Bitcoin Forum

I've been watching the BTC price for what seems like forever.  Coinbase charges 1% in fees.  I figure if I can (for example) buy at $225 and sell at $228, then I've made over 1%.  It doesn't sound very hard.  I will have my coins instantly if I register my credit card on Coinbase, right?

EDIT: Plus then I get to spend more time reading the hilarity scrolling up the BTC-e trollbox.

Trading doesnt sound very hard.  just increase your balance 1% a day and you're rich!

The catch is that its very hard to win consistently.  The days where you lose will
make it like taking 1 step forward 1 step back...add in the 1% fees and you
start to see its not so easy.

I believe day trading is still profitable everywhere if done correctly.

Of course the big problem with this is that the markets are basically a fugazi and you never know which way its sliding.
I think overall I've likely made < .05 BTC daytrading (or attempting to) and the trick is to have large sums to buy and sell from what I have learned.

Go for it. If you think BTC is going to go up Buy a crapload. wait for it to raise and sell.. Wait for another dip... Rinse and repeat!

the markets are a zero-sum game /cliche

But the fees are like a house edge at the casino; making your EV negative. So you can expect to lose, unless you're really lucky or really skillful.

The best thing about Coinbase is that it makes it easy for everyday folks in the USA to buy/sell bitcoin. I remember when bitinstant was the only option but now CB makes life way easier to purchase bitcoin by hooking up one's checking account. I bet the lion's share of US interests of normal types are buying on CB.

As far as I know, the exchanges now are full of trading bots.
And that is not so good for trading in my opinion.
They tend to mess with the price, and that is why there hasn't been any price improvement for a while.

unclear what you're saying? bots lead to higher volatility? or lower?
I would say neither is really true.  Bots have little net effect on price action or long term rates.

Of course it is still profitable, though of course the opposite is true and you can end up losing alot if you're not careful but you can say the same with anything. You can make money buying stocks and trading them, but you can also lose. Start off small and give it a go and see if you can make money. If you're good at it you can invest more and see where you get to but it's never easy work and can be quite stressful so take that into consideration.

Neither.
Bots are set to buy low, sell high.
The only difference nowadays is that there are too many bots,
so the ones running them kind of ask for smaller profit in order to compete with the other bots and have any profit at all.
Which means that the price is not really going anywhere, at the moment.

that doesn't make sense...because if we price were to be 'going somewhere' without the bots, then for price to stay the same, the bots would all have to be buying or selling in such a way to nearly exactly offset the current trend, which is unlikely.

So you're buying at $225 selling at $228...you make a few trades maybe get back a few percent on your investment. Then the price drops to $190 and you think...oh shit, this is it, Bitcoins is done for...better sell! It goes to $180 and rebounds going up to $250..oh shit, can't miss out on it going to $1000 again better buy...price drops back down to $225. You now have half of what you started with and are wondering wtf just happened.

In poker if you sit down at the table you can usually tell who the fish is. The guy that everyone else is there to take money from.
If you sit down and don't see the fish. You're the fish.





Convert and spend.

Erm, actually what you just wrote doesn't make sense.

It's simple:
Once upon a time, one would add a command for the bot to buy let's say at $120 and sell it at $130+
Now they buy at $120 and sell at $123 - $125

In all do fairness I haven't traded in a while, so maybe most of the bots are dead now.
I kind of doubt it though.

I could set aside some money and buy at any particular point and wait for it to go up 5% and sell, then wait for it to go down 5% and buy, etc.  If the price goes way up and I don't get a chance to re-buy, it's OK because I still have my separate long-term holdings.  If the price goes down for a long time and I don't get a chance to sell soon, it's OK because that's basically what I've already been doing all this time anyway.  I could call that previous buy more long-term holdings and re-buy for more trading with fresh fiat.  So worst-case scenario I convert more fiat to BTC for long-term holding, and that's OK because I believe the price is going up long-term.

BTW, am I right about the credit card thing with Coinbase?  If I put my credit card on file there I get my BTC instantly?  Is there an "instant limit" that is lower than your daily limit?

@louise: yeah but there's other activity besides the bots.  so if price isn't moving it's just that the market is flat right now.

If the credit card thing works the way that it works for my bank account I buy bitcoins at a set price and it takes a few days for the money to transfer over. But the price is locked in when you buy.

Wait a sec.  Why would I use Coinbase for this?  I could just transfer BTC to any exchange that allows a USD balance and trade back and forth between BTC and USD with much lower fees.  Which exchange is best for that?  BTC-e?  Bitfinex?  I would think they all have fees lower than Coinbase's 1%.

Basically you're asking if it's possible to profit from a sideways market, and it is.

