I’ve been riding a Bitcoin (and Ethereum) roller coaster for a year .. and its been a fun little diversion. However, its hard to see the journey .. it feels like I’ve come out ahead, but have I really?
I doodled various (complicated) ways to try to show stuff via a 3D graph .. but when I actually went to play, this 2D version works just as well:
- Vertical (down) drops == I transferred bitcoin (either to another account, or buying something with bitcoin).
- To the top-left = I bought bitcoin for USD
- To the bottom-right = I sold bitcoin for USD (for buying something usually)
- Note: A similar chart would exist for my Ethereum account. No, i did not buy a switch for $90, it was more than that.
- Steep curve vs Shallow curve gives a feeling for price. buy Steep, sell Shallow is the desire.
- I could beat myself up .. if only I hadn’t spent the bitcoin, I’d have so much more now…
- Currently, my experiment is net-positive. Even if bitcoin goes to $0 right now.
How I created this
- Download transaction report from Coinbase. This is a .CSV file, which I then open in excel.
- Their report has a “Amount” (Column C) which has + for bitcoin added, – for bitcoin removed.
- Their report has a “Transfer Total” (Column H) .. but it isn’t signed.
- Their report also has a Transfer Fee column .. I’m ignoring that for this graph. I did sum it up, I’ve paid $30 in fees this year.
- Add a new column, “Signed Transfer Total” formula is something like “=IF(H27<>0,H27*SIGN(-C27),0)” – to get a signed USD column. Note that I’m reversing the sign so that a plus in bitcoin is a minus in USD.
- Add a new column, “USD Balance”, which sums up all the Signed Transfer Total to date. Something like “=SUM(J$6:J27)”. For simplicity I added it right next to their bitcoin balance column
- Grab those two columns and chart it, scatterplot, lines
- Adjust the vertical size of the graph till you get something that works for you.
In summary
I do not regret this Bitcoin experiment.
I do hope to leave stuff in Bitcoin, i think it will continue to grow for a while.
