Handling cryptocurrency transaction costs

[Andrea Shepard]

When I post expenses for transaction costs, I don't want their value to ever get recalculated.  Usually, I can do this with a fixated cost like this:

2019-07-20 Transfer some Zcash
        Assets:Cash:Exchange Balances:ZEC                                10.00000000 ZEC
        Expenses:Banking and Transaction Costs                           0.0001 ZEC {=77.41 USD}
        Assets:Cash:Cryptocurrency;ZEC Wallet                            -10.00010000 ZEC

A related problem arises when accounting for transaction costs associated with cryptocurrency-vs-cryptocurrency trades:

2019-07-29 Trade ZEC for BTC
        Assets:Cash:Exchange Balances:BTC                                0.07281083 BTC @ 136.98629723 ZEC
        Expenses:Banking and Transaction Costs                           0.02591400 ZEC {=77.62 USD}
        Assets:Cash:Exchange Balances:ZEC                                -10.00000000 ZEC

Here, I want to fix the lot price of the posting to the expense account in a third currency.  Doing this causes the transaction to not balance:

Unbalanced remainder is:
     -0.02591400 ZEC
0.02591400 ZEC {=USD77.62}
Amount to balance against:
9.9740859999430009 ZEC
0.02591400 ZEC {=USD77.62}
Error: Transaction does not balance

It seems to be treating the unspecified ZEC as a different commodity from the cost-fixated ZEC?

[John Wiegley]

>>>>> "AS" == Andrea Shepard <and...@persephoneslair.org> writes:

AS> It seems to be treating the unspecified ZEC as a different commodity from
AS> the cost-fixated ZEC?

Yes, it is in fact a different commodity from Ledger's point of view. You'll
have to repeat the fixated cost on all ZEC within the transaction. Anything
else will have a "floating value" that moves with market.

John