The situation
A small Web3 company receives BTC from customers and partners. Leadership has agreed to hold a certain amount of BTC as part of its treasury. Above that, the company needs dollars for salaries, rent, and vendors. Someone currently checks the balance every week, subtracts the reserve in their head, and sells the difference.
Miners often run the same logic: keep a long-term stack, convert the rest into operating cash.
The rule is simple to describe: keep X, convert the surplus. The challenge is applying it the same way every time.
The problem and the decisions
How big should the reserve be? That's a business decision, involving your treasury policy, your risk tolerance, your accountant, maybe your board. Coinomatic won't tell you, and neither will we. What we can help with is how to enforce whatever number you choose.
Other decisions:
- Where should the buffer sit: in BTC, in USD, or both?
- A BTC reserve means "never convert below this many BTC." A USD buffer means "after converting, leave some dollars on the exchange rather than withdrawing everything," for example for timing or fees.
- How often should the surplus be swept? Weekly is common. Monthly fits payroll (article 14).
- Should the whole surplus go, or part of it? 100% of what's above the reserve, or a smaller share.
Two minimums, easy to confuse
The wizard has two different "minimum" settings in two different steps:
- Setting: Minimum balance to keep; Step: Conversion (2 of 6); Unit: BTC; What it protects: BTC that should not be converted
- Setting: Withdraw everything above a minimum balance; Step: Withdrawal (4 of 6); Unit: USD; What it protects: Dollars left on the exchange after withdrawal
Mixing them up is the most likely mistake with this strategy. Write both numbers down before you start.
Illustrative example
Illustrative example – made-up company and numbers, BTC only, not a recommendation.
The company's policy: hold 1.00 BTC in reserve. On Monday morning the available balance is 1.18 BTC.
Rule: Scheduled, weekly Monday 9:00 a.m. ET → % of available balance 100% → Minimum balance to keep 1.00 BTC → withdraw immediately, everything above a minimum balance (a small USD buffer the finance lead picked) → no end.
Expected behavior: about 0.18 BTC is converted, and 1.00 BTC stays. The USD from the conversion is withdrawn except for the buffer.
The percentage is calculated from the amount above the reserve, so 100% converts everything above it.
If one week only 1.0002 BTC is available, the surplus is tiny. That run may be skipped for being below the exchange minimum (ORDER_SIZE_TOO_SMALL), which works much like a threshold: nothing happens until enough has built up.
How Coinomatic helps you set it up
- Conversion: asset BTC → % of available balance → optional Minimum balance to keep (BTC) and Maximum cap per execution (BTC).
- Withdrawal: when (immediately after each conversion / on a schedule) and how much (100% of available USD / fixed amount / everything above a minimum balance).
- Review: a plain-language summary of the rule plus two confirmations.
Your BTC reserve stays on your Kraken account. Coinomatic "never takes custody of your funds."
Time check
Model example, your numbers will differ.
Assumptions: manual sweep ≈22 min (17 for exchange work + 5 for approval/documentation in a business); automated check ≈2.5 min; monthly review ≈15 min; setup 20 min / 12 months.
- Weekly sweep (≈4.3 runs/month): 4.3 × (22 − 2.5) − 15 − 1.7 ≈ 67 minutes a month.
- Monthly sweep (1 run): 1 × 19.5 − 16.7 ≈ 3 minutes a month. Close to nothing.
For a monthly-only sweep, the case is consistency and enforcing policy, not time. The weekly version starts to pay back in minutes, and a business that also automates payroll and client payments sees more (≈315 min/month in our agency persona, article 9).
Limits and how to check the result
- We haven't executed this combination of settings in a live test. The fields are visible; the behavior described follows the app's own wording.
- At the time of our test, Review didn't show every detail (for example, the withdrawal destination or start date). Double-check the reserve number in the Conversion step before saving.
- A conversion isn't a bank deposit. A verified withdrawal method at Kraken is required.
- Plan limits apply if you run several automations. See the Pricing section.
- Check: after the first run, compare your Kraken BTC balance with the reserve, and the converted amount in Transactions with your expectation.
Next step
Agree on the reserve number internally first. Then follow the Knowledge Base guide Create an automation, and run a one-off test with a small amount before the weekly sweep.
Coinomatic is software that triggers actions on your connected exchange account (today: Kraken) based on rules you set. It is not a financial advisor, broker, or money transmitter, and it does not take custody of your funds. Nothing in this article is financial, tax, or legal advice.