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

[mboehler]

Hi Pablo,

I have a request for a future version of Butter-bot.  Could you put in an option to set the FIAT and/or Bitcoin reserve by percentage instead of a fixed amount?  Ideally this would be user selectable, either percentage OR fixed amount.

This way, if you start losing on trades, ie due to sideways motion eroding your money, for each trade you would lose less and less.  Likewise, if you earned a lot on some really good trades, you could start earning more and more.

Hopefully this makes sense.

Thanks for reading!

[bigb159]

I guess we need reversed chart reading to make more btc with ema trading ( what generates also more dollars )

not btc- usd but usd-btc...

so it will sell btc when usd get more in value ( decreasing btc price ) and buy when usd get lower ( increasing btc price ).

Then ema trading will work to generate more btc but also usd as you could always sell your "more" btc manual when you want usd...

So as for now usd is on a downtrend...
When btc drops usd is in uptrend...

When you buy and sell BTC for USD you should be trying to increase your USD balance. Buy BTC for low value in dollars, sell high for more dollars. Over the past week of micro-trading I've had to change my mentality. I started out trying to trade up .5 BTC to 1 full BTC and with the current volatility, I was on track. I caught myself halfway through the week - my BTC balance was not increasing as steadily as my USD balance was. In essence, when you trade on this current uptrend, you hope that the price of BTC will drop and you will be able to snap up lots of BTC to dump at for a better fiat price. As the trend goes up, I can buy fewer BTC at the high price, but my USD balance is increasing.

TL,DR - you're looking at the wrong charts if you want to trade for BTC balance. You need to be selling and buying USD on the BTC value.

[vesperwillow]

Folks, as a reminder, this is a long term strategic bot which is best used when the market isn't highly volatile as it is right now. Go look at the charts and history and you'll see we're on quite a ride this week, way up.. way down.. all over the place, spinning in circles. You can't expect the bot to be the wizard of oz and magically handle this by itself.

Things will settle out and the bot will keep on trucking.

[mboehler]

I guess we need reversed chart reading to make more btc with ema trading ( what generates also more dollars )

not btc- usd but usd-btc...

so it will sell btc when usd get more in value ( decreasing btc price ) and buy when usd get lower ( increasing btc price ).

Then ema trading will work to generate more btc but also usd as you could always sell your "more" btc manual when you want usd...

So as for now usd is on a downtrend...
When btc drops usd is in uptrend...

When you buy and sell BTC for USD you should be trying to increase your USD balance. Buy BTC for low value in dollars, sell high for more dollars. Over the past week of micro-trading I've had to change my mentality. I started out trying to trade up .5 BTC to 1 full BTC and with the current volatility, I was on track. I caught myself halfway through the week - my BTC balance was not increasing as steadily as my USD balance was. In essence, when you trade on this current uptrend, you hope that the price of BTC will drop and you will be able to snap up lots of BTC to dump at for a better fiat price. As the trend goes up, I can buy fewer BTC at the high price, but my USD balance is increasing.

TL,DR - you're looking at the wrong charts if you want to trade for BTC balance. You need to be selling and buying USD on the BTC value.

What exactly would someone have to do differently to increase bitcoin than what he is doing now to increase fiat?

You say you want to buy and sell USD with Bitcoin.  But wouldn't you still be doing the same thing?

If you want to buy as much USD as you can with your BTC, you need to wait until USD is low.  Then buy as much as you can.  Then once the price of USD rises and starts coming back down, you sell your USD back for more BTC.

Example:
If 1 BTC = $600 then $1 = 0.00167 BTC, Point A
If 1 BTC = $500 then $1 = 0.00200 BTC, Point B

In the example above, USD is at its lowest (0.00167) BTC at point A when BTC is at it's highest ($600).  Likewise, USD is at its highest (0.00200) at point B when BTC is at it's lowest ($500).

Is this not the exact same thing?  Sure you could invert the graph, but you would just be flipping it upside down. The crossovers will still come at the same points.  You would still trade BTC for USD at point A and trade USD for bitcoin at point B.

If I am wrong, someone please explain why.  Thank you!

[bigb159]

Trading on the ups and downs of a trend would mean having an guesstimate of where the trend will be at the end of the day.

