I create and operate a lot of trading bots, mostly arbitrage and market making and such. I just wrote a long story about an arbitrage system I was operating during the big bull run, you can read the full article here: https://forum.gekko.wizb.it/thread-56746.html

In the beginning of 2014 I created a 3d web visualisation displaying all 0-conf transactions and new found blocks happening in the Bitcoin network in realtime:

Realtime Bitcoin Globe

The project now has a steady stream of monthly visitors due to the attention it got. Here some examples of media that mention it:

• Google Chrome Experiments
• Coindesk
• The Next Web
• Localized blogs:Chinese, Portugese, Polish

The project currently has at least 10k monthly visitors and I am thinking of monetizing it by putting a small text based ad on the bottom of the page (like so). This is the first time I am thinking about placing advertisements without using Google Adsense: I like to experiment with more quality advertisements.

I was thinking about setting up an admin page providing easy insights in visitor amounts for a party placing ads on the page. But I am open for other options as well.


If anyone is interested in placing ads on the Globe, send me a private message here or email me at wizbit [at] mvr [dot] me (PGP). If anyone has questions or ideas let me know in this thread!

[The platform:]

as per reddit suggestion, I am posting this here as well

As part of my thesis on visualizing the development of cryptocurrencies I need your feedback on the prototype of the webbased datavisualization platform I am building.

The platform:

http://beta.wizb.it/

The site has statistics and charts that show the landscape on a macro scale. It is intended as a starting point for understanding the size of the cryptocurrency landscape. Therefor I focussed on simple charts with understandable metrics.

It is focused on currencies and exchanges. Here are some examples:

- Currencies page (the 8 top currencies)
- Currency page (the 6 most important metrics for a single currency)
- Currency detail page (How a certain metric is developing over time)
- Exchange page (the 3 most important metrics for a single exchange)

I do things a little differently compared to existing charts. Take my pool distribution chart for example:


(note that all charts have dummy data)

Feedback

It would be mega awesome if you could fill this short survey or just comment any feedback you might have!

Thanks,

Mike

Hey guys,

I'll be visiting Berlin this weekend and I have some time available. Are there any meetups / hackathons / events or anything in the city this weekend?

Mike

[Realtime Bitcoin Globe]

The Realtime Bitcoin Globe shows (almost) all transactions happening in the bitcoin network in realtime. It also shows freshly minted blocks.

Realtime Bitcoin Globe

- This is meant as a fun datavisualization / experiment.
- The locations are the relay IPs as reported by blockhchain.info.
- Since the network has more and more transactions the globe might auto rotate extremely fast. You can disable auto rotation in the bottom right.

I am still smoothing it out some bugs on different platforms. If something is not working (on platforms where WebGL is) please let me know!

Feedback is highly appreciated!

---

This project is part of Wizbit, an upcoming service providing insights in financial data around crypto currencies.
--

This project in the press:

- Wizbit blog
- The Next Web
- Hackernews
- Adafruit
- bittercoin
- launch.co
- omicrono
- pejcz

Greetings,

I wasn't sure where to post this question, but I figured finding profitable trade strategies using backtesting would fall under speculating about what the price is going to do. I am working on a trading bot and I'm currently implementing backtesting functionality. My background is in IT and not in trading, so hence I got a couple of questions on how this is normally done.

My current backtesting feature is pretty simple: define a TA strategy with its parameters, define the dates from where to where you want to backtest it and my bot will run the simulations. Currently it works really simple by just receiving a new candle every tick and the strategy can decide to act based on this new candle and all previous ones, this loops until all candles in the timerange are dealt with. When it's done it will spit out the results like so:

Code:

2013-06-30 13:25:30 (INFO):	(PROFIT REPORT) start time:			 2013-04-24 07:00:00
2013-06-30 13:25:30 (INFO):	(PROFIT REPORT) end time:			 2013-05-23 16:00:00
2013-06-30 13:25:30 (INFO):	(PROFIT REPORT) timespan:			 29 days

2013-06-30 13:25:30 (INFO):	(PROFIT REPORT) start price:			 121.6
2013-06-30 13:25:30 (INFO):	(PROFIT REPORT) end price:			 125.44
2013-06-30 13:25:30 (INFO):	(PROFIT REPORT) Buy and Hold profit:		 3.158%

2013-06-30 13:25:30 (INFO):	(PROFIT REPORT) amount of trades:		 15
2013-06-30 13:25:30 (INFO):	(PROFIT REPORT) original simulated balance:	 245.404 USD
2013-06-30 13:25:30 (INFO):	(PROFIT REPORT) current simulated balance:	 281.819 USD
2013-06-30 13:25:30 (INFO):	(PROFIT REPORT) simulated profit:		 36.415 USD (14.839%)
2013-06-30 13:25:30 (INFO):	(PROFIT REPORT) simulated yearly profit:	 447.030 USD (182.161%)

