Cryptocurrency Portfolio Trackers for Everyday Use – 2020 Update

About two and a half years back, Abhijoy and I reconnected over our mutual interest in cryptocurrencies after almost a decade of lost contact. As we discussed various technologies and related topics which intrigued us in crypto, a recurring theme was “where do you track your portfolio?”.

These talks led to our original article “Top 5 Cryptocurrency Portfolio Trackers for Everyday Use”, which examined some leading portfolio trackers in the market in 2019.

Over time, all these platforms have gone through numerous changes and updates. New trackers have come to the fore and some existing ones have discontinued.

Cryptocurrency markets are starting to see increased interest in the backdrop of the US OCC permitting banks to offer custody and other services for cryptos, DeFi exploding onto the scene and BTC starting to chart higher price points. We found this an opportune moment to revisit the original five trackers to see where they are at now, and also explore two more trackers that are making waves.

iOS: Download here

Web: Access here

Crypto Pro is one of the veterans in the crypto portfolio tracking space with its first version released back in 2015. It is a full-feature tracker with standalone apps for iPad, Mac, and Apple Watch apart from the standard iPhone app. It is a privacy-first app with no-logs policy.

As a testament to its focus on privacy, even user activity or viewing habits aren’t tracked. This means no user analytics data is logged by the app. All data is stored locally on the client-side device.

Users can, however, take a backup of their data to cloud storage. The app access can be secured through Face ID, Touch ID, or lock code.

Crypto Pro is immensely popular among Apple users and has more than 50k reviews in the App Store currently with 30k+ reviews in the US alone and a rating of 4.7/5. The Android app is currently under development. Click here if you would like to be notified when it goes live.

The iOS app can be synced across all your Apple devices through iCloud and the API keys are secured with Apple’s keychain framework for end-to-end encryption. The Apple Watch app offers customizable displays and charts with real-time updates and notifications. Custom complications for every watch face are also available.

The app tracks cryptocurrencies, metals, and fiats on all major exchanges. Portfolio values can be represented in several fiat, cryptocurrencies, and commodities (viz. gold, silver, etc.). The price data is pulled from a combination of all the supported crypto exchanges including Binance and Coinbase. Multiple portfolios can be added; either through import or manually. Importing native wallet transactions and balances is also supported. API imports can be done from more than 90 exchanges.

In addition to these, Crypto Pro also has unique offerings such as curated news feeds that auto-adjust as per portfolio choices, custom price alerts that drill down to exchange-level trading pair triggers, portfolio analytics, and personalized Today widgets. The app UI is customizable completely – from icons to logos to color schemes to graphs. All the basic features are completely free-to-use and there are no ads hogging screen space. However, advanced features such as automatic exchange import, live prices, etc. are available with paid subscriptions. Any user referring their friends or family to the app gets an extra year of paid subscription for every 3 people referred.

iOS: Download here

Android: Download here

CoinMarketCap (CMC) is a renowned name in the world of cryptocurrencies. Breaking into the top-100 page of CMC is a matter of pride for blockchain projects even today. Earlier this year (May, 2020), CoinMarketCap launched its crypto portfolio tracker mobile app. It is a light-weight app with an aesthetically pleasing user interface. Needless to say, the app pulls data from the CMC website, and lists 2000+ cryptocurrencies and 300+ crypto exchanges. Each coin’s market stats are accompanied by a short description of the coin, and links to the project’s social media platforms. The iOS version of the CMC app currently has 10k+ reviews from the US.

Historic price and volume data of coins, market pairs, exchange statistics, and pretty much everything else that is visible in the website can be found in the app too. The app provides candlestick charts for coins – a feature that has not yet been added on the website. A unique feature of the app is the Crypto Compare tab, where you can chart the performance of any 2 coins in terms of their price, trading volume and market cap, over various time frames. For users who want to keep track of recently added coins, there’s a separate section in the app for that as well.

The app has been designed such that the latest updates from the crypto world are presented to the user in a concise form. Biggest coins by market cap, top gainers and losers, BTC dominance, and other useful information are displayed in the landing page itself. The CMC app also features trending News articles from reputable crypto news organizations, displayed right at the beginning. Apart from base cryptocurrencies like BTC, ETH and XRP, the CMC app lets you view your crypto portfolio in 90+ fiat currencies (including USD, EUR, JPR, INR, CNY, etc.) and precious metals like Gold, Silver and Platinum.

Users can either create an account or choose to go incognito without logging in, saving their data locally. The app is completely free to use. However, it comes at a small price; ads keep on popping up from time to time, which seem a bit irritating after a while. There are also sponsored links in the app to purchase cryptos, which lead you to Crypto.com. Though the ads might be necessary to keep the app completely free to all users, they dampen the user experience to some extent.

Blockfolio has made a lot of progress with respect to integration with crypto exchanges. You can automatically connect to your exchange accounts, import your trades, and place buy/sell orders on the go. Supported exchanges include leading global exchanges like Binance, Bitfinex, Bittrex, Coinbase, CoinbasePro, OKEx, Poloniex, KuCoin, Kraken and HitBTC.