If you spent $350 USD on 1 BTC this morning, sold it for $400 USD at noon, you have added to your USD balance.
If later, the trend continues to fluctuate as it rises to $550 you could purchase again, only your 400 will not get you a whole coin like before. If you sell it again at $600 you have again increased your USD balance.
At the end of the day, unless price of BTC drops, you have lots of dollars worth less in Bitcoin.

I am sure that you can trade on the same graph, though it would be more useful in your case to see it in terms of drop of dollar value per Bitcoin. Personally, I build up as much USD as I can until I see BTC drop as far as possible and snatch them up, but somehow I always end up with USD, and one of these days, I will be stuck with buying very expensive Bitcoin with my accrued cash.

[fible1]

Hi Pablo,

I think it would be very useful to put a warning that says "WARNING: THE BOT WILL BUY AT THE CURRENT PRICE, WHATEVER THE MARKET CONDITION IS AS SOON AS YOU ENABLE TRADING. (I UNDERSTAND/STOP THE BOT)".

In the future you should add an additional per-market setting like "Initial buy price: XXX".
Then when you click on the "enable trading" link or button the BOT should show an alert that says: "Do you want to wait until a price of XXX has been reached before allowing the BOT to buy? (YES/NO/CHANGE THRESHOLD)"

Of course the BOT should use the threshold only when trading goes from disabled to enabled and not during its normal operation.

This could help with users that start to try the BOT in a day that shows a lot of fluctuation and avoid a situation where the BOT buys at 700 and sells 30 seconds later at 500.

Hi Boozezela ,
   I would be very interested in seeing the logs for this if any of you still have them. Butter will trade all your currency for either Fiat or BTC once you enable it depending on the market signal. Depending on when the signal was triggered this may be an issue because remember: Butter issues "standing" buy or sell orders depending on the trend.

Regardless, I understand the issue here and I will bring it up with the developer to revise the mechanics of this.

Any feedback is welcome .

Pablo.

[fible1]

Here I go again with another feature request.

Settings profiles so we can save different kinds for different market conditions. Also for there to be several immutable stock presets profiles for different conditions, too.

Put it in a drop down menu like Windows classic desktop themes were.

Here I go again with another feature request.

Settings profiles so we can save different kinds for different market conditions. Also for there to be several immutable stock presets profiles for different conditions, too.

Put it in a drop down menu like Windows classic desktop themes were.

GREAT idea!

Will bring this up with the developer to see what he thinks, but I think it's a pretty good tool suggestion.

Pablo.

[fible1]

Hi Pablo,

I have a request for a future version of Butter-bot.  Could you put in an option to set the FIAT and/or Bitcoin reserve by percentage instead of a fixed amount?  Ideally this would be user selectable, either percentage OR fixed amount.

This way, if you start losing on trades, ie due to sideways motion eroding your money, for each trade you would lose less and less.  Likewise, if you earned a lot on some really good trades, you could start earning more and more.

Hopefully this makes sense.

Thanks for reading!

M,
  Another great suggestion, this was already on the board, we will be likely looking into this as soon as there is some free development time .

Pablo.

[Casimir1904]

I guess we need reversed chart reading to make more btc with ema trading ( what generates also more dollars )

not btc- usd but usd-btc...

so it will sell btc when usd get more in value ( decreasing btc price ) and buy when usd get lower ( increasing btc price ).

Then ema trading will work to generate more btc but also usd as you could always sell your "more" btc manual when you want usd...

So as for now usd is on a downtrend...
When btc drops usd is in uptrend...

When you buy and sell BTC for USD you should be trying to increase your USD balance. Buy BTC for low value in dollars, sell high for more dollars. Over the past week of micro-trading I've had to change my mentality. I started out trying to trade up .5 BTC to 1 full BTC and with the current volatility, I was on track. I caught myself halfway through the week - my BTC balance was not increasing as steadily as my USD balance was. In essence, when you trade on this current uptrend, you hope that the price of BTC will drop and you will be able to snap up lots of BTC to dump at for a better fiat price. As the trend goes up, I can buy fewer BTC at the high price, but my USD balance is increasing.

TL,DR - you're looking at the wrong charts if you want to trade for BTC balance. You need to be selling and buying USD on the BTC value.

Increasing your usd would make sense when btc in the longterm will decrease but btc in longterm only increase, so lowering you btc volume and increasing your usd volume is alsways losing value.

This would be ok with forex trading or some stock trading.

For BTC we must do it like btc is the main currency and we sell/buy usd on up/downtrends.

