When you’re trying to explain your crypto holdings to the uninitiated, it can be hard to quantify. You’ve not even got one Bitcoin? How many Ethereum? What even is a satoshi? Portfolio apps are all very well, but with their figures and charts, they’re not very tangible.
Fortunately, there’s now a more tactile way to show off your crypto assets in the form of PixelPortfolio. The newly-launched Android app presents your holdings of cryptocurrencies—including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Monero, Chainlink and Nano—in the form of cute retro pixel art. Enter your holdings and blocky pixel art coins and ingots fill up your coin case; “sell” some and the ingots burst apart into piles of coins, which can be picked up and dropped with a satisfying “clink.”
User-friendly finance
“I wanted to make something for the non-trader crypto enthusiast, something that didn’t feel like a financial application,” developer “Bighands” told Decrypt. “The most important aspect of the application is to make something digital feel real—which is also why I added a feature to let users pick up the coins in the app. Pixel art worked really well for giving the app that retro and special feeling.”
The app leapt to the front page of Reddit’s r/cryptocurrency subreddit this week, and since then feature requests have been flooding in. Bighands told Decrypt that as well as adding more coins and fiat pairs (“I would love to have every coin in the top 100 and beyond, but I need to create them one at a time,” he said), users have asked for features like sound controls and the ability to shake the device so that your coins jingle satisfyingly in their case. Support for Elon Musk’s favorite crypto, Dogecoin, also figured highly on the request list. Wow, such inevitability.
“Users don’t need a subscription and they don’t need to pay for hidden features,” said Bighands. Instead, in-app purchases are limited to cosmetic themes. “I’m also considering a PRO option which would let users record purchase and sale price,” he added.
The app currently supports Android 7; backwards compatibility with older Android devices, as well as an iOS version, are on the way. It’s time Bitcoin goes retro.