However, other than a few exceptions such as Bitfinex, most Bitcoin exchanges don't offer leverage or the ability to short. Bitcoin is also in a long term bear market, so it's quite possible that you could buy coins at $225 and not have the price increase above that for a long time. It's probably not a big deal if you're a hodler but for a day trader, that's obviously not ideal.


Bots do tend to increase volatility in some situations. For example, when there is a breakout in a long term sideways market, the cumulative effect of bots responding to the breakout can have a cascade effect which amplifies the price increase/decrease and pushes the price lower/higher than it would have been otherwise.

before april coinbase was a good choice for trading, look here http://www.coindesk.com/bucks-to-bitcoin-top-exchange-platform-fees-compared/

now it isn't the case anymore, bitfinex and btc-e are leading the podium

but kraken is even better if you trade with a volume above 250, and it ends as low as 0.1 with 1k or more

Exactly, running a exchange is a business just like a casino, based on the fat the casino always wins statistically.
The best is to hold long term, day trading is too hard to predict to perform well.
Benefit from shitcoin pumps sometimes if you are feeling lucky, thats that.

Nice article but they don't include Kraken.  It looks like you would need to trade $250K/month before your fee is .2% at Kraken:

https://www.kraken.com/help/fees

But it starts at .1-.2% at Bitfinex:

https://www.bitfinex.com/pages/fees

Where is Bitfinex located?  Are they trustworthy?

If you are an "average" trader, your EV would be a loss of whatever the exchange fees are. In this case, it would be 1%. Also, don't forget that fees are charges entering and exiting a position. If you're a frequent trader, those fees really add up. That's why its best yo choose an exchange with low fees.

bitfinex is usa based if i'm not mistaken, but i'm not sure they don't report it in their site and i can't find nothing on the web

on kraken you are right i missed some zero..., well then bitfinex seems one of the best

So if I open a long position in BTC and I don't close it, I'm left with some BTC.  If I open a short position in BTC and I don't close it, what am I left with?

Haha, a very nice plan. What happens when you buy at $225 and the price drops to $220?

Then I scored some more long-term BTC at the cheapest price I've had yet.

I'd say the last place I'd day trade BTC on is Coinbase.

I seem to remember an article saying that they were running an algorithmic trading system to set their pricing.  I could be wrong on that, but you never beat the box.

That is not to say you can't buy low and sell high, it just seems they are more likely to carve into your margins than elsewhere as they'll be out in front of you 99.9% of the time.

Wait, so u re not joking, u re serious about this plan?

Sure I'm serious.

this is what i was thinking before i started trading. i though it is easy an i simply buy low and sell higher (with considering fees) and i will profit. but in action it is much harder than that, specially in a long run.

anyway i figured out that bitcoin market is not meant for me so i went to altcoin market and it was good for me so far. but i still have much to learn.

I'm coming from the other direction.  I know the altcoin market well but lately I've been wondering if I'm neglecting BTC.

Were you trying to make multiple trades per day?  I'm thinking more like swing trading (although I said day trading before).

No, it's not profitable. Better invest your hard-earned money on something fun like hookers or cocaine. Same ROI.

You can only make money trading if a) you're gambling with other people's money or b) you have access to priviledged information (this is called inside trading and is highly illegal) and/or can exploit order flow (a practice called "front running", which, like insider trading, is also in violation of every securities law on the planet).

I guess there's also option c), which is the investment equivalent to Russian roulette. Imagine 10,000 monkeys throwing darts at a candlestick chart; with enough market participants, a random simian millionaire is bound to emerge from this twisted economic experiment.

If you have the fund to protect yourself against losses, yeah why not. It's a matter of how much you can make and whether you are willing to let the fund sitting idle in your account and wait until the price is right before selling. If you aim big margin trading is the way to go.

The fees are exactly that high for a reason. There goes the gains.

It could be different in my case because I wouldn't mind holding more BTC long-term.  Assuming the price of BTC is going up long-term (which is a belief of mine), how could I lose?

But that wouldn't be day trading anymore, now would it?

Not that there's anything wrong with the good old buy/hold strategy, it's actually a lot better than trying to time the market, which, at the end of the day, is all day trading is, really.

You just have to accept it's a gamble.

No and I pointed that out a few posts back:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1053907.msg11330647#msg11330647

If you're interested in an exchange you should consider one where a lot of trading volume is being done.  For margin trading okcoin.cn and bitfinex.com are good.  Okcoin.com is still developing.  What's good about these sites is that you can implement 3x leverage.  Leverage is a useful tool for augmenting your trading balance.

And then there are the okcoin.com futures that lets you use up to 20x leverage.  It's slightly different from margin trading so it takes a bit to learn but futures are also another good tool for trading.

Profitability is slightly dependant on skill.  Everyone might have a slight edge in different areas, or you can just suck at trading.  Trading takes experience and screen time.  Don't think of it as easy money.

