No offense but it is that simple.  The link I provided explains it in depth but what I wrote is the gist of it.  And it's not 'one bot' (obviously).  There's shit tons of them.


Some coins won't be selected for bots because they are too stable.  Bot auto trading requires high volatility / high volume and a generally healthy curve (not recently pumped, not on a death spiral).


Sure it's desperate, I wouldn't argue that futzing around over 1 sat is laughable.  The real point of it is to make sure they're at the top of the list.  Not that they get 1 sat more.  And some coins do have a very high range during active trading.  I'm watching MCO go bezerk right now and it's not unusual for there to be a 15k spread between best bid and best offer.  That's 3% at the current rate.  A lot of traders are aiming for 5-10%, that's giving away an unacceptable portion of it.  Also putting your trades in ahead of time tells everyone your intentions, it lets other people put up walls in front of you that prevent your trade from going through.  Ex, you want to sell 10 coins at 6000 sat.  Someone else wants to make sure they sell their 5000 coins first at 5999.  It's entirely possible the market will run out of momentum before it cracks through those 5000 coins they're selling.  Sometimes I preset my sales, sometimes I don't, it depends on what's going on.

Lately I've been trading a lot and I've had a chance to watch how the bots work.  It's really annoying.  But aside from that, I'm starting to feel like they, long term, leech value out of the coins and essentially hand it to the exchanges and bot operators.

They all work with the same basic premise: Track the exponential moving average, the volume of trades, and when it goes beyond the middle range (right on the line), either buy or sell under certain conditions.

Which sounds reasonable enough so far, if it's just the same thing a person could do, why not let a bot do it, right?

Here's why I feel they're a toxic component to the trading process:

1) They don't care at all about what the coin is about, it's fundamentals, management, nothing other than it's EMA score.  They would literally trade dog turds around if the market was volatile enough.

2) They cut humans out of the process unless the humans don't mind getting the short end of the stick.  The only way to get your trades in on a bot-infested coin is to either take current market value or keep your offer so close to it that you might as well have.  If you try to buy too far below a coin value, they make an offer 1 sat higher than yours.  If you try to sell too far above coin value, they make an offer 1 sat lower than yours.  By the time you get your trade in, the price has already changed enough that it's probably not a good trade anymore.

3) They work against natural market dynamics.  In a botless world, the actions of a coin's team and the fundamental laws of supply and demand dictate a coins value.  But in the bot's world, the only thing that matters is 'is it high' or 'is it low' (and, a bit, what is the current volume).  So if a great coin gets good news (like GEO did recently), and as soon as the coin starts to climb a bunch of people start selling... that's why.  The price rose enough to make it profitable to sell, so they will.  Which then drives the value down until it's back in EMA range.  Bots are fundamentally incapable of HODLing.  That's not what they're there for.  And if this reaction drives value down enough to spook human investors into selling, eventually the value goes down below EMA and the bots will buy the coins right back to repeat the cycle again in a moment.

This cycle ultimately removes volatility from a coin, while constantly edging it downwards.  I think the steady downwards trend is because of trading fees, but maybe it's because humans eventually get fed up and leave.  I'm not sure.



So... that's my rant about why bot's are screwing up crypto exchanges.  Thoughts on this?  Possible solutions or strategies for mitigating these effects? 

I've been giving some thought to programming a "brainless" bot that just takes commands from me as to what trades I want to make, and then it does the 1 sat snipe BS the actual bots do, to make sure my trade has a better chance of happening.  But otherwise, it wouldn't make any decisions and it wouldn't have an autopilot.   Maybe that's what's needed?  It feels like a cheap trick that edges out other humans from the process so I'm reluctant to take those steps... but I want my trades to be successful so that has to take priority.

Here's an example of a trading bot ("gunbot") along with detailed descriptions of how it works:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1715214.0

Just gotta be patient and HODL!

Careful, the swings are propped up by someone dumping a truckload of money onto BCH, and eventually they'll get tired of doing so.  Don't get caught holding the bag.

That's an interesting chart but why would it just keep going up forever?  I'm not sure what that target is based on.

BTW I edited the post you replied to with another question about circulating supply and how that will change on 31st, I think.  Thoughts on that?

Do you think Monaco could double?

The supply you listed is the circulating supply, but apparently the total supply is about 3x that.  Is this the rest of the coins that Monaco gets to flood the market with when the app launches?  Or is the non-circulating supply what hasn't been mined yet?  Terms of the ICO indicate that they can not sell their coins until the 31st, so I think some of the pump we're seeing is from them jacking up the price so they can massively dump 2 minutes after launch.

Well sorta... LOL.  I bought at 320k or so a week ago... it dropped and dropped... Then it hit my target, I sold 2.5 of 3 coins, kept 0.5... so far so good

but then it went bezerk today, and I thought 'I'll buy some more, this things a rocket'.  And lol, not exactly a disaster but I really need to work on my patience.  I bought 7 more at 420k, said to myself, at 470k I'll sell most, keep 1, call it a day.

But then the market turned, I sold early, got my 0.5 free coin back plus some... should have called it a day right there.

Nope.

470k hits and I think 'ok screw it, this things gonna climb for the next two days.'  So I buy back in!   And it climbed a bit before the bears took over, slaughtered everyone and now it's at 457 so I'm barely up, lost half the gains I had previously made, but I'm gonna hodl for the next day or so and see what's up tomorrow.  I think it's going to go even more bezerk over the next 48 hours.

So ridiculous, I could have made so much more if I had simply never sold the first 3 I got.  !!! live and learn.

Is this going to keep up for the next two days?!? 

HOLY SHIT 

Devs say the new wallet is almost ready, that means the Ubiq migration is just about complete, a lot of the announced changes are about to go in effect.

Speedbump then.  Didn't take long to evaporate, that's for sure.

Hey any idea what the next peak on this might be?  I'm selling 95% of what I got at 3712 to leave me with 5% left free, sound good?  Or is this something with long term legs?

That's a bot, there's a few of them and they're all working their ass off to drive the price down.  When the news hit it won't make a lick of difference but they tend to act like gravity gradually driving price down in the absence of any other upward motion.

It can be really annoying to try to get a buy or a sell in with them sniping your offers by 1 sat... I wish Bittrex would ban them.  Try to avoid buying from a bot or selling to one if you can.

Wow, shooting up like a rocket.   Nice call!

There's about a 1.2 BTC wall sitting at 3500 on Bittrex, but after that it looks like growth should come a lot easier.  3600 has a bit of a block to chip down too but each represent about 0.5% of the daily volume, so it shouldn't take too long (0.5% of one day is 7.2 minutes).

(Edit:  ...and about 8 minutes after I posted this, it's gone.)

I'm in at 3471

Your picks are always solid.  Let's see how it goes.

No I think Bittrex is the main source for now.

GEO for sure.  Not sure when, but soon. 

No, sorry.  Devs say they're in the final stages of testing.  Insiders are stocking up for the big boom.  I think they want to keep the exact date under wraps to maximize bump profit.

Cheers!  Don't be too greedy