Financial Idiot 012 - App Insights
This Blog Post was originally distributed by the Newsletter "Financial Idiot". You can find and subscribe to it here.
DISCLAIMER: I'm an idiot and this isn't financial advice! You can lose money when investing, and you should never invest money you don't own or you can't afford to lose. I'm not responsible for your decisions!
I'm back from vacation, and I hope you enjoyed the last newsletter. Today I want to talk about the apps I'm using for investing. For total transparency, I always include an affiliate link and a non-affiliate link (and will make those accordingly). If you want to support me, I look forward to getting a notification that somebody signed up with a link of mine. :)
As an added disclaimer, I'm not sponsored by any of the following Websites / Apps!
Since we talked about crypto in the last issue, I thought we would continue with that before we switch to Fiat and then finish with something I found pretty interesting that got recommended to me.
I should start with the App I use most of the time for everything crypto. As you might have already guessed, it is crypto.com (affiliate link, non-affiliate link). As we talked about recently, I've got good exposure on CRO coins and two active savings plans (Polkadot and NEAR). The fees aren't exactly low, but I like the simplicity of the buying flow (for example, the saving plans cost me 0,40€ per transaction in fees since I'm buying with my "regular" Visa card). As I've said, besides buying crypto, I'm using the benefits of the card (free Netflix, Spotify and Prime with 35k€ Lock) and get some Coins in the Earn program, although I'm trying to offload them to their native chain to reduce the risk of crypto.com going bankrupt.
The second thing I will talk about is Kraken (non-affiliate). If I remember correctly, it was the first exchange I used to buy cryptocurrencies in 2014 or 2015. It is one of the "Urgesteine" (Primeval rocks) of the centralised exchange base (founded in 2011). It was also one of the first where you could wire transfer Euro into and buy crypto with it. I'm using it now to let my arbitrage bot run on it. Although it is currently not active, I might write about that bot in the future.
Let's continue with Bitpanda (affiliate, non-affiliate). Bitpanda has been around for a few years (founded in 2014), and my account dates back to 2016. I've been using them to enter and exit the crypto market quickly and easily. Since they are Austrian, you can quickly transfer money to and from them. In contrast to Kraken, they've got a pretty wide "spread" (difference between buy- and sell-price), although that got slightly better over time. If you're solely buying and selling on their platform, the spread isn't a problem, but you can get a vast "fee" if you buy at Bitpanda and sell at Kraken, for example.
If I remember correctly, I bought into the Pantos (PAN) ICO they got back then and made a good profit. Nowadays, I'm using it to have two saving plans running. One for the BCI25 Index (an Index containing the top 25 cryptocurrencies) every month and one for 25€ of ETH every other week (which is then transferred to Lido ETH2.0 and Rocketpool ETH2.0 Staking).
Although the European Union said they want to make crypto exchanges tax easy, taxes on cryptocurrencies (well, on gains) have already been paid to the tax office in Austria. Since I'm going to work for the next App I will mention in September, take it with a grain of salt. Some of you might already know that I'm talking about Blockpit (non-affiliate).
As mentioned, I'm using blockpit to consolidate all my transactions on all the apps/exchanges mentioned above. I'm importing (via a self-written program) my transactions from crypto.com, and I auto import everything from Bitpanda and Kraken. The service isn't exactly cheap, and there are competitors on the market, but I like that I can ask a coworker if something breaks in my stuff. :)
Now we are reaching almost the end and continue with Fiat. The only platform I'm using to trade ETFs, shares and everything other than the "conventional" stock market has to offer is Flatex (there aren't affiliate links, you can send me an email, and I will invite you then). They are tax easy in Austria, so I don't have to think about them. The KESt (Kapitalertragssteuer) is automatically transferred to the tax office, so I don't need to take action at the end of the year.
As for the closing App, I'm going to introduce an exciting and different approach to buying into things. The App is called SplintInvest (affiliate, non-affiliate). It got recommended to me by a friend. With it, you can buy into Whisky Barrels, high price watches, expensive wine and a few other luxury goods. It is a Switzerland-based App that purchases the goods, insuring and storing them for the investors. What I enjoy about it is that you don't have to buy a whole Whisky barrel (worth 20k€ or more) but can buy a small portion of it called a "Splint" (worth 50€). You can purchase multiple Splints of one thing or one Splint per thing. For example, I've got one Splint of "Scotch Whisky - New Make Barrels 2021" and one of "Le Pin 2016 Pomerol Magnum".
I have to admit I'm not sure yet how that Splints are going to be taxed, but with only 100€ exposure, I don't think I risk a hefty fine if I'm doing something wrong. :)
Also, it is a relatively new Platform, and I don't fully trust it yet. But I find it quite interesting to easily invest in some expensive Whisky for only a tiny portion at a time.
As with everything, I'm an Idiot, and the Apps mentioned above could be gone tomorrow. Always inform yourself before investing in something (and don't trust me on my opinions)!