Tracking what your crypto is worth sounds simple. It's not. Prices move fast, you hold things across multiple coins, and calculating P&L requires knowing both the current price and what you paid.
Most trackers solve this by asking you to connect your exchange account or wallet. This guide is about doing it without that — manual entry, real-time prices, no credentials shared with anyone.
Why avoid wallet connection?
Connecting a wallet to a third-party app requires signing a message that grants read access to your on-chain data. Reputable apps like Zerion and Zapper use this responsibly — they're read-only and well-audited.
But the attack surface is real. Phishing sites mimicking legitimate portfolio trackers have drained wallets. If you're tracking a simple spot portfolio with no DeFi positions, there's no reason to take that risk.
Manual entry sidesteps the problem entirely.
The manual tracking setup
The approach is simple: you tell the tracker what you hold, and it calculates value and P&L from live price data.
You need: 1. A list of your holdings (coin + quantity) 2. A dashboard that pulls live prices and does the maths 3. A way to know your cost basis (what you paid — this you track separately)
For holdings and live value, a dashboard like Arclight does this automatically. Add your coins and quantities, and it shows current value and 24h P&L updated every 30 seconds from CoinGecko prices. Nothing leaves your browser.
For cost basis, a spreadsheet is still the most reliable option. Exchanges provide export CSV files for tax purposes — pull those into a Google Sheet and you have your full picture.
What 24h P&L actually means
The 24h P&L figure most dashboards show is not your overall profit — it's how much your portfolio value changed in the last 24 hours based on price movement.
The calculation: current value − value 24 hours ago.
In Arclight's portfolio tracker, this is calculated as: - Get current price for each holding - Get the 24h price change percentage from CoinGecko - Work backwards to find yesterday's price - Calculate what your holdings were worth then vs now - Sum across all positions
This tells you whether today was a good day, not whether you're up overall on your investments. For that, you need cost basis — which is why the spreadsheet is still part of the workflow.
Setting up the tracker
In Arclight, the Portfolio Tracker widget is in the default layout. To add a holding:
1. Click "Add Coin" at the bottom of the widget 2. Select your coin from the dropdown (Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, ADA, DOGE, AVAX, LINK, DOT, UNI, LTC) 3. Enter your quantity 4. Click Add
Your portfolio now shows live value and 24h P&L. Holdings are saved to your account so they persist across sessions.
If you hold a coin not in the default list, the whale alert and price alerts features let you track any CoinGecko-listed coin — the Pro tier expands beyond the preset list.
Setting price alerts
The most useful feature for active traders is price alerts. Instead of watching the screen, you set a target price and get a browser notification when the coin crosses it.
In Arclight (Pro), the Price Alerts widget lets you: - Pick a coin - Set a target price - Choose above or below - Leave the tab open (or minimised) — the alert fires regardless
The notification comes through your browser's native notification system — no app install, no phone number. The alert triggers once and resets, so you won't get spammed if the price oscillates around your level.
This replaces the habit of checking prices every 15 minutes. Set your levels and work on something else.
The limits of this approach
Manual tracking has one real weakness: it doesn't automatically know when you buy or sell. You have to update your quantities.
If you're an active trader making multiple moves a day, this friction adds up. DeFi positions (LP tokens, yield farming, staking rewards) are also invisible without wallet connection.
For a simple spot portfolio — Bitcoin, a few alts, held across one or two exchanges — manual tracking is faster to set up, more private, and just as accurate.
The goal is a setup you'll actually maintain. A simple, accurate tracker you update once a week beats a connected one you stopped trusting.