People tend to run into a common problem after investing in cryptocurrencies: they realize that tracking various assets across different wallets, exchanges, and platforms can get pretty tedious. Because let’s face it — you’re not going to be able to resist the temptation of periodically checking in on how everything is performing. To get over this hurdle, you need to know how to build a crypto dashboard to stay on top of it all.
A crypto dashboard isn’t yet another app that claims to be the best place for you to store your crypto; rather, it’s a place that tracks your holdings and investments in all the other places you’re storing them. Let’s take a look at how crypto dashboards work, why they’re useful, and a few ways to create your own.
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How a crypto dashboard works
You’ve probably come across apps and platforms that connect your bank accounts from various institutions so you can budget, save, and track everything more efficiently. For example, Mint is an app that helps you manage your money by connecting your accounts, making it possible for you to monitor how well you stick to your budget.
Well, you can do the same thing for your cryptocurrency investment portfolio. A crypto dashboard connects to various locations where your cryptocurrencies might be held, mostly wallets and exchanges. They might also include ways to add crypto-adjacent assets, such as financial products that include crypto (like the new bitcoin ETF) and NFTs.
A crypto dashboard can take the form of an app (for desktop or mobile), a website service, or even an interactive widget you create yourself. We’ll go into how these options differ and how to go about building them yourself shortly.
Benefits of a crypto dashboard
If you’ve made it this far, you probably have an inkling of why creating a crypto dashboard can be a sensible move, but maybe you’re not sure if it’s worth the bother.
Aside from the fact crypto dashboards are too easy to set up to pass on, here are the top advantages to consider.
Greater convenience
We’ve already hinted at the main advantage of building a crypto dashboard — it saves you time and helps you preserve your sanity. Cryptocurrency platforms aren’t exactly known for being particularly user-friendly in the sense that you can log into them quickly and easily.
Because they value high security and decentralization, most crypto wallets require complex passwords (known as keys) and use sophisticated authentication methods to ensure you don’t get hacked. Great for helping you sleep at night; not so great for convenience.
This is manageable when you only have one wallet or so, but open a few wallets and it can soon get overwhelming. No matter how much you appreciate the security, you probably don’t want to spend half an hour having to work out how much all your crypto is worth.
The further you delve into the crypto world and the bigger the variety of cryptocurrency or products you hold, the more important (but difficult) it becomes to stay on top of everything. Most wallets only support a select few cryptocurrencies, and the more niche a token is, the lower the chances of a mainstream wallet being compatible with it.
Crypto dashboards eliminate this problem, but their advantages go beyond mere convenience.
Manage your portfolio more easily
When you have the historical performance of all your crypto listed in one place, you can see clearly who the under-achievers and the high-performers are — and make decisions about whether to buy, sell, or hold.
When you have everything compiled together, you can view your current allocation (the percentage of each different crypto asset in your portfolio) and how that’s changed over time. Many people originally decide how to allocate their money based on their risk tolerance and which assets they’re most willing to “bet on” performing well.
But over time, your ideas about which cryptos are “good bets” are likely to change — meanwhile, your allocation will naturally alter due to the disproportionate performance of different assets. For instance, you might start off with ten different cryptocurrencies each making up 10% of your portfolio, but one could end up becoming worth 60% just because it achieves runaway success.
Most people are uncomfortable with this and prefer to take a diversified approach to investing.
It can be complex and confusing to stay on top of all of this without something like a crypto dashboard to track everything and do the calculations for you.
Be able to act fast
Finally, being able to see the value of all your cryptocurrencies at once will allow you to make quick decisions about what to sell to take advantage of a new opportunity. Maybe you read a news story about an up-and-coming cryptocurrency with promising technology behind it, and you decide you’d like to invest.
If you hold most of your investment portfolio in crypto (or you’re unwilling to use the rest of your money on buying crypto), you might decide to sell some of your current holdings to make room for this new opportunity. But what should you sell?
Normally, you might have to resort to making an uninformed decision or missing out on the opportunity because you couldn’t decide what to sell, but a crypto dashboard will make the process easier. You can simply check your dashboard to see how the performance of different cryptos compare and therefore which ones you feel most comfortable with selling.
If you use crypto as a payment method, you’ll probably also want to check its current value before you spend it.
