Difference between Profit/Loss, Total Account Value, Balance, Realized Gain and Unrealized Gain

Dario Kachel

Modified on: Wed, 24 Jul, 2024 at 4:52 PM

CoinTracking uses different calculations to evaluate your trades:

Total Account Value:

On some pages (for example, under 'Transactions'), you will find a 'Summary' box on the right hand side.These numbers reflect the current value of all your currencies and coins.It is the value you would get right now if you sold all your coins and currencies. (The 'Summary' box appears only if at least one commodity is listed.)

Sum Coins: The current value of all your coins like BTC, ETH, LTC...
Sum Commodities: The current value of all your commodities like Gold, Silver... (appears only if at least one commodity is listed)
Sum Currencies: The current value of all your currencies like USD, EUR, GBP... (at the beginning probably negative, since coins are usually bought with currencies)
Total Account Value (or sometimes called 'Profit/Loss'): The sum of all three values (Coins + Commodities + Currencies). It is the difference between income and expenditure.

Example:
When you bought 1 BTC for 500 USD and the current market price is 1000 USD

Your Coin value will be: 1000 USD
Your Currency value will be: -500 USD
Your Total Account value will be: +500 USD

Unrealized gain:

Unrealized gain is the profit/loss you would achieve if you sold all your coins right now. It is calculated from the average purchase price of a coin and the current market price.

Calculation:
(Current market price - average purchase price) x amount

Example:
If your average purchase price per BTC is 300 USD and the current BTC price is 1000 USD
Your unrealized gain will be: 700 USD

Realized gain:

Realized gain is the profit/loss you've already achieved with your sales. It is calculated using FIFO from your purchase price of a coin and your sales price.

Calculation:
(Sales price - Purchase price) x amount

Example:
When you buy 1 BTC for 100 USD and you sell it for 200 USD
Your realized gain will be: 100 USD

Example:
When you buy 1 BTC for 100 USD and you sell 0.5 BTC for 100 USD
Your realized gain will be: 50 USD

Balance:

Usually refers to the current value of a coin or currency.

Current Balance: The current value for all your currencies
Daily Balance: The value for all your currencies on a specific date in the past
Balance by Exchange: The current value for all your currencies grouped by exchange or trade-group
Balance by Currency: The current value for all your currencies grouped by currency and month or year

Difference between Dashboard and Realized/Unrealized Gains numbers/values:

The Fees and losses are included in gains, but the "Dashboard" and the "Realized/Unrealized Gains page" show different things:

1. On dashboard we just take the amount of the coin that we have times the current FIAT price and we get the total value

2. On the gains report we actually take cost basis into consideration because we calculate gain, not the value. Furthermore the actual gain (realized and unrealized) depends on the used method. So for example, with the LIFO method we can have an old purchase left done with very high price so the unrealized gain will be negative and the current value will be positive but very low. When we change the method to FIFO we can be left with more recent purchase that has much lower cost and therefore the unrealized gain could be even positive.

You can compare only the sum of the current value column on gains page with the dashboard but there is still a difference: dashboard calculates current value for assets with negative amount while gains always treat them as 0.

English

Total Account Value:

Unrealized gain:

Realized gain:

Balance:

Difference between Dashboard and Realized/Unrealized Gains numbers/values:

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