hours of work.
Finally, after three months of work, Kachel debuted CryptoTracking.info. When the tracker came out in 2013, it was one of the first crypto trackers with a tax calculator feature to hit the market. At first, Kachel managed the platform alone. Now, he has a team of seven people working with him on the project.
CoinTracking.info’s creators
- Dario Kachel – Founder, CEO. Kachel was a project manager for a number of companies in Germany. In 2013, he founded CoinTracking.info. Prior to that, he started a basic cryptocurrency tracker called nxtreporting.com. A message on the site indicates that development on that tracker has been discontinued.
- Citruslab. Citruslab is the design team behind CryptoTracking.info’s iOS and Android apps. Other projects that Citruslab has been involved with include a crypto tracker called Coinpeak, a mobile game called Pi1 and a pill reminder app called MedBeep.
Core Features
CoinTracking.info’s core value proposition is that it’s been around longer than most other crypto trackers. Because of this, it’s generally less buggy and has more features than most other products of its kind.
Portfolio tracking
CoinTracking.info automatically syncs all your wallets, mining pools and cryptocurrency exchange accounts. This gives you the ability to instantly find out how your portfolio is performing across multiple platforms. There’s support for over 6000 coins and over 30 popular cryptocurrency exchanges.
Tax form generation
Paid CoinTracking.info subscribers can download IRS form 8949 and other tax forms. Katchel described CoinTracking.info’s tax form generation feature to Forbes:
“CoinTracking creates U.S. compliant tax reports such as Capital Gains And Losses on Form 8949, Other Income Reports, Gift and Donation Reports, Lost and Stolen Reports, and Closing Position. Reports can be exported in many formats like Excel, CSV, PDF and even in standard forms like Form 8949, Statement for the IRS, TaxACT, and TurboTax.”
Multiple accounting methods
The CoinTracking.info tax calculator supports several different accounting methods, including FIFO, LIFO, HIFO and LOFO.
Easy to use
CoinTracking.info’s easy tracking feature lets you quickly create a cryptocurrency watch list. The interface and the apps have intuitive interfaces and can be tweaked to suit your needs.
Limitations
CoinTracking.info’s main limitation is its lack of live support. You have to fill out a form and submit a ticket, then wait for help if you need extra assistance. Unlimited plan subscribers get faster service than those that chose Pro or stuck with the Free plan.
Customer Support
CoinTracking.info’s extensive support database contains more information than most other cryptocurrency trackers. It has tutorials, detailed advice about how to tweak your settings and other useful information. Live phone and chat support, however, is not available. However, the CoinTracking team does provide quick multi-lingual support via several social networks and forums, including bitcointalk.org, Facebook, Twitter & Google Plus.
Mobile Apps
CoinTracking.info’s iOS and Android apps both have near perfect reviews. The high ratings are especially impressive because the apps have been reviewed thousands of times. The few complaints that do exist reference inconsistent fingerprint login performance and other minor bugs.
Subscription Prices
CoinTracking.info’s basic plan lets you use the site as a coin tracker for free. However, that plan’s tax reporting features are very limited. Free accounts can only import 200 transactions and preview the tax and capital gains reports.
The $76-per-year Pro edition of CoinTracking.info is the best plan to get if you’re a casual cryptocurrency trader. Pro users can process up to 3,500 transactions, download tax forms, import large 20 MB CSV files and sync with up to five different crypto wallets. If you plan on using CoinTracking.info to do your taxes every year, you may want to consider purchasing the $246 Lifetime License to save money over the long run.
The high-end $120-per-year Unlimited upgrade caters to the needs of crypto day traders and traders that use bots to execute orders with unlimited transactions, 200 MB CSV uploads and priority customer support. The $1823 Lifetime License is pricey, though.
CoinTracking explained to CoinIQ that its Lifetime License subscription fees are high because of the computational overhead involved with calculating millions of data sets for the tracker’s 360k users.
User experience
The Dashboard view gives you a high-level look at how well (or how badly) your portfolio is doing.
Twelve different tabs bring up a variety of additional widgets. One of the most interesting of these is the Balance by Exchange tab, which displays how much cryptocurrency you have across all your crypto exchanges.
Another interesting part of the interface is the experimental Bitcoin Analysis page. Several detailed analytical charts appear there, along with a BTC Risk-O-Meter that attempts to gauge the likelihood of a major price fluctuation.
Final Thoughts
CoinTracking.info could be the all-around best product of its kind on the market today. Its major advantage over the competition is the fact that it’s been around quite a bit longer than most other trackers. The development team has used this head start to fix bugs, improve compatibility and to create a pair of well-received mobile apps for iOS and Android.
