Hi everyone,
I'm offering a bot to earn some BTC through arbitrage trading between Poloniex and Cryptsy. I've been developing and using this bot since May and I got some decent profits from it.
The bot checks for altcoins, which are traded on both exchanges and compares their prices. If the difference is big enough to earn at least some satoshis (after deducting transfer fees), it enters the trade.
Wow. I could code this within two hours by myself...Yeah, right. No big deal until here. The difference of this bot compared to a selfmade 2-hour bot is its ability to manage the wallets. This bot is designed to minimize the manual effort you have to invest.
The bot records its activities and exchange rates in a database and uses this information to reinvest a portion of its profits into the most profitable (in terms of arbitragable) altcoin. Additionally, the amount of held altcoins is calculated based on their exchange rate. This allows the bot to profit from hyped (PnD) coins. Managing the flow of BTC and altcoins between the two exchanges (And the profits to a configurable wallet) is an additional feature.
Can I see it in action?I moved the bot to a Amazon EC2 micro-instance and started it with a fresh account and a fresh balance. You can see its trading activity here:
http://54.75.161.34/IMPORTANT: Please don't keep the page open for too long. As it is an EC2 micro-instance the database fails when more than 10 people are watching. Thanks.
Please note: I started with a fresh database and fresh accounts. I seeded the wallets with 0.1 BTC each (which should arrive within the next hour). The bot needs to learn which altcoins are profitable before it starts to invest in them. It should take around 48h before first profits can be seen.
(All BTC above 0.5 BTC are sent to the "profit wallet" every 6 hours. So don't be confused that the balance doesn't raise above this bar.)
So why are you selling this bot, instead of getting rich from it?The main reason is the rate-limit for the requests to the exchanges. Due to the amount of traded altcoins and the required pause between requests (to prevent getting blacklisted) it takes several minutes to check every pair. This causes missed opportunities, as these usually only exist for a few seconds. To fix that I would need more instances of the bot on different machines with different IPs, different accounts and API keys. I tried that with three accounts, but it took a reasonable amount of time to manage everything. The earnings were higher but I decided it wasn't worth the time and I began to get confused with the different accounts, 2FA and coin-addresses. Additionally, I didn't want to get banned from the exchanges by using multiple accounts.
Instead I started to change the code in a way that other people could use it (By adding configuration files and stuff).
So it makes more work than it earns?If you pay someone to manage and maintain the bot - yeah. If you manage it yourself in your free time - no. Typically involved work is to regulary check if there are disappeared altcoin-balances or stuck deposits/withdrawals (Unfortunately I had this happen on both exchanges more than once and a support ticket had to be opened to fix it). You need to enter transfer fees for new traded altcoins into the config file. Cryptsy requires you to approve new withdrawal-addresses with your 2FA. And some more administrative stuff (database backup, etc.).
What is required to operate the bot?You need a computer that is able to execute PHP-scripts and to host a MySQL database. This could be your home computer, a Raspberry Pi or a VPS. I use a Amazon EC2 micro-instance. For the Web UI you need a webserver (Apache, nginx, ...). I will provide setup instructions and all required configuration files. I will also provide basic support if something doesn't work.
So when 20 people operate this bot the opportunities to do an arbitrage trade are nearly nonexistent?Correct. However, I will only sell up to 8 licenses for this bot. As I want to continue operating this bot for myself (to generate a steady income stream), I have no interest to destroy the arbitrage opportunities for myself.
How can I am sure that this bot doesn't steal my coins?It's PHP. You can check for yourself if the code does crazy stuff. Additionally, to prevent interfering with you conventional trading, you should start with a new and fresh account on each exchange and only transfer small amounts of BTC in.
Will this bot make me rich?No.
Will this bot get me a steady income?At least for some time. There can always happen unforseeable things in the future, which may prevent the bot from working. The exchange could get hacked. The exchange could close its doors. Someone other builds a better bot and catches all the opportunities.
How much can I expect to earn?Just to make this absolutely clear: I cannot guarantee that you will earn anything with this bot. For me it generates a steady income (Look at the provided link above for a running live-bot). However, trades may also fail and it cannot be guaranteed that you make a profit every day. As your copy of the bot sees the orderbooks at different times than mine, you cannot expect to see the same results. You may perform better or worse.
How much does it cost?I think 0.5 BTC is a fair price as there were a few dozen hours of work put into it. This includes the bot with configuration files and setup instructions. Future updates are also included (Exchange API changes or new features/improvements). If you are interested in purchasing the bot, please send me a PM with a (realistic) offer. If you want an escrow, please provide one.
Can I get it cheaper and give you a part of the profit?The problem is that I cannot check how much profit you made without having access to your exchange account. That would be the only reliable source (as the database-backend with the trade records could be manipulated). Maybe some day in the future I may implement something to provide that way of payment, but not today.
What do all these boxes on the Web UI mean?The big center box contains the 48h history of the BTC balance in both wallets. On the right side are the wallets at the exchanges (P for Poloniex, C for Cryptsy). The numbers in parantheses are the number of times this coin has been traded, the number of times there was a arbitrage opportunity (which may or may not have been filled due to missing funds, etc) and the amount of coins the bot wants to buy or sell.
The four boxes in the next line contain a list of the recent trades, wallet management activity (Buying / Selling altcoins), coin transfers between wallets and a countdown to some internal events: consolidate (Even out the wallets and sell unneeded coins), take-profit (Move profits to private wallet), balancing (even out the BTC wallet) and restock (Buy new coins).
The last box contains the log messages from the last 30s.
Regards,
Sebastian
