(Closed) Butter Bot!: Premier Bitstamp, and BTC-E EMA Trading Platform (Closed)

[seanrarey]

Some of the bitstamp API seems to be back online; bitcoinity is returning an accurate graph now. But is anyone else's butterbot stuck "loading data" like mine? If it's not just me I'm sure it'll be fixed within a couple of hours.

"Loading Data" lol

[Soju Boy]

And we're back!

[Grinny]

And we're back!

w00t!

[Kuroth]

Appreciate your advice and Info seanrarey...    Tip coming as soon as I can get it OUT of Mt Gox and into CoinBase..

I have been using CoinBase since June but just for buying BTC..  But now I am starting to see the "light"  of what you and Pablo are saying

My Mistake was I should have never used Mt Got in the first place. Live and learn..

I will get going again with the Bot.. Heck its just made me 1K...  I am NOT mad at the Bot..Just venting..  Sorry for my rant..

[Kuroth]

Ok..  Singed up with BitStamp..  Now just waiting to get verified..  I assume that could take 24 hrs or so?


 

[bassclef]

Recent posts lead me to believe that not everybody using this bot is up on the basics.  To that end, I am going to jot up on the board some key points you should know and research if you are going to trade in Crypto.

1.  Hi

Me.  Why believe me?  Don't.  Do your own due diligence; but this should get you pointed in the right direction to do that.

That said, in "real life", I am a trade consultant and trainer, and I charge for it.  I have no affiliation with ButterBot except as a user.

2.  Crypto

Know your trade.  Know Bitcoin, how to use it and move it.  Crypto is extremely easy to move around, that is a large part of it's power.  Posts about not being able to access/move/exchange one's funds are a massive case of cart-before-horse in-over-your-head trading.  Don't take offense, learn what you are doing wrong and fix it... I will show you how.

3.  Portal

Very first on your "I-wanna-b-a-trader" checklist is your portal.  You need to be able to exchange USD for BTC in minutes; not days.  Do not confuse your portal with your exchange.  At the exchange, that is just money on books.  I am talking about getting real, physical paper $20 bill into BTC and back again.

EXAMPLE
I "park" my mortgage payment in a trade account each month until the day it is due.  This past month, a very good month, that mortgage payment made me more then $700 in profit in the time it sat there.  This is the power of a good portal.

Use your portal to move your money between your bank account and the exchanges, _not_ the exchange withdrawal/deposit system.

I use and recommend Coinbase as my portal.

4.  Exchange

So much info is available on the different exchanges it seems redundant to write anything on this, but based on a post here earlier, I guess not everybody reads as much as I do, so I will address the 4 largest, in descending order of "respect":

BitStamp:  Widely regarded as the standard leader at this point.  This said, they are going through a spot of growing pains, and often get overwhelmed in heavy trading.

BTC-e:  Located in Russia, this exchange has continued to surprise and impress.  They do not have the volume of the larger exchanges (for you whales out there), but they are solid, and I have never experience a single problem trading there.  Low fees and predictable curves have made it the most profitable butter accounts for me & mine.

BTCChina:  New on the scene, and taking the lead.  They do not deal in USD, however, so have not had much to do with them

GOX:  What can be said here that is not already splashed all over the news & internet?  Stay away!!  They are a mess, a risk, and just not worth the headache.

If you are trading larger amounts (>$10,000), I recommend spreading the investments across more then one exchange.  This diversification helps manage risk and reduces the shock to the market when Butter buys/dumps large sums.

5.  Strategy

Hundreds of thousands of books have been written on this part.  If you read them all, you may or may not be able to beat ButterBot, because it uses a pretty solid strategy for the Crypto trade right now.  Butter has made over 40% returns for me in the time I have been using it (a couple of months).  I know few people that have been able to beat that.

So for the purposes of this forum, the strategy I recommend is to tune your settings carefully to the exchange you are using, and leave it alone.  I check/re-tune about once a week.  That is too often, but I feel useless if I don't.



If you need a Coinbase account, feel free to use this link; it will kick us both back $5:

https://coinbase.com/?r=5170cd8e09b9d96e2f000009&utm_campaign=user-referral&src=

If you have not purchased Butter yet, feel free to use this link... again, we both get a kickback:

https://butter-bot.com/?r=82a121d4

If any of the above helped you, feel free to buy me a cup of coffee:

1QGr5R2An47fmM1fAjeaG1JAnfis81wTNC


Sean

This is super helpful, Sean. Thank you so much for posting.

One question: Could you elaborate on how you tweak your bot settings? I notice the recommended Bitstamp settings (20/42) are a little slow on the draw lately. Maybe that's a good thing.