One of the main goals of trading is to not lose your money.  If you don't lose all your money you'll be able to come back to trade another day.

Another key to trading is patience.  You need to wait for good trade setups.  If you overtrade then that can lead to disaster.  You do not always need to be in a position.  Wait for high probability trade setups.

I trade purely on okcoin.com but another site might be better in your situation.  Okcoin futures offer up to 20x leverage and offers 0.03% trading fees.

https://www.okcoin.com/?invid=2033157

Also note that you can both long and short which means you can profit off of any direction.  If you're new wait for good entry points for longer term trades.  Other people are better at scalping which is short term trades for smaller spreads.

And I think the other thing about the bots is a bit ridiculous.  Bots can help add liquidity to the market.  They also just implement strategies, and those strategies can be wrong. 

Day trading on Coinbase cant be easy in this low volatility.  I don't bother trading BTC/USD without leverage.

with this low volatility you need leverage more then ever, to raise you profit with lower risk, i would agree to no use it if the swings were higher

What are you left with if you open a short position and you never close it?

If the price goes too high you'll get margin called.

And with okcoin futures contracts expire.  You might have a weekly, biweekly  or quarterly contract.

When the contract expires it'll get settled against the index.

If the settlement price is lower than your entry price you make Bitcoins, if its higher then your entry price you lose Bitcoins.  If you get margin called you lose all your Bitcoins you used for the contract.

Spread on coinbase is too large to be a viable trading platform.

I use it all the time.

Sure, how profitable are you?

If you really want to get profit from trading you need to use leverage on a liquid exchange.  Smaller spreads and lower fees help.

So leverage basically makes your profit and loss increase faster than it would without leverage?

Yep.  Every nickel, every tick matters.

Fees add up fast, as does everything else.   When doing a cost analysis it is important to factor these things in. 

I've traded the commodities markets and lost money because the fees ate the profit on the position.  I'm sure others have as well.  Look at all the numbers involved before doing anything.

Learn how to trade, how to read charts, etc.  That's boring stuff but will save tons of money in the long haul.  If people do not, they are at a relative disadvantage and will eventually be eaten the vast majority of the time.

What's interesting is that futures with 0.03%, their fees can also add up.  Especially with the leverage you can use.  There's someone on tradingview who's quite an active scalper that was able to rack up 21 BTC in fees.

daytrade is batter to trading on other exchanges for more profits, here are more choose https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=695082.0

Yes, every day cant be lucky for you, I've experienced stuff like this, and though I made some money, I couldn't make it everyday.

exactly, its a good tool to use.

What leverage does is it amplifies risk and reward. You stand to gain much more with leverage but you also stand to lose much more as well. With 10x leverage and $1,000, your effective trading position would be $10,000. Because of this, a 10% drop would be enough to completely wipe your balance out (since 10% of $10,000 is $1,000) but on the other hand, a 10% rise would end up doubling your money (from $1,000 to $2,000).

but there is one thing to mention, the fact that with another leverage you can pay the previous one until you regain the lost money, but in this way you are building a continuos debits, thus raising the over all risk

still the best option for professional traders that are shorting all the time

Hello , Coinbase problem is the verification that take on funding option sometimes you will
need to send some money to your account via Bank , but they will take a lot of time to
confirm it , at that time you may loose if you buy or the market can made changes .

Bitcoin Boy .

I admit I've never used Coinbase before but with day trading, I would think that your balance (both fiat and USD) would already be stored in the exchange itself with buy and sell orders being placed seconds after submitting them. So after the verification process and initial deposit, you would rarely need to send fiat to the exchange from your bank account, no?

You may have right , but don't forget that the price may be go down in a day you don't have
fund , and you are needing to buy urgent cause you know that you will earn a lot, so that
the verification process will burn your profit if you send from bank again

But I can agree too with what you say .

Bitcoin Boy .

I see what you mean. The only exchange I've ever used was BTC-e and I remember they had a variety of options for transferring fiat and some were supposed to be faster than others so that might be something worth looking into. I think 3 days is usually the standard time it takes for funds to be transferred from a bank account to an exchange. In any case, it's probably a good idea to keep some USD on the exchange for situations like those.

I have spent a few days looking at different exchanges, and the prices seem to be different at coinbase.  Their spreads are larger too.  I get the feeling that they will take a bigger chunk regardless of how small their fees are.

I chose them to buy coins because they had a pretty easy and cheap way to transfer from bank.  However after looking at other options I wonder if paying a higher fee up front might have saved me money.  Sure the fee is "only" 1% to send money from the bank, but after I bought I noticed that the price of btc was about a buck lower at btc-e.  In any case I am only using them to buy the coins, any other trading type stuff will be done on a better exchange.