So I got a couple of questions for those more familiar with trading

• Is this simple way of implementing backtest solid enough? I would say there is a big gap between fine tuning parameters until the profit % becomes the highest and finding a strategy that would work on the real market. I know backtesting doesn't tell you anything about the future philosophically, but statistically it can be pretty smart, right?
• Isn't it smarter run a bunch of simulations (with different parameters) on the first part of the timerange, and apply the most profitable ones on the second part to get a more accurate number towards the current time and thus current environment of the market
• How should I deal with previous price bubbles, I know another bubble can happen again but I doubt they will look the same every time. Therefor I do not think it is wise to tweak a strategy towards a bubble that happened in the past, right?
• Is the output data something you'd expect on backtesting functionality? Are there things missing that also need to be taken into account

Any feedback is appreciated!

[Downloadable candles]

I am working on backtesting for my trade bot Gekko and I created a simple script to calcuate candles on MtGox data. This script will output a csv file with all candles. Nitrous has created a great tool which can download all trade data and calculate candles based on this trade data. Check it out in the Mt. Gox data downloader thread.

Downloadable candles

I've ran the script myself for a couple of candle durations on a couple of markets, here are the download links:

Hourly

• Hourly BTC/USD candles from Jun 26 2011 19:00:00 to May 23 2013 16:00:00. The CSV file has 16699 candles (note that 27 candles/hours are missing, during these hours I could not find any trades).
  
• Hourly BTC/EUR candles from Aug 27 2011 10:00:00 to May 23 2013 16:00:00. The CSV file has 12613 candles (note that a lot of candles/hours are missing, during these hours I could not find any trades).
  
• Hourly BTC/GBP candles from Sep 06 2011 08:00:00 to May 23 2013 16:00:00. The CSV file has 11423 candles (note that 3586 of candles/hours are missing, during these hours I could not find any trades).
  
• Hourly BTC/AUD candles from Sep 02 2011 12:00:00 to May 23 2013 16:00:00. The CSV file has 5830 candles (note that 9271 of candles/hours are missing, during these hours I could not find any trades).
  
• Hourly BTC/JPY candles from Aug 30 2011 11:00:00 to May 23 2013 15:00:00. The CSV file has 3101 candles (note that 15173 of candles/hours are missing, during these hours I could not find any trades).
  

4 Hourly

• 4 Hourly BTC/USD candles from Jun 26 2011 17:00:00 to May 23 2013 16:00:00. The CSV file has 4182 candles (note that 1 candle/hour is missing, during these 4 hours I could not find any trades).
  
• 4 Hourly BTC/EUR candles from Aug 27 2011 09:00:00 to May 23 2013 13:00:00. The CSV file has 3683 candles  (note that 129 of candles/hours are missing, during these hours I could not find any trades).
  

Daily

• Daily BTC/USD candles from Jun 26 2011 to May 23 2013. The CSV file has 697 candles.
  
• Daily BTC/EUR candles from Aug 27 2011 to May 23 2013. The CSV file has 630 candles (note that 6 candles/days are missing).
  
• Daily BTC/GBP candles from Sep 06 2011 to May 23 2013. The CSV file has 622 candles (note that 2 candles/days are missing).
  

Other timeframes (provided by Nitrous)

• 900 min USD
• 1800 min USD

Calculate your own candles

EDIT2:

If you have a copy of Microsoft excel you can use the data from Bitcoincharts to create your own candles for a number of exchanges and makets. Read the whole method here. (big thanks to TradesLikeAPotato)

EDIT:

Nitrous has created a great tool which can download all trade data and calculate candles based on this trade data. Check it out in the Mt. Gox data downloader thread. If you want to use my older script here is the howto:

You can also use the script to calculate your own candles (for example: weekly, daily, 4hourly, 15min, 5 min, 1min, 514 seconds, etc. candles):

The simple script requires a local copy of a database with MtGox trades. To download this database you should use Nitrous' excellent trade data downloader.

Once you have this database:

• Install nodejs
• Install npm (you can skip this on Windows and OS X if you used the installers)
• Download the script and put it somewhere close to database dump (from the trade data downloader).
• Go to the directory in command line or terminal.
• Open candleCalculator.js in a texteditor and edit the candle vars to your needs (adjust the startTime, endTime and candleDuration)* also check to see if `mtgoxDump` points to the correct file (it is as long as it's called dump.sql and is in the same directory)
• type in: npm install moment underscore sqlite-wrapper
• type in: node candleCalculator.js
• watch it go! Once every 10 candles it will write them to the csv file (candles-[script start timestamp].csv).

Notes:

• It is advised to index the date column (Money_Trade__) of the database before you start calculating candles. This will extremely speed up the time it takes to calculate the candles: without it takes 40+ hours on my VPS (with SSD) and with it it takes less than 5 minutes to calculate all  hourly USD candles.
  