[seanrarey]

Appreciate your advice and Info seanrarey...    Tip coming as soon as I can get it OUT of Mt Gox and into CoinBase..

I have been using CoinBase since June but just for buying BTC..  But now I am starting to see the "light"  of what you and Pablo are saying

My Mistake was I should have never used Mt Got in the first place. Live and learn..

I will get going again with the Bot.. Heck its just made me 1K...  I am NOT mad at the Bot..Just venting..  Sorry for my rant..

Thanks for the tips, what a cool little community this is becoming.



Kuroth, if you made some money in your GOX debacle, you came out nice.. I lost a few grand (hacking/theft).

I am not sure how long BS's new verification process takes, I have not been through it.  I do see their API is back online, nice to see their data back.



When tuning your bot to BitStamp try Butter's recommended as a place to start.  I am seeing some very nice numbers using 20/42 EMA, 1hr poll times, and moderate 0/0.08 gate timing.  You may try that as well as theirs, and tune off of it.

[seanrarey]

This is super helpful, Sean. Thank you so much for posting.

One question: Could you elaborate on how you tweak your bot settings? I notice the recommended Bitstamp settings (20/42) are a little slow on the draw lately. Maybe that's a good thing.

I would be happy to talk about settings I am using, with the caveat that I am not claiming these are the "right" or even the best settings possible.  This bot is a new product, and I am learning it along with the rest of you.  I am, however, finding sweet-spots by using Pablo's recommended starting points and running simulations.

This also delves into my trading opinion's and theory, so it can be weighed against other successful opinions to form your own.

Let's start with the EMA lines, and talk specifically about tuning for BitStamp.  20/42 gives a nice spread, and insulates the trading from the considerable "noise" we see in the BitStamp trades.  The way I am reading the trends, however, it is not slowing down the trades _enough_.

Changes in the direction of the bitcoin market are usually being predicated by a very chaotic period of panic selling or buying.  During this period there exists temporary pressure that is seldom advantageous when changing an EMA position.  If trading manually, one must resist the overwhelming urge to buy/sell with everyone else.  Once the period of panic is over, the market will normalize, or "snap back" before continuing in it's new direction.  More often then not, this is the prime time for the EMA trader to enter or exit a position.

In my efforts to time the bot for this on Bitstamp, I am having success using 1hr poll times and both gates: set at 0 and .08 respectively.

On BTC-e, the breaks are cleaner, and the noise it less.  So there I am using the same EMA and polling times, while using a single very fast gate to signal trading.  So, in summery:

BitStamp:
EMA 20/42
Polling: 1hr
Gates: 0/0.08

BTC-e:
EMA 20/42
Polling: 1hr
Gates: -1/0.01

In combination with my particular tick-offset I am getting very good trading results, but I want to re-iterate that not everyone will agree with these specific settings or strategy, and I am constantly seeking input on ways to better tune the machine for improved results.  This is a gambling game after all, and we are simply seeking to tip the odds in our favor.

Sean

[Kuroth]

So in Back testing using the Bots Back testing, on all 3 exchanges, Pablo's suggested settings   10/21   0.25   0.25  2 hr poll  still produce the best results by far..  I have yet to find any other settings that do better..   So I am always curios why some use other settings?    I guess more I need to learn but for now I will Stick with Pablo's Settings..


Still not Verified on BitStamp..    Hopefully soon..


Update:   I see where there are some other suggested settings for Bitstamp.  Will test those out

[fible1]

Quick note about the Bitstamp settings:

The Bitstamp settings are back tested for 6 months, since we always say longer is more accurate, this deserves some explaining:

A year ago Bitstamp didn't have what we would consider the market depth necessary for trading, only about 6-8 months ago did Bitstamp really develop a deeper user and trading base so we consider that the more accurate result is to back test for that time period.

If anyone has any questions, please let me know .

Pablo.

[seanrarey]

Butter stopped getting data from BTC-e @ 9:30 last night.  I like the exchange, but if I cannot get data from it reliably, it becomes a liability.

Do you know Pablo if there is a known problem they are working on, or have they just become flaky?  They are reporting 400 or so bots online, and the web interface is up.

Sean

[fible1]

Butter stopped getting data from BTC-e @ 9:30 last night.  I like the exchange, but if I cannot get data from it reliably, it becomes a liability.

Do you know Pablo if there is a known problem they are working on, or have they just become flaky?  They are reporting 400 or so bots online, and the web interface is up.

Sean

Hi Sean,
  Their API is terribly flaky right now, we are working on developing a solution for this right now and we should have something ASAP. Please bear with us a little while, we will have a solution as soon as possible.

Pablo.

[seanrarey]

Butter stopped getting data from BTC-e @ 9:30 last night.  I like the exchange, but if I cannot get data from it reliably, it becomes a liability.

