The Coinbase Pro topic

[figmentofmyass]

My trades keep clearing and my account is not growing.  I am placing profitable scalping trades in the .5%-1% profit range.  All of my trades were successful but my account is slightly less than when I started.  I have placed about 10 successful scalping trades and each trade is about $300 each.  My account is slightly less than when I started.  I use the stable coin USDC.  This is confusing.

Can anybody tell me what the hell is going on with Coinbase Pro!?!?!?

first things first---stop using the USDC market. it has way thinner order books and way worse slippage than USD markets. convert your USDC to USD and go to https://pro.coinbase.com/trade/BTC-USD instead of https://pro.coinbase.com/trade/BTC-USDC.

without seeing your executed order history, we can't know what happened exactly, including whether you are getting charged maker or taker fees. are you using post-only limit orders or market orders, or some combination? with market orders, you are not only getting charged much higher fees but you may be getting a much worse average execution price than you think.

Is Coinbase Pro totally unsuitable for scalping???

They must be gouging my trades with fees....  Are they taking .25%, or are they taking 25%

if they are taking 0.25% off each side of the trade and you are experiencing slippage on market orders, then you will consistently lose money on 0.5% scalps.

[1Referee]

My trades keep clearing and my account is not growing.  I am placing profitable scalping trades in the .5%-1% profit range.  All of my trades were successful but my account is slightly less than when I started.  I have placed about 10 successful scalping trades and each trade is about $300 each.  My account is slightly less than when I started.  I use the stable coin USDC.  This is confusing.

Can anybody tell me what the hell is going on with Coinbase Pro!?!?!?

If your balance is less than what you started at before you 'profitably' traded, you're probably miscalculating the actual profit percentages.

Coinbase Pro's taker fee is 0.25%, so opening and closing a trade costs you 0.50% in total.

Opening a trade; $300 minus 0.25% fee = $299.25

Closing a trade; $299.25 + 0.5% profit = $300.746 minus 0.25% fee = $299.994

@figment... USDC is more than liquid to handle $300 trades.

[figmentofmyass]

@figment... USDC is more than liquid to handle $300 trades.

that's questionable advice IMO.

the spread on the USDC market is consistently 2-10x worse than the USD market. sometimes it's much more drastic, like $0.01 vs $5. market ordering into that spread is just irrational.

the USDC market is for the birds and the market makers profiting off them. this is why 24-hour volume is 13-14x bigger on the USD market. there's no logical reason for the OP to stay there when he can convert to USD with a click of a button.

[1Referee]

there's no logical reason for the OP to stay there when he can convert to USD with a click of a button.

That's another thing, but that doesn't take away anything from the fact that you can execute a trade worth $300 in a second on the USDC pair. It's up to OP to take the gap between bid and ask into consideration when trading, which I assume he has since he states that his trades are profitable.

In order to get to the bottom of this it would be helpful if we have a screenshot so that we can see what the actual problem is here. Copy and pasting the profitable trades will suffice too.

[figmentofmyass]

In order to get to the bottom of this it would be helpful if we have a screenshot so that we can see what the actual problem is here. Copy and pasting the profitable trades will suffice too.

my guess is that his trades weren't executing at the price he thought they were. often times, what you see on the order book at the spread and what actually executes the millisecond you submit an order are two different things. that's the danger of the market order function, especially in a high slippage environment.

a better way to get market order functionality without taking that risk:
-use a limit order instead
-go to advanced > execution = "allow taker"

this way, the order will never execute past the limit price you set = no unexpected slippage.