Like with default setting making 12000-13000 usd in the past 2y is increasing your usd *120  - *130 btc got worth 250* - 325* in that time, halving your btc volume just cost money...
When you traded in the same time as i said you would have made more btc and so also more usd...

Maybe it should just be an option in the bot to trade to btc-usd or usd-btc..

for me and the most others btc-usd don't make sense as you lose btc in longterm and so also usd ( even when usd volume increase ).

If you don't believe in BTC you could be ok with trading btc-usd.
If you believe in BTC your would trade usd-btc.

[itod]

Increasing your usd would make sense when btc in the longterm will decrease but btc in longterm only increase, so lowering you btc volume and increasing your usd volume is alsways losing value.

  ^
This

If you don't understand this, you are hurting yourself financially in the long term.

[agibby5]

Increasing your usd would make sense when btc in the longterm will decrease but btc in longterm only increase, so lowering you btc volume and increasing your usd volume is alsways losing value.

  ^
This

If you don't understand this, you are hurting yourself financially in the long term.

So it appears there's no value in this bot then?

[itod]

Increasing your usd would make sense when btc in the longterm will decrease but btc in longterm only increase, so lowering you btc volume and increasing your usd volume is alsways losing value.

  ^
This

If you don't understand this, you are hurting yourself financially in the long term.

So it appears there's no value in this bot then?

I absolutely didn't say that. What I've asked is to see some profitability stats, but it's treated as super-secret data instead to be analyzed by the community. No need to see the exact amounts how many someone traded, normalize it to units (BTC/US$). For example, if you started with 2.4 BTC, divide start/end figures with 2.4 and let's see how much is gained for 1 BTC. Than we will see if there is a value to this bot or not. Maybe some trading strategies produced gains in BTC.

[madpoet]

There is value IF YOU WANT TO MAKE USD

itod, you have a certain opinion about the long term value of BTC.  You think that taking profits in USD is hurting people financially.  Not everyone shares your opinion.  Some of us are using this bot strictly to gain USD account value.  I get that is contrary to what you want, but it doesn't make it less valid.  You want a bot that will gain you btc over time and this is not necessarily that bot.  I am not sure how else to explain it.

[boozezela]

I absolutely didn't say that. What I've asked is to see some profitability stats, but it's treated as super-secret data instead to be analyzed by the community. No need to see the exact amounts how many someone traded, normalize it to units (BTC/US$). For example, if you started with 2.4 BTC, divide start/end figures with 2.4 and let's see how much is gained for 1 BTC. Than we will see if there is a value to this bot or not. Maybe some trading strategies produced gains in BTC.

There is no secret and you don't need any chart or excel spreadsheet.
It is simple arithmetic / common sense: every time you sell high and THEN buy low the balance in BTC increases.

Assuming you are operating in a commission free market for the sake of simplicity:
You buy 1BTC at $650 and hold till the value rises to $700, then you sell > you have $700 that means a $50 profit.
Now you wait very patiently for the price to drop below $650. At $640 you buy and hold. Now you have 1.09375 BTC.

Rinse and repeat 100 times and your balance in BTC will increase. Is it worth your time? Probably not because it is unlikely that BTC value would drop to 630, 610, 590, 410 and so on and even with a sawtooth-like pattern it will keep rising and rising and rising.

There will be instances where you will buy higher that 650 and sell higher than 700 and slightly increase the balance in BTC simply because you are leveraging on a higher BTC balance but the increase will be negligible.

So if you have the money to do so, every time there is a sensible price drop, just buy new BTC with fresh money. You don't need a BOT to do so, you just need a chart.

[Casimir1904]

There is value IF YOU WANT TO MAKE USD

itod, you have a certain opinion about the long term value of BTC.  You think that taking profits in USD is hurting people financially.  Not everyone shares your opinion.  Some of us are using this bot strictly to gain USD account value.  I get that is contrary to what you want, but it doesn't make it less valid.  You want a bot that will gain you btc over time and this is not necessarily that bot.  I am not sure how else to explain it.

ok lets say you started 2y ago...
the bot would have buy 43.xx btc
after 2y you have 12-13k usd "profit"
but you have only 22-23 btc left...
how much usd would you have now when you sell 22-23 btc and how much when you sell 43 btc?

its loosing money when it trade for longterm vs a increasing value...

it must trade usd-btc not btc-usd
you would also make more usd with that and if it was option you could change it anyway...

