Topic: Can I sell individual blocks? (Read 175 times)

I think the OP is asking about selling specific tax lots of coin that he has purchased over time.

This is really more of a legal question than a technical one. I don't think the specific inputs used in a transaction should make a difference for tax lot purposes. The OP should contact a tax professional that is familiar with his specific situation in order for him to get advice on how to optimize his specific tax situation.

You are not the miner and you did not mine a single block by yourself (your rigs) then did not take a whole reward for that block. Your title is not correct. Even you mined one block, took whole block reward, what you will sell is awarded bitcoin for that block. You can not sell any bitcoin block.

Ok, now move on your plan to sell your bitcoin. If you have 10 bitcoin in your wallet that was bought 2 times: first time you bought 2 btc (at lower price), second time you bought 8 bitcoin (at higher price) but you have all 10 btc stored in a single address. Now, you want to sell 2 btc.

It's simply to do it: send out the amount of 2 BTC from your wallet, the leftover amount will be 8 btc that is still stored in your wallet. But you can decide to store the 8 btc at the same address or move it to a change address. You should choose a change address to increase privacy for your transactions.

You have your bitcoin on exchange, that I think after all you should move it to a non-custodial wallet.

Electrum is a light wallet (SPV) and you can use it very easily, don't need much space in disks, fastly synchronization, and gives you Coin control feature.
https://electrum.org/#download
Verify that wallet: [Guide] How to Safely Download and Verify Electrum
What you spend from your wallet is UTXOs, this guide is written about spend out with UTXOs and coin control feature in Electrum: How to spend specific UTXOs in Electrum

I'm sorry to say this but what you ask denotes that you fail to understand the basic principle of the value of BTC (or let's say any asset that may increase it's value over time).

The overall sum of BTC that you may have holds a particular value as of today than it did a few years ago when I suppose you bought it. There's no way that you can "get rid" of the particular amount of BTC that you sold at a high price because it never went to any particular "bag", it went to your overall balance of BTC that you may hold.

Now, if you asked this question : How can I regain the money that I overspent in buying BTC at a later date? Say that you bought 1 BTC at around 400 USD (around 2016) and then 1 more BTC when it was at 19.000 USD around 2017. In total you've spent 19.400 USD.

If you want to regain the amount of price that you've paid for 1 BTC during the end of 2017 you just have to sell around 0.5 BTC(ish) now to regain that initial investment that you've made. All the remaining sum would simply be profits up until today.

Notice that I haven't touched in any way in the value of BTC, only on the values that you've invested and that you may get back if you want.

Let me know if my explanation, albeit very rudimentary, helped you in any way.

Hopefully I'm tracking the question but the market price for bitcoin is always set to the present. If you bought bitcoin at different points in time, it will always trade at the current market price regardless what you may have paid for them at a certain point in time.

Also there are no blocks that you acquire when you buy bitcoin. Bitcoin is just a giant ledger that keeps track of how many transactions different addresses possess. Your balance is the total sum of all the transactions you've received. The 'blocks' are part of the actual bitcoin blockchain that verifies the latest transaction activity on the ledger.

As has been explained already, the problem isn't really from the exchange in this situation, although it is pertinent to use a non custodial wallet to store your holdings, but that wouldn't help this situation. What amount you bought the Bitcoins for in separate transactions doesn't matter when you want to sell.

Let's say you own 1BTC which you bought in separate 0.5BTC transactions, the first for $500 and the second for $1,500. If you wish to sell $200 worth of bitcoins now (approximately 0.005BTC), you simply enter that amount and send. There's no benefit from separating the particular UTXO you purchased higher, as you'll still be spending the exact same amount of Bitcoin for that value.

You can also think of it like cash in your wallet, if you have two jobs and one pays you better for less work, maybe $5 and $20 respectively. You own $25 in your wallet at the end of the day. Would you consider which notes you got cheaper when you want to spend them on groceries? Probably not, as it would not change the amount you're spending out of your wallet.

When you buy or sell on centralized exchanges you don't create real on-chain transactions, they simply update your balance on their databases accordingly. Therefore, all that matters is how much you want to sell.
However, if you plan to keep some coins and hold them for long term then I advice you to withdraw them to your non-custodial wallet. You can use Electrum or buy a hardware wallet.

Exodus is a wallet and only provides crypto-to-crypto exchange. It doesn't support buying bitcoin with fiat money. Using Exodus or any other non-custodial wallet will not serve your purpose too as long as you are using centralized exchange like Coinbase to purchase the btc first.

If your only concern is to mark the direct relation between buy and sell transaction based on the quantity purchased/sold then there is nothing wrong with Coinbase. Like I said in previous post, just sell the amount equivalent to the amount you bought at higher price and it will show in your 'trading report' exactly like you want.

Otherwise, if you want to mark the direct relation between the incoming and outgoing bitcoin transaction of same amount then use peer-to-peer trading. Some P2P Exchanges also let you receive bitcoins directly on your personal bitcoin address. Send fiat money to seller's bank account and get bitcoins on your address X. Later, send bitcoins from your address X to buyer's address and receive money in your bank.

Exodus is non-custodial wallet which will held you with private keys or recovery seed and makes you fully control of your bitcoin/crypto. It also means that you're the one responsible of making your funds safe from malware, or any bad actors. And its completely different from coinbase.
I say much better from coinbase in comparison of controlling of your funds. Though while you can use coinbase anywhere since its a web based, exodus in the other hand can only be used in your computer.

Crap, that’s what I was afraid of. What about a wallet like Exodus? Do those work differently?

Since you’ve got them at an exchange, you really haven’t got any control over the bitcoins related to any particular purchase. By that I mean that what you’ve got on the exchange is a balance on the exchange’s software, but there is no one-to-one mapping between your purchases and the subjacent bitcoins held at the exchange, whatever combination of storage they use. The movements there are off-chain, and are simply movements on the exchange’s internal ledger (not a hardware wallet) used for book keeping. There's no possible approximation that can be perform with bitcoins you do not control.

Bitcoin is fungible in nature. It doesn't matter which bitcoin you bought for $100 and which for $10K, both value same now.

Moreover, since you are using Coinbase, you in reality own no bitcoin. Your bitcoins are in custody of Coinbase. So, if you want to sell lower than your total balance, just place sell order for lower amount.

For example, if you bought 2 BTC at lower price and 1 BTC at higher price then your wallet would be showing the balance of 3 BTC. Just place the sell order for 1 BTC.

I use Coinbase and am new to this world, so I don’t understand what you're meaning. 🤦🏼‍♀️🤷🏼‍♀️

What software are you using for your wallet?

Depending on the software, you might be able to freeze inputs or addresses you don't want to spend. Alternatively you could create a raw transaction out of whatever you want to spend (if it's not too many inputs).

I have some Bitcoin I bought low that I want to keep...and some I bought higher I want to get rid of. Is there a way to just sell what I bought at the higher amount and leave the other?