I have been doing this a short time only, but I have been trading in stocks for a long time.  Sometimes execution speed and smaller spreads are more important than trading fees.

If you have good strategy and knowledge then day trading is always profitable otherwise it will erode your account balance. Benefits of daytrading is no overnight tension.

Also one thing to learn is that you don't always need to be in a position.  Currently we're mostly going sideways with chop, we're not in a trending market.  As a trader you don't need to trade this.

Unless you have much experience I don't think it is.  Obviously there is a risk which is why I wouldn't advise most people to give it a go.

One great thing about Bitcoin is that you can start trading with a really small balance.  Great way to gain experience if you're interested.  But currently market is crappy.

That is true.  It is still a risk but not as much with small balances.  Unfortunately the returns are not good with small balances...  It isn't worth the time gaining a dollar or two a day.

i dont have a credit card till now but yes you will have profit if you correctly trade at coinbase just 1% fees is too much effecting the trades..but who knows about the future you can get a lot of coins if suddenly the market rises

you can do the same with altcoin too, especially at launch when their price is so tiny, and usually after that they get pumped or simply die, if they die you don't lose much, if there is a pump you can earn a ton

I wouldn't say it's always profitable. Even the most highly experienced traders can experience large losing streaks sometimes. The difference (or so I've been told) is that they don't let their emotions take control. They have a strategy in place and they follow it in order to cut their losses when enough is enough rather than letting them drag on and on.


But a sideways market can also be a good opportunity for a trader who knows his stuff.

What about Coinbase's separate exchange?

http://exchange.coinbase.com

Very low fees:

https://support.coinbase.com/customer/portal/articles/1826608-what-are-the-fees-for-using-coinbase-exchange-

But its also not just about fees.

When considering profitability you also need to consider spread which is like a fee.

Also if you want to be profitable you might need to utilize margin.  And Coinbase doesn't offer that.

Why pay 1% when .25% or other absurdly low fee is available via other exchanges?

Its not 1%, that is the price to transfer funds to the account.

I would suggest to not trade on the margin unless you really know what you are doing.  It is very dangerous.

it's 0.25% on coinbase too, there was some misleading about the fee, but it should depend on your volume, with higher ones you pay way less

Yes the fee is comparable.  0% is a bit better.

But another question is getting good liquidity and less slippage on your orders.  And even if you're trading with small amounts the spread is important.

Thanks for all the thoughts and replies to my thread guys.  :)  Very informative.

Why would you write that about someone else's thread?

daytrade on btc-e or lakebtc or kraken, you need give me a reason to believe it is avaliable

daytrade on coinbase, you need give me a lot of reasons to believe it is avaliable

Imo BTC is much to slow to daytrade. you wait like 10h for a tradable move, while on Forex you have entries like every hour

No, it's not profitable. Better invest your hard-earned money on something fun like hookers or cocaine. Same ROI. LOL

You can only make money trading altcoins, or btc leverage trading, plus future trading.

I guess there's also option c), betting on the sportsbooks, I have won decent money on French Open 2015, I deposited 1 btc to a sportsbook and currently my balance is 2.8+ btc, so it is very easy money to make profits from tennis, if you gamble on nadal, djokovic or roger federer.  ;D

I was lucky to only waste a couple weeks trying this strategy. I find that the profits are so small, it isnt worth the time. I have moved on to bigger and better investments, but if you are able to figure it out, more power to you.


Good luck

1% is a crazy fee.....only playable for mid to longterm

Agree with this. Swing trading maybe, definitely not day trading. Also, you don't want to have all those ACHs in and out of your account... some banks will close your account.

Well, bitcoin volatility has been decreasing.  Of course its hard to make money in this market.  That's why a lot of people have moved to forex so you have more than one thing to trade.  When bitcoin breaks out and we get more volatility there will be plenty of trade setups.

it's not 1%, this rumor is false, it's 0.25% for trading, like many others exchange, the 1% is for withdrawal only

if Bitcoin ever breaks out again

actualy, once you know how to play Forex you don't need Bitcoin breakouts anymore

Something to take into consideration are the tax implications. Now I don't know where you live, but in the United States, day trading results in a higher tax rate than those than hold an asset for longer than a year. Therefore, if you're day trading, you need to factor taxes into how much you'd have to make before you actually reached break even and then started to make a profit. Further, for tiny movements, you really need giant amounts of an asset to make any real money. That's why we see bots buying/selling thousands of bitcoin at a time. Only then does it become potentially lucrative.

that's true for day trading bitcoin too. 

I'm not sure about that.  You would be taxed on each gain but you can write off each loss so I think the break-even point would be about the same.  Do I have that right?

yea...the quote makes no sense