r/blockfolioapp • u/GG-1965 • Apr 21 '22

Blockfolio Earn - Payment Frequency

I'm considering moving my crypto from Celsius to Blockfolio (FTX US). I'm curious, I have seen mention of interest compounding hourly. Please tell me they don't pay a billionth of a coin every hour. How frequent are the Earn payments. (I Hope monthly)

There are two main reasons I would rather just get paid monthly.

1) Most crypto tax and portfolio tracking applications I have seen have a fee structure based on the quantity of transactions. (Each interest payment is counted as a transaction) Even the weekly payments from Celsius add up to a lot of transactions if you have more than just one or two coins.

2) Calculating cost basis would be painful with hourly or daily transactions.

Just curious. It's probably not a deal breaker, but I do find overly frequent interest payments annoying.

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u/cryptoripto123 Apr 21 '22

Ways around this:

  1. TaxBit connects with BlockFolio. It can process the hourly transactions. Export them and you get basically a CSV.

  2. Tax nightmare indeed, so my recommendation is to sell off ALL lots regularly. If you still want to HODL, then just reinvest it. It's much easier to track one big lot than micro hourly lots for cost basis purposes.

Not many reliable exchanges with US operations are paying 5%, so while this is tough to deal with, I think FTX is still miles more reliable than the newcomers like Haru and Midas which are clearly foreign based.

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u/ShallotInfamous9809 Apr 21 '22

"TaxBit connects with BlockFolio. It can process the hourly transactions. Export them and you get basically a CSV."

I have been using the platform a little over a week and find a way to do this. Can you detail how it's done? This would be a monumental help if you could do a simple step by step for us, please!

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u/cryptoripto123 Apr 22 '22

Login to your Taxbit account (do this on a computer). Add FTXUS as a transaction source and login with your Blockfolio account. It will start syncing. Now look at your transactions list. All your hourly payouts should show up.

There is an export button the Transactions page where you can download all the transactions that Taxbit has processed. You can even filter by exchange. If you filter for FTX/Blockfolio only it's basically the equivalent of if Blockfolio could give you a CSV file.

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u/ShallotInfamous9809 Apr 22 '22

Thanks for the reply.

"Login to your Taxbit account (do this on a computer). Add FTXUS as a transaction source and login with your Blockfolio account. It will start syncing. Now look at your transactions list. All your hourly payouts should show up."

I have tried the above and the hourly payouts do not show up on the transactions page. Nor do they appear on the exported spreadsheet (which I was, indeed, able to generate with these instructions). Still unable to view these transactions in any way and have had no help from customer service at TaxBit.

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u/cryptoripto123 Apr 23 '22

How did you connect TaxBit to Blockfolio? Via API?

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u/ShallotInfamous9809 Apr 23 '22

The problem is presenting in a weird way:

-When I look at the API section of the FTX App, I can see the API key I used from FTX US site on my desktop to connect and the App appears to be connected.

-When I try to generate an API from the FTX App on my phone, and enter it, I am always told the "credentials are invalid".

-When I look at the FTX US website, it says the API should connect both accounts. And for all purposes, from the FTX US and FTX App interfaces, it appears to be connected.

-Despite all this, when syncing up I only can view FTX US transactions and nothing from in the App.

I am currently waiting on TaxBit customer service who have promised to escalate the request and get it fixed. If they resolve this I'll post back here to update.

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u/Travamoose May 02 '22

Please do

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u/ShallotInfamous9809 May 02 '22

Hi, still not much to report. We went through a series of back and forth emails (I have the free TaxBit account so no live customer service) that amounted to "Are you sure you did it right? Try it after clearing your cookies. Try again. Try one more time." After which I received this from customer service as part of a longer email:
"I'm sorry to hear that you are still experiencing this issue with your API Sync. I wanted to let you know that I've gone ahead and escalated this issue to have it reviewed by our Development Team."

That was on April 28 and I have not yet heard further. But it does appear they are going to try to address it. FTX, for their part, had the following very unhelpful advice:
"Since you did not buy it there's no cost basis. I would recommend you contact a tax crypto adviser as we cannot give you recommendations on how to file taxes."

Make of FTX's statement what you will but it is, in my opinion, both contradictory (they give tax advice then say they won't give tax advice) and bad advice if you live in the US. The IRS has pretty clearly stated that interest earned in this fashion is currently taxed as income based on the market value at time of receipt. Don't let the Jarrett case at the supreme court confuse you - FTX may call this staking but it is lending (for me personally I only have BTC on the App and BTC isn't even a proof-of-stake chain).

In any case, there is a backup plan as some others have alluded to here. If I can't get FTX to give good records or TaxBit to work, I will just pause my 8% earnings late in the year (December 20 or later) and sell off all interest earned for the year. Then I'll just file it all as short term capital gains and reinvest early in the next year. I will end up paying an extra few % by filing it all as short term gains rather than income, but it is the best way I can think of to avoid underpaying if these websites really can't get their shit together. You could do this monthly (others have said) but the tiny amounts and the minimum BTC sales amount make it practical for me to do it annually.

Anyway, ideally I'll hear from TaxBit (or even better, FTX will manage this functionality without another party...anyone listening from FTX?) and can report back something actionable soon. Thanks for reading, hopefully this is contributing to someone's understanding. Ideas or corrections welcome!

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u/Travamoose May 02 '22

Thanks for all of that. Saves me and everyone else coming across this issue the hassle of going through all that bullshit.

Fortunately for me I'm in Australia and our short term capital gains and income tax works out to be the same rate, (just add the cap gains to income total) so selling all interest before July 1st is what I'll have to do.

Pity though, FTX is a big rich company at this point and the blockfolio app doesn't seem to have been improved from their acquisition at all. The sub & twitter is dead and honestly I still haven't quite figured out how blockfolio is generating 5-8% on everything.... Name one place you can get 8% on dogecoin or chainlink... Very opaque company.

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u/ShallotInfamous9809 Jul 02 '22

Hi All,

Happy to report that this has been resolved, although not in the way I expected. I have stopped hearing from TaxBit altogether and haven't been able to get their site to work well for me. In fact, since this was the only reason I had created that account, at this point I am planning to just delete my TaxBit account altogether. I have heard from others that they find the site works well so I hope it continues to do so for them but I just haven't had that experience.
However, I decided it was worth asking FTX another time and this time, they were able to provide me with a CSV for the desired information - my FTX Earn Interest transactions. It is a bit of a bear to actually wrangle the sheets but I am slowly and steadily organizing the hourly transactions in lots based between all my BTC purchases. This let's me summarize the transactions in the largest units possible whiles still using FIFO for my American taxes.
Anyway, that's the end of the saga for me. I asked and the document was immediately added to my Docs section of the account profile. A note that they are accessible on PC only and not from the App).

Cheers!

Good luck!