Further considerations
Usually, outlining the benefits of a certain service or feature comes along with a quick caveat about the potential disadvantages too. But when it comes to crypto dashboards, there’s not really anything bad that can come from having one per se — however, there are a few caveats you should be aware of when making your decision about which crypto dashboard to use.
Most importantly, security. To use a crypto dashboard, you’ll need to connect accounts holding your investment to a third-party service — so if that service isn’t implementing top-tier security protocols, giving it a miss is a no-brainer. Some features to look out for include:
- Two-factor authentication (2FA)
- How your information is stored (e.g., third-party provider, offline storage)
- Whether the service can access your data directly
- Level of encryption
How to build a crypto dashboard
Finally, we’re onto the juicy stuff: building your very own crypto dashboard. We’ll run through three options here:
- Building a DIY crypto dashboard
- Creating a dashboard using tracker apps
- Using the Money Minx portfolio tracker
Option 1: Build a DIY crypto dashboard
If you don’t like the idea of using an app to track your crypto for you, you could opt to build your own instead. There’s just one challenge: you’ll need to know how to code.
There are plenty of tutorials on the internet about creating a dashboard using programming languages like React, Python, or other options. This could take you a while to figure out depending on your existing experience, but it’s a rewarding project — and you’ll at least finish with the peace of mind that you’re in control of everything.
If you don’t care about everything syncing automatically, you could consider using a tool like Google Sheets or Excel to display data about your crypto accounts, and updating them periodically instead. This will help with tracking your allocations and performance over time, but it won’t save you the time and effort associated with logging into various platforms separately.
Option 2: Use portfolio tracker apps
Another option is to use one of the many dedicated crypto portfolio tracker apps available on the web. CoinMarketCap, CoinGecko, and CoinStats all offer services that allow you to add your crypto wallets to one place and analyze how they’re moving.
However, there’s still a glaring disadvantage here: you might be able to track what your cryptocurrency is doing, but you can’t compare it to the performance of the rest of your portfolio. If you only care about crypto, that’s fine, but many people would prefer to have everything in one place.
Option 3: Build a crypto dashboard on Money Minx
Would you prefer a more comprehensive dashboard? On Money Minx, we support more than 21,000 different institutions (including various cryptocurrency exchanges and wallets) — so when we say that you can track everything in one place, we really mean it.
As for security, rest assured that we have the highest standards — we use a trusted third partner Yodlee for an extra layer of safety, so all your information is stored with them. Even our employees won’t be able to see your credentials.
With that in mind, let’s take a look at how to create your crypto dashboard on our platform.
Adding your accounts
When you’ve created your account, you’ll first be taken to the “net worth” page — from here, you can add your accounts and start building your dashboard.
After you click “add account,” you’ll see the following two options:
Adding a connected account means you give Money Minx permission to access your account info, while adding a manual account means that you’ll enter in the details yourself instead.
You can connect these crypto wallets:
The manual option is useful if you happen to hold some crypto in a wallet we don’t support. We have dedicated categories for NFTs and cryptocurrencies, and you can simply fill in the following fields:
Using the features
After you’ve connected your wallets and other accounts (or added them manually), the net worth screen will spring to life. You’ll be able to see a graph that breaks down your investment assets, liabilities, and net worth:
This is a great way to visualize how your cryptocurrency portfolio is doing, how its performance compares to previous months, and which crypto assets are most responsible for those changes.
It’s also a useful tool for figuring out whether you want to rebalance your portfolio based on what you find.
Plus, the longer you keep your accounts connected and the more accounts you connect, the more useful this data becomes. You’ll even be able to access projections about your future performance and comparisons between you and similar Money Minx users.
The second tab of interest is allocation, which gives you a breakdown of how much of your portfolio is made up of different assets. You’ll see the percentage of your portfolio consisting of each asset. Some people might not take action on this, but others might prefer to keep things diversified and even to maintain a more constant value.
Start tracking your crypto today
The advantages of a crypto dashboard are clear for anyone who’d rather spend their time reading the latest crypto news than painfully logging into each of their crypto wallets one by one. Once you’ve created yours, you’ll wonder how you ever lived without it.
If you want a one-stop-shop for all your crypto and investing accounts, Money Minx is the place to go. A few clicks is all it takes to set everything up, and you’ll have a tool that becomes smarter over time as it learns about your portfolio and its performance. Why not create your free account today and start playing about with the features?