Do you know Pablo if there is a known problem they are working on, or have they just become flaky?  They are reporting 400 or so bots online, and the web interface is up.

Sean

Hi Sean,
  Their API is terribly flaky right now, we are working on developing a solution for this right now and we should have something ASAP. Please bear with us a little while, we will have a solution as soon as possible.

Pablo.

Great thanks.

[seanrarey]

BTC-e data push behavior just got stranger.  Let me explain:

I have Butter running on two different computers.  Lets call them A & B.

On computer A, I have 2 instances of Butter running.  One managing an account on BTC-e, and one managing an account on Bitstamp.  On this computer, the Butter managing the Bitstamp account does show data from BTC-e as well, but no updates since 9:30 last night.  

The Butter managing the BTC-e account does not even show that; it is stuck with a "Loading Data" message.

Computer B has a 3rd instance of Butter running, on a separate BTC-e account.  This instance is largely for testing, but when I just checked it, I found it running properly, reading current and accurate data from BTC-e; unlike both bots running on computer A.

I find this very strange indeed.  This is not an API issue, as one out of the three is pulling data just fine (and this is coming from Butter's server, yes?).  None of the bots are connected to the same account, so there is no conflict there.

Pablo, is it possible that this is being caused by running two instances of Butter on the same machine somehow?

**EDIT**
I killed the 2nd instance of Butter on computer A, and was able to get the single instance to start showing data correctly again from BTC-e.  More testing needed, but there may be a correlation there.

[Soju Boy]

Quick note about the Bitstamp settings:

The Bitstamp settings are back tested for 6 months, since we always say longer is more accurate, this deserves some explaining:

A year ago Bitstamp didn't have what we would consider the market depth necessary for trading, only about 6-8 months ago did Bitstamp really develop a deeper user and trading base so we consider that the more accurate result is to back test for that time period.

If anyone has any questions, please let me know .

Pablo.

Hey Pablo, this actually caught me kind of off-guard and made me completely change my settings around. I had found amazing settings for a 1 year bitstamp back test! Now I've recalibrated my numbers using 6 months backtesting... and of course the profits are only a teeny tiny fraction (although still large) of what they were backtesting 1 year. I suppose I now know why. I wonder what makes bitstamp so different from Mt Gox in terms of trading strategy? (controlling for trading fees)

[fible1]

Quick note about the Bitstamp settings:

The Bitstamp settings are back tested for 6 months, since we always say longer is more accurate, this deserves some explaining:

A year ago Bitstamp didn't have what we would consider the market depth necessary for trading, only about 6-8 months ago did Bitstamp really develop a deeper user and trading base so we consider that the more accurate result is to back test for that time period.

If anyone has any questions, please let me know .

Pablo.

Hey Pablo, this actually caught me kind of off-guard and made me completely change my settings around. I had found amazing settings for a 1 year bitstamp back test! Now I've recalibrated my numbers using 6 months backtesting... and of course the profits are only a teeny tiny fraction (although still large) of what they were backtesting 1 year. I suppose I now know why. I wonder what makes bitstamp so different from Mt Gox in terms of trading strategy? (controlling for trading fees)

Hey Greg ,
  It's just the liquidity factor in the back testing. Mt. Gox has been highly liquid for several years and we can back test two years with a set amount of depth. Bitstamp was somewhat illiquid (for trading purposes) up to a couple of months ago, that's the main difference.

Please let me know if you need anything at all .

Pablo.

[fible1]

***********************
BTC-E
**********************

We have tracked down the issue affecting pricing information on BTC-E and the issue should now be resolved. Otherwise, a simple reset should take care of it.

If you are running multiple instances of the bot and you are still having issues, please make sure that each instance has its own key for each exchange.

Do not hesitate to let me know if you need anything at all .

Pablo.

[NginUS]

Does everyone who uses BTC-e have to reset their bot because of this fix you implemented?

[Bloodislav]

Hello. I have bought butterbot yesterday and wanted to set up trading on mtGox. Since then unfortunately I'm only getting "The MtGox API is currently having issues but we will keep trying. Butter Bot will recover automatically once the API is back up." My frother is using the same bot and gox is working fine for him. I even tried to generate few API's, but same problem every time. Anyone has  a clue what could be the catch?

Thank you

[seanrarey]

Hello. I have bought butterbot yesterday and wanted to set up trading on mtGox. Since then unfortunately I'm only getting "The MtGox API is currently having issues but we will keep trying. Butter Bot will recover automatically once the API is back up." My frother is using the same bot and gox is working fine for him. I even tried to generate few API's, but same problem every time. Anyone has  a clue what could be the catch?

Thank you

lol.  aaaaaand this is why I normally make a rule against giving free advise.