Now you losing money no matter what settings... even when your usd volume increase...

Would the bot see btc as the currency and usd the thing to trade then it would generate more btc and so also usd ( you always can sell off your btc for usd and because you have more you have also more usd )...

Till now the bot made only a buy for me i keep it running as i have only $200 on mtgox so no problem for that amount...
But from all test with different settings their was no way to get profit out from previous data, all settings lost btc...

So Probably i should ask for a refund and not posting here?

[mboehler]

ok lets say you started 2y ago...
the bot would have buy 43.xx btc
after 2y you have 12-13k usd "profit"
but you have only 22-23 btc left...
how much usd would you have now when you sell 22-23 btc and how much when you sell 43 btc?

its loosing money when it trade for longterm vs a increasing value...

it must trade usd-btc not btc-usd
you would also make more usd with that and if it was option you could change it anyway...

Now you losing money no matter what settings... even when your usd volume increase...

Would the bot see btc as the currency and usd the thing to trade then it would generate more btc and so also usd ( you always can sell off your btc for usd and because you have more you have also more usd )...

Till now the bot made only a buy for me i keep it running as i have only $200 on mtgox so no problem for that amount...
But from all test with different settings their was no way to get profit out from previous data, all settings lost btc...

So Probably i should ask for a refund and not posting here?

Please explain how to trade usd-btc not btc-usd.  I'm afraid I don't see the difference.

[Casimir1904]

now the bot buys when it see uptrend in btc price and sell on downtrend.

If you change the direction it buys usd on uptrend of usd and sell usd on downtrend of usd.
If btc price increase usd is going down and if btc price decrease usd is going up, as in the longterm usd is going down and btc up it will increase the btc volume what also increase your usd volume...

lets say over the last 2 years...

bot start with $100 and sell them for 43 BTC.
USD price is decreasing so it dont buy.
Now comes an up of BTC bot still dont buy USD.
Now a Drop comes to BTC and the bot will buy USD as USD is in uptrend.

When BTC going up again the BOT sell its USD as their is a downtrend in USD

On that way the bot would probably made much more BTC in that 2y and because BTC is general increasing and not decreasing it will also grow your USD value.

Its also easier to take fiat money out of it, as you can sell some of your extra "generated" coins without loosing your starting stack.

[fluxist]

The discussions of profiting USD vs BTC are missing the point.

The real question is, does the EMA strategy beat buy-and-hold (i.e., will I have more or less converted BTC after using the bot)? The answer seems to be it depends on the conditions of the market.
During this recent insane rally, I don't see any EMA beating buy-and-hold. Another algorithmic strategy I'm using similarly performed worse than buy-and-hold in this period. I have had success trading half-manually with this bot entering the short position and then manually buying back BTC when I have some gains and I see a trend reversal. EMA has a lag in tracking the trend reversal and the market is moving very fast.

I've been using the bot with close supervision for about 2 weeks and I'm up about 8% in BTC. The largest gain was made by manually buying back during the flash crash two days ago. YMMV.

[boozezela]

A decent strategy could be to always sell the same amount of BTC.
When the market condition allows it, by buying using your USD profits the BTC balance will increase slightly. When this happens put the extra BTC aside, rinse and repeat.

E.g. if you start with 5 BTC and you end up after a trade with 5.13 BTC, put the 0.13 aside and keep selling 5 BTC.
Which means as I have already said, buy low, sell high and then buy again low(er).

[itod]

Every trading strategy needs a benchmark to which it will relate and measure it's success. In trading stocks traders mostly use S&P 500 as that benchmark. If you are trading stocks/US$ and you end with less value than simply buying S&P 500 and holding it, usually it's considered bad strategy. If you trade cryptocurrency, BTC/US$, end you end with less value than Buy&Hold strategy - you are doing it wrong. Now, increasing your US$ portfolio not necessarily means you will in the long run end with more than Buy&Hold, but increasing BTC, due to a long term deflation and upward trend in BTC, it is certain to beat Buy&Hold. Deflation is built into BTC, but even if it was not, long term trend since 2009 is obvious, and there is not a single analysis that predicts sliding of BTC value in the long term.

To summarize: If you are using bots in trading, and you are increasing your US$ amount you may be (but not necessarily) trading successfully, if you are increasing your BTC amount you are certainly trading successfully.