• As of now the script will report the following OHCL for a candle that did not have any trades: open: NaN, high: -Infinity, low: Infinity, close: NaN. If you don't want them strip them out after run or add a simple check at line 48.
  

*If you're not sure how to edit the dates and durations please see the docs of momentjs.

[Main features]

[EDIT 2017]

Gekko is still undergoing active development, but almost all information here is outdated. Please check the code on github and everything else on the brand new shiny website:

https://gekko.wizb.it/


Here is the first version of my (open source) trading bot for node called Gekko.

The most valuable commodity I know of is information.

-Gordon Gekko

You can find the whole project on Gekko's Github repo.

Gekko is a Bitcoin trading bot and backtesting platform that connects to popular Bitcoin exchanges. It is written in javascript and runs on nodejs.

This is the open source do-it-yourself version, we are planning on running hosted Gekkos in the cloud which does not require you to download and install anything, configure any textfiles or deal with the commandline. If you are looking for such a solution, sign up at Wizbit and we'll let you know once it's out.

Use Gekko at you own risk.

Main features

Trading platform:

• Paper trading
• Live trading (trade bot)

Market interface:

• Emit market events
• Basic IRC Bot, basic Campfire Bot

Supported exchanges

• Mt. Gox
• Bitstamp
• CEX.io
• Kraken
• BTC-e
• Cryptsy (alomst; in the pipeline)

Trading platform

Even though there are multiple EMA trading bots in javascript (as Chrome plugins) all of Gekko's code is written from scratch. The goal of the project is for me to learn more about such systems, therefor I'm trying to keep the code as readable as possible to also attract non programmers.

Gekko can watch the realtime markets. You can apply automated trading methods to realtime data coming in to do live or simulated trading (automated trading or paper trading). Gekko also stores the market data it sees so you can run the trading methods with simulate trades on a set of historical data to see whether they would have been profitable during that time (backtesting).

Gekko, as well as the current bitcoin exchanges, are not built for HFT or anything related to being the fastest. The trading methods Gekko can do are based on indicators used by human day traders. The result is that Gekko does not look at data below the one minute timescale and (depending on configuration) and will normally not trade more than a couple of times per week (also depending on configuration).

So Gekko is not

• A fully automated trading bot that you turn on and will generate profit withouth you having to do anything.
• A trading platform for human day traders with a GUI and charts.
• A High frequency trading bot designed to operate on < minute resolution.
• An exchange.

Market interface

Gekko also has a plugin system that can do certain things whenever something happens or let Gekko communicate through more platforms. Gekko currently knows these plugins:

• Campfire: Enables Gekko to talk on Campfire and report latest market data and advice.]
• IRC bot: Enables Gekko to talk on IRC and report latest market data and advice.
• Mailer: Automatically sends email when your trading method has new advice.
• Profit Simulator (paper trader): Hold a fake portfolio and simulate trades based on advice.
• Redis Beacon: Broadcast events propagating through Gekko on Redis pub/sub.

Installing Gekko

Windows user? Here is a step-by-step guide on how to get Gekko running!

Because Gekko runs on node you need node installed. You can find more detailed instructions on how to install Gekko in the install section of the README.

Configuring Gekko

Configuring Gekko consists of three parts:

• Watching a realtime market
• Automate trading advice
• Enabling plugins

Read the configuring Gekko documentation for a detailed explanation.

Running Gekko

To run the bot you just have to start Gekko:

Code:

node gekko

You can also run Gekko silently or use more complex features, for examples check out the advanced features.

How does Gekko work?



If you want to contribute or are interested in how Gekko works:

• Read about Gekko's overall architecture.
• Read on how to add a new exchange to Gekko.
• Read on how to create your own plugin.

Hi Newbies (and non-newbies),

I just wrote a blogpost about Bitcoin on my blog. It's more of an overall explanation of how Bitcoin works and I'll go through a lot of misconceptions I've seen on the internet (especially through the main stream internet) and why I think they are false.

Note that the post is somewhat lengthy and it doesn't cover anything like how to get your own wallet or how to setup your own miner.

Bitcoin and some of its misconceptions

It talks about Bitcoin, blocks (and the blockchain), mining, wallets and exchanges. And the following misconceptions:

• You can make free money with your computer.
• Bitcoin is not stable.
• Bitcoin crashed because it got DDoSed.
• Bitcoin is a ponzi scheme.
• Bitcoin is anonymous.
• We can't trust Bitcoin because we don't know who created it.
• Bitcoin is for buying drugs and other illegal stuff.
• Bitcoin is only for geeks because you need to understand a lot before you can mine your own bitcoins.

I'm not a Bitcoin veteran so please let me know if there are errors in the post. The same goes for typos, as I am not a native english speaker. And also let me know what you think!