A sticky note on the monitor bezel says “2024-03-14 Buy Long, fee rate -0.35%,” but the writing is smeared and blurry.

I just exported last year’s trading history, and the exchange’s CSV is a complete mess—like a car crash scene. Contract, spot, and financial management returns are all piled into one column, and the date formats aren’t consistent. With this kind of market right now, the fee rate is so extreme that the group is arguing about whether it’s a reversal or a squeeze. Either way, I’m not dealing with it for now. I’ll first note the time stamp, the coin, and the counterparty for every trade—because when the tax bureau asks later, “I kind of remember” is the worst possible testimony.

My method: On the first day of each quarter, my alarm goes off. I spend 20 minutes checking the on-chain wallets and the exchange, take screenshots, and save them to cloud storage, with the file name including the date. It’s a hassle, but at the end of the year, I won’t have to go crazy staring down thousands of rows in spreadsheets.

For now, that’s all.