Hi. I'm Donnie.

The Problem I Hit

I bought some Bitcoin and Ethereum about four years ago. I took "not your keys, not your coins" seriously, so I moved it into a self-custody wallet. I also knew I needed to diversify, so I spread my holdings across several wallets — if one was ever compromised, the rest stayed safe.

Then tax season arrived. I had no idea what I actually owned, what it cost me, or where it was. I had fragments across different places — a spreadsheet, an exchange CSV, some scribbled notes, and a lot of confusion. To reconstruct the history, I had to spend weeks digging through transaction hashes and receipt emails. I tried tax software, but it never saw the full picture, so I couldn't trust the numbers it gave me.

That's when I realized the bigger problem: there was no tool that let me see my full picture even if I connected my wallets. A wallet connection is just another attack surface, so I avoid them. And there was no way to verify that an address was safe before I sent money to it.

Why I Built Almstins This Way

No wallet connection, ever. The moment you hand your wallet to an app, you've created a new risk. Almstins reads your blockchain data the same way you can on Etherscan—publicly. Your keys stay safe because they never leave your wallet.

Bookkeeping as infrastructure. Accountability requires documentation. Almstins isn't a trading tool or a price tracker. It's a record. Every asset, every transaction, every cost basis. Because you can't manage what you can't measure, and you can't prove your position without a history.

Safety before the click. I built the wallet checker to answer one question: "Is this address safe before I send?" Scams, sanctions, honeypots, phishing—they all happen after the click. The checker lets you verify first.

Clear over clever. The docs are plain English. The error messages tell you what went wrong and what to do. The safety verdicts don't hide behind a risk score; they tell you what we actually know and don't know.

What I Believe

Crypto is infrastructure that lets individuals move, store, and manage their own money without asking permission. But infrastructure only works if people can trust it. Trust doesn't come from marketing; it comes from:

• Honest design decisions. Building constraints into the architecture (no wallet connection) instead of hiding behind promises.
• Transparency. Saying what we store, what we don't, what could go wrong, and how we protect it.
• Completeness. Solving the full problem—not just the exciting part, but the boring bookkeeping part that actually matters.
• Clarity. Writing for people, not algorithms. Explaining in English, not jargon.

Why This Matters Right Now

Crypto's moving from speculation into infrastructure. Stablecoins for remittances, Bitcoin as reserve assets, DeFi as the backbone of cross-border payments. The users arriving aren't degens— they're people who need the infrastructure to actually work.

They need tools that don't break, don't betray, and don't ask them to trust blindly. They need documentation so they can prove what they own. They need safety so they don't send funds to the wrong place.

That's what Almstins is. Not a bet on price, not a playground. Infrastructure.

What I'm Building Toward

Almstins today is a portfolio tracker + safety checker + bookkeeping tool. The roadmap is longer:

• A MetaMask Snap that checks addresses before you sign, so safety reaches into your wallet itself.
• Deeper integration with tax professionals and advisories so Almstins isn't just a tool you use— it's a layer your accountant and your advisor both understand.
• Ecosystem tooling that lets other builders plug safety and accountability into their products.

The north star: make it obvious that the best crypto product is the one that doesn't ask you to trust it blindly. Make documentation and verification as easy as the transaction itself.

A Note on Beta

Almstins is in beta. That's not an apology; it's a description. We're still learning what advisories need, what emerging-market users need, what the next layer of security looks like. We're building in public and iterating based on real feedback.

Being in beta doesn't mean the code is unstable or that your data is at risk. It means we're still deciding what comes next based on what you tell us actually matters.

How to Reach Me

If you have feedback, questions, or just want to talk about where this is heading, I read every message. Email me at hello@almstins.com or find me on LinkedIn.