Blockfolio has also rolled out quite a few significant updates to improve the accessibility to social media sites and news outlets. Blockfolio Signal has been one of the distinguishing features of the app on this front. This feature allows users to receive curated signals directly from the leadership teams of leading crypto projects, such as Monero, Ontology, VeChain, Nano, Lisk, and so on.

You can now provide feedback and report Signals as “Factually Incorrect” or “Shilling", and contribute towards maintaining the veracity of the Signal community. Signals are now categorized under the labels Technical, Community, Marketing and Emergency, to help users sort through the news easily.

Blockfolio has added a News section, where users can stay up-to-date with the latest crypto news from CoinDesk, CoinTelegraph and other crypto news outlets. Through the Coin Profile tab, you can directly access the social media platforms and technical information related to your favourite projects. Sharing news items on social media sites and directly with friends is much easier now.

Other features aimed at improving user experience include real-time pricing, price change alerts, and increased charting options. Users also have the flexibility of accounting for their crypto airdrops and mining rewards without entering a BUY or SELL record.  

Presenting the latest events from the crypto world to users instantly through the app seems to be in vogue now. Delta already had the Delta Direct feature, through which crypto teams could send project updates directly to the users. The feature has been streamlined further – apart from project specific updates, users can also read the latest news articles from the world of blockchain, curated by Decrypt.  

Delta now displays in-depth analytics and information about the supported cryptocurrencies. For any coin, not only can you see information pertaining to its price action and your holding details, but you can also check out the project website, whitepaper and social media platforms directly from the app.

The new updates offer more analytical tools to users. You can analyze your trade history, assets holdings, asset source, asset location, most used exchanges, trades and investment status. Simply connect your portfolio with your exchange accounts and crypto wallets; transactions and airdrops will be automatically tracked along with the exchange fees.

Recently, Delta has been acquired by multi-asset investment platform eToro. Users of Delta app can easily purchase Bitcoin, Ethereum and other major cryptocurrencies through eToro’s regulated trading platform. In addition, it is expected that users will be able to trade directly from the app via eToroX, eToro’s own crypto exchange, in the near future.

Delta has also introduced Advanced Metrics, a feature exclusively available to users of Delta’s paid subscription Delta PRO, which promises to make tax computation accurate and hassle-free. The Delta PRO subscription includes additional perks such as advanced portfolio analytics modules, unlimited connections to exchanges and wallets, and early access to new app features.

CoinTracking doesn’t seem to have made any major updates over the last year and a half. Trades still have to be entered through their website (and not their mobile apps), which seems quite weird to be honest. They have added some new features to enhance the user experience though.

One useful addition is a widget, which provides quick and secure access to the user’s basic portfolio information, along with current prices for Bitcoin and 3 other coins as chosen by the user. CoinTracking’s mobile app has also incorporated Face-ID and Touch-ID based authentication schemes, in addition to the conventional Passcode based scheme.

Apart from this, other new features are minor changes, which other apps might have incorporated right from the beginning. These include price alert for coin price movement, the ability to track balances over multiple exchanges and wallets in one place, and a summary of the 24 hour price change for all coins in the user’s portfolio.

All in all, CoinTracking has lagged behind other portfolio tracking apps on the development front. While the ability to create comprehensive tax reports might still be a selling point for the paid version, the free version of the app will leave you unsatisfied in all likelihood.

CrypoCompare has always focused on developing an ecosystem based on crypto, and not so much on developing only a portfolio tracker app. Their aim is to provide clear and concise information, bridging the gap between the crypto asset and traditional financial markets. As a result, there have been minimal updates to their portfolio tracker over the last 18 months.

One significant update seems to be in line with what other apps have done as well. The CryptoCompare app now has a News section, where users can stay connected to the latest social media feed and news updates from the world of blockchain. This section features articles from more than 40 sites. If you’re an avid reader, then you would be spoilt for choice here.

Apart from this, the app supports bare minimum features, and no update has caught our attention. As a service provider, on the other hand, CryptoCompare seems to have done serious work over the last few months, which is reflected in their website. However, this is beyond the scope of our discussion on portfolio tracker apps, and maybe a subject worth exploring in a completely separate article.

Gem has had a difficult year so far and there haven’t been too many updates on the app since we last wrote about it in our previous article. The team had to go through some layoffs over the crypto winter which resulted in fewer code pushes and updates. Consequently, planned features like Shapeshift-partnered wallet and trading, price alerts, iOS widget and history export haven’t materialized yet.

However, there have been certain enhancements over this time such as daily portfolio update notification, support for more crypto assets, improvement on certain exchange API connections (which were buggy), etc. The app continues to be one of the most aesthetically pleasing trackers out there and is still completely free to use. The onboarding process is simple and it takes just minutes to get started on the app. As one of our top picks as a portfolio tracker, we sincerely hope that Gem is able to regain its earlier development and user acquisition momentum.

Disclaimer: None of the authors have any vested interest in any of the products mentioned in the article.

About the authors:

Rohit Chatterjee is an Analog Design Engineer working at Texas Instruments. Abhijoy Sarkar is a banker-turned-entrepreneur. They are high school friends who lost contact years ago. They reunited over crypto in early 2018 and have been investing through mutual research and shared knowledge.