Anyone interested in an open source arbitrage bot?

[Findbl0k]

Hi guys,

Loooooong time lurker here.

Some time ago I built an arbitrage bot in PHP. The bot could arbitrage several currency pairs between btc-e.com and cryptsy.com. With a little bit of elbow grease, this bot could be re-coded to work with new exchanges (like Poloniex for example). If there is any interest in this I will post the code in a new GitHub repository. I'd love to see some community involvement in a project like this. AFAIK, there are currently no open source arbitrage bots for altcoin exchanges?

The bot is coded to hold some constant amount of altcoin, and collect arbitrage profits in BTC. At the time, btc-e had LTC/BTC, NMC/BTC, FTC/BTC, XPM/BTC, TRC/BTC, and NVC/BTC. I made some small amount of BTC with the bot. It was really fun to code, and I learned a lot in the process. And because it was coded in PHP, it was pretty fast and would usually beat the other bots to the top of the order books.

But... as you might know, Cryptsy went down some time ago. I stopped running the bot and pulled my funds when things started to get sketchy there. Luckily I got most of my funds out before the ship sank

So what do you guys think? Any interest? I spent a lot of time on this (hundreds of hours) and I would hate to see this code go to waste. I'd have to do a lot of explaining how the code worked, but that's no issue. I'm currently working full-time on another project, so I can't contribute too much. But I'd love to see someone make this arbitrage bot run again.

[maydna]

maybe you can share your bot in here, so other coders will take a look with your bot, no need to paste the full codes, but maybe a little is enough to show what you have to do with your bot. i think its a good idea to have arbitrage bot because we don't have to take a look in each of website with our browser. but the main problem we have is the time to sending and receiving the amount into our wallet.

[ArdiPrabowo]

iam interest in your bot or software is freeware
if you want selling your bot, iam still interest but must profitable your bot

[pooya87]

i have no knowledge of PHP but some from .net programming, if your bot code is well written and properly documented i am very interested in seeing it open source and maybe even using it.

[mobnepal]

Yeah it will be quite interesting to see open source arbitrage bot on PHP, and i also know quite a lot about PHP coding that will be plus point for me. If you can make it work with multiple trading platform like poloniex, btc-e and bitfinex it will be quite useful. Good luck and hope to see it soon.

[Findbl0k]

iam interest in your bot or software is freeware
if you want selling your bot, iam still interest but must profitable your bot

Well, the bot was coded specifically to arbitrage btc-e (still alive) and cryptsy (dead now). So it will take some work to port it to other exchanges. The counter-trading engine also needs to be re-worked, since there are edge cases where an open order is filled at the same time that a market order is placed on a counter-trade. The counter-trading engine that I designed is "dumb" in the sense that it assumes that when a market order is made on the counter trade side, that the next trade must be the market order that was just placed. I definitely ran into problems when this edge case popped up and I had to frantically place a manual counter-trade to make sure I wasnt making unintended buys or sells  . But opportunity detection, order placement, and order updating worked flawlessly.

i have no knowledge of PHP but some from .net programming, if your bot code is well written and properly documented i am very interested in seeing it open source and maybe even using it.

I will definitely beef up the documentation when I open source it. This will take some time, and with the xmas holiday coming up it might be a couple of weeks before it is ready.

Yeah it will be quite interesting to see open source arbitrage bot on PHP, and i also know quite a lot about PHP coding that will be plus point for me. If you can make it work with multiple trading platform like poloniex, btc-e and bitfinex it will be quite useful. Good luck and hope to see it soon.

Excellent I will post updates here! In the meantime, I'll give you guys some technical background to chew on. Consider this scenario:

Exchange 1: there is a buy order for 100 LTC at 0.001 BTC/LTC
Exchange 2: the highest buy order is for 0.0008 BTC/LTC

If I place a buy order on Exchange 2 for 100 LTC at 0.00081 BTC/LTC (above the next highest buy order) and someone sells 100 LTC into my buy order, I can sell the 100 LTC that I already have on Exchange 1 for 100 * (0.001 - 0.00081) = 0.019 BTC profit (assuming zero fees). At the end of the trade I still have 100 LTC (although on Exchange 2 instead of Exchange 1), but I am 0.019 BTC richer.

The trick is to bait a buy or sell order when an arbitrage opportunity exists, and initiate a counter-trade on the opposing exchange when someone chews into your order.

[numismatist]

Just publish. At the moment your work has become worthless anyways. It's not only Cryptsy gone down, but most coins are only pumping on single Shitcoin Exchange Sites anyways

[Supercrypt]

Just publish. At the moment your work has become worthless anyways. It's not only Cryptsy gone down, but most coins are only pumping on single Shitcoin Exchange Sites anyways

I guess platforms are easily changeable and there would not be any specific big differences in coding based on exchanges.

I just wonder how effective this bot could be because we need to observe intensively to find out the gaps in trading prices across exchanges. Seems so interesting, looking forward for more explanations and discussions.

[alani123]

It'd be pretty interesting to see variations of an open source bot attempt to compete in the bitcoin exchange market. IIRC there haven't been any significant open source trading bots and I'd love to review the competitiveness of one.

[sal002]

I have been thinking about this as well.  While I like PHP, there is a great exchange connector in Change (Java).  Why reinvent the whole wheel?