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

[papaminer]

I am still waiting for ALT coin release...

[seleme]

I have another dumb question...

Am I right to say that this bot is designed to mainly rise our fiat value, not btc one. I've just went through several settings and all three exchanges, run tests and then calculated onmy own and in last month during this rally I would be good in fiat but down in btc in any of tests.

For example, the pic below... if I'd started with 10 000$ and bought at 200.475 I would buy 49.88 BTC. But last trade on the pic would be buy at $42675 AT $938 and I would get only 45.5 BTC.

This is a month test period where we had 400$ (45%) correction so I really don't understand how would I finish with 9% less bitcoins. And I would buy most of the times higher than I would sold in trade earlier.

I want to make more btc with this, not USD, is this something usual or one kind of.

Btw, what does the value column represents?

Could anyone confirm I'm right or wrong here please?

[Stingery64]

You are wrong,

its not designed to increase your fiat and decrease your bitcoins, its designed to decrease your fiat and also your bitcoins.

becuase just holding your 49 bitcoins would return you more fiat in exchange than using the bot.

to increase your fiat you dont need any bot, you need just wait...


49.88 btc * 938 = 46787,44$
vs
42675$

I already said several times the bot is dumb, the buy triggered by EMA cross is no sense, bot is always
selling low and buying high to cut off loses, it just buy low when the drop is veryyy huge, strong and long,
and this just DON'T HAPPEN with bitcoin

Its slowly wasting your bitcoins bit a bit, trying to catch the perfect scenario, instead of jut buy lower than you sell at. Its that easy...
just put buy at 2-5% market drop price and butter bot result would change dramatically instