Using Quicken to Track Bitcoins

Unknown

How to set up Quicken to track bitcoins and others (soon, well maybe).  Like many of you, I ended up here trying to find the answer of how to track Bitcoin's with Quicken.  I'm using Quicken 2017 but have been a long time user of the program.  Here's how I did it and it works!  

First - create a new investment account to reflect your bitcoin wallet.
Second - under "Tools" then "Security List" click "Add New Security" - type "NYX" - you're wanting to find NYXBT - that is where the New York Stock Exchange is tracking Bitcoin.
Three - DONE!  Now transfer funds into the account and purchase/sell just like any stock.

Hopefully in the near future the NYSE will start to track other cryptocurrencies with their own index,  When that time occurs we'll be able to add them as well and able to use Quicken to track them.

While I can't take full credit for this solution, I was trying to add the Index XBT as a security or to Quicken when I got frustrated and decided to use chat help from Intuit.  Mc Don F. was extremely helpful in assisting me with the above solution of how to add the NYSE Index as a Security that's now working quite well in tracking my investment in Bitcoins.

And here is the Yahoo Finance link to the index - https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/%5ENYXBT?p=^NYXBT

Good Luck!    J

Unknown

Thank you John!  I have just started buying a couple of small lots of Bitcoin and your workaround was very helpful.  At least now I can monitor the portfolio thru Quicken.  Maybe as you make new discoveries like this you might keep me posted?  Thanks again, Karl

UKR

How does tracking Bitcoin work for you?

I thought I read somewhere that Bitcoin is tracked to 8 or more decimal places, e.g., 0.12345678
Quicken can, at most, handle 6 decimal places in "Number of Shares".

Unknown

UKR said:

How does tracking Bitcoin work for you?

I thought I read somewhere that Bitcoin is tracked to 8 or more decimal places, e.g., 0.12345678
Quicken can, at most, handle 6 decimal places in "Number of Shares".

Since I just started today, and my purchases were the 25th and 27th, I don't know yet how this is going to work out over a longer haul.  I was pleased just to get the index for bitcoins to work like a normal security.  I can see how the sig fig issue could become a problem, but I will tackle that when the time comes.

Rocket J Squirrel

If you have an account at Coinbase, you can create a Quicken checking or savings account using "Coinbase - Bitcoin Wallet" as the financial institution. I don't, so I can't speak to how well this works.

jcalveras

I use a simple manual brokerage account and use the NY bitcoin Index to follow the price of bitcoin. 

Use the Index Security: INDEX:NYXBT

1 share: 1 bitcoin. 

It downloads quotes as far as November 2015. 

I tried to use Coinbase setting on quicken, after generating the Secret API keys from Coinbase, but my accounts or my transactions were not downloaded. 

I tried the same as here: https://support.coinbase.com/customer/portal/articles/1514014-how-do-i-integrate-coinbase-with-my-mi...

Did it work for any of you ? 

Unknown

I would think that if Quicken devs could just change the share qty field to allow 8 decimal places, this would all be solved pretty quickly.  Seems like an easy fix to me (and I'm an IT guy).   

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE Quicken devs....give us 8 decimals!!!    I use quicken for stocks, etc... but struggling with spreadsheets for tracking cryptocurrencies for fifo and tax lot accounting.   Would love to be able to do it in Quicken like everything else..   just need those 8 decimals!

Unknown

I ́m also waiting for Quicken to alow 8 decimal places on shares qty field. Do we have an estimate? it should be hard to do. Quicken guys??? anything?

NotACPA

OSO Aguilo said:

I ́m also waiting for Quicken to alow 8 decimal places on shares qty field. Do we have an estimate? it should be hard to do. Quicken guys??? anything?

We're other users.  We have NO INFO about the timing of any change to Q ... nor whether any specific change is even in the pipeline.

SO, don't hold your breath.

Unknown

I just entered in an idea for Quicken to support Crypto Tracking.  Why
don't you guys send it some votes and see if we can get traction. 
Thanks! https://getsatisfaction.com/quickencommunity/topics/track-bitcoin-btc-and-other-cryptocurrency-accou...

Unknown

It would be helpful if you could add the ability to monitor specific bitcoin/eth addresses only. Like using ethscan or something of that nature.
It would also be helpful to link to any of the major exchanges if that is possible. Bittrex or poloneix. Especially from a tax point of view.
Also physical gold and silver tracking would be helpful too. i.e. entering the amount owned and just displaying a rough estimate based upon spot price.

bkm

UKR said:

How does tracking Bitcoin work for you?

I thought I read somewhere that Bitcoin is tracked to 8 or more decimal places, e.g., 0.12345678
Quicken can, at most, handle 6 decimal places in "Number of Shares".

You are correct. Quicken only tracks to 6 decimal places, and some cryptos can go up to 9 or so decimal places. Quicken is lacking in this department.

I don't want Quicken to lose any info, so I track my cryptos as millionths of shares so I can have Quicken track all my decimal places properly. There are still limitations with this method, but it has worked so far with me.

Getting a picture of Net Worth is a little trickier, however. When I enter Price History for a crypto, I have to divide its value by 1000000. And therefore I cannot use the NYXBT ticker.

If Quicken simply allowed more than 6 decimal places -- maybe up to 12 or so -- that would fix all my problems.

NotACPA

UKR said:

How does tracking Bitcoin work for you?

I thought I read somewhere that Bitcoin is tracked to 8 or more decimal places, e.g., 0.12345678
Quicken can, at most, handle 6 decimal places in "Number of Shares".

If Quicken simply allowed more than 6 decimal places -- maybe up to 12 or so -- that would fix all my problems.

And expand the size of EVERYONE'S Q data file just to make room for this extra space in ALL investment quotes.

I sincerely hope that they NEVER make this change. 

Cryptocurrencies, quite simply, have no ECONOMIC REASON for their valuation.  They're the modern version of "Tulip Mania".

bkm

UKR said:

How does tracking Bitcoin work for you?

I thought I read somewhere that Bitcoin is tracked to 8 or more decimal places, e.g., 0.12345678
Quicken can, at most, handle 6 decimal places in "Number of Shares".

That's a nice opinion, but the market cap of cryptocurrencies does tell a different story.

I doubt the size of the data file would expand that much, and if there is that much repeated data, how about compressing the data file upon save? Makes more sense than excluding useful features.

Unknown

If you use CoinBase, you can create a Savings account in Quicken and choose "CoinBase" as the name of the bank.

Walter Kraslawsky

Six digits is not a big issue right now since a rounding error to the nearest 0.000001 BTC error is still less than a rounding error to the nearest $0.01. 

A bigger issue is that we are all in a global economy that now adds cryptocurrencies to the old fiat currencies.  In addition to converting USD, euros, pounds, and yen back and forth at our banks, and we are converting USD, BTC, ETH, and LTC back and forth on online exchanges. 

Last night I bought 182.00000000 LTC for 1.58522000 BTC on the GDAX exchange, and there was no way to enter that into Quicken without selling BTC and buying LTC on Quicken.  The problem is that there was no "right" answer.  I could have used any USD value as long as the same USD coming out of the BTC sale went back into the LTC purchase.

Hopefully the Quicken development team is aware of these issues.

Sherlock

Walter Kraslawsky said:

Six digits is not a big issue right now since a rounding error to the nearest 0.000001 BTC error is still less than a rounding error to the nearest $0.01. 

A bigger issue is that we are all in a global economy that now adds cryptocurrencies to the old fiat currencies.  In addition to converting USD, euros, pounds, and yen back and forth at our banks, and we are converting USD, BTC, ETH, and LTC back and forth on online exchanges. 

Last night I bought 182.00000000 LTC for 1.58522000 BTC on the GDAX exchange, and there was no way to enter that into Quicken without selling BTC and buying LTC on Quicken.  The problem is that there was no "right" answer.  I could have used any USD value as long as the same USD coming out of the BTC sale went back into the LTC purchase.

Hopefully the Quicken development team is aware of these issues.

Last night I bought 182.00000000 LTC for 1.58522000 BTC on the GDAX exchange, and there was no way to enter that into Quicken without selling BTC and buying LTC on Quicken.  The problem is that there was no "right" answer.  I could have used any USD value as long as the same USD coming out of the BTC sale went back into the LTC purchase.

We can use "Remove" and "Add" instead of "Sell" and "Buy".

Unknown

Walter Kraslawsky said:

Six digits is not a big issue right now since a rounding error to the nearest 0.000001 BTC error is still less than a rounding error to the nearest $0.01. 

A bigger issue is that we are all in a global economy that now adds cryptocurrencies to the old fiat currencies.  In addition to converting USD, euros, pounds, and yen back and forth at our banks, and we are converting USD, BTC, ETH, and LTC back and forth on online exchanges. 

Last night I bought 182.00000000 LTC for 1.58522000 BTC on the GDAX exchange, and there was no way to enter that into Quicken without selling BTC and buying LTC on Quicken.  The problem is that there was no "right" answer.  I could have used any USD value as long as the same USD coming out of the BTC sale went back into the LTC purchase.

Hopefully the Quicken development team is aware of these issues.

IRS hasn't clarified, but most of what I've seen suggests that crypto is not eligible for section 1031 treatment, so you should be entering it as a sale to USD at FMV and a purchase for the same amount.

(I am not your tax advisor.)

Walter Kraslawsky

Walter Kraslawsky said:

Six digits is not a big issue right now since a rounding error to the nearest 0.000001 BTC error is still less than a rounding error to the nearest $0.01. 

A bigger issue is that we are all in a global economy that now adds cryptocurrencies to the old fiat currencies.  In addition to converting USD, euros, pounds, and yen back and forth at our banks, and we are converting USD, BTC, ETH, and LTC back and forth on online exchanges. 

Last night I bought 182.00000000 LTC for 1.58522000 BTC on the GDAX exchange, and there was no way to enter that into Quicken without selling BTC and buying LTC on Quicken.  The problem is that there was no "right" answer.  I could have used any USD value as long as the same USD coming out of the BTC sale went back into the LTC purchase.

Hopefully the Quicken development team is aware of these issues.

Thanks. I agree. My problem in Quicken is determining the fair market value for each coin traded while daytrading directly from one coin to a different coin. Since the exchange does not report the US dollar value for either coin at the time of the trade, to trade BTC into LTC, I have to go through a painstaking process of trying to find the BTC price in USD at the time of the trade on my own to sell it before buying the LTC with the same total.

I am tempted to just use the last price available in the price history no matter how old that is rather than trying to update the price history to the current price to show the current FMV when selling it. Since the BTC is being removed/sold in lots, it is also painfully more correct to trade each BTC lot into a matching LTC lot, regardless whether the price of the BTC at the time of the trade is set to a researched current price, the most recent price, or the cost basis which may be different for each lot.

Unknown

Walter Kraslawsky said:

Six digits is not a big issue right now since a rounding error to the nearest 0.000001 BTC error is still less than a rounding error to the nearest $0.01. 

A bigger issue is that we are all in a global economy that now adds cryptocurrencies to the old fiat currencies.  In addition to converting USD, euros, pounds, and yen back and forth at our banks, and we are converting USD, BTC, ETH, and LTC back and forth on online exchanges. 

Last night I bought 182.00000000 LTC for 1.58522000 BTC on the GDAX exchange, and there was no way to enter that into Quicken without selling BTC and buying LTC on Quicken.  The problem is that there was no "right" answer.  I could have used any USD value as long as the same USD coming out of the BTC sale went back into the LTC purchase.

Hopefully the Quicken development team is aware of these issues.

Noting once again that I am not your tax advisor (or anyone else's); I don't think using a stale value would fly if examined closely.  My own choice is to note the current exchange quote for USD at or near enough the time of trade, and then record it as sell crypto for USD (even if multiple lots), then buy other-crypto for same USD.  I think that would hold water as a reasonable approach.

Unknown

On Quicken for Mac, the NYXBT ticker does not show up.  Any comment?

jcalveras

Add in the list as: INDEX:NYXBT

Unknown

in the security list, nyxbt does not exist!

Walter Kraslawsky

I don't have a MAC.  However if the initial setup for a symbol uses an incomplete internal database (where perhaps the Windows database might be more complete than the Mac version), you should be able to add it manually by creating a placeholder security with the name BTC and then editing the security details to insert the INDEX:NYXBT symbol as shown above. 

bkm

UKR said:

How does tracking Bitcoin work for you?

I thought I read somewhere that Bitcoin is tracked to 8 or more decimal places, e.g., 0.12345678
Quicken can, at most, handle 6 decimal places in "Number of Shares".

If the numbers were stored as text there would be no additional space required in theory. Only store the digits required up to a limit. And if course compress the data file to save space.

Beer bill

worked, to a point, but for some reason will not update the price per share.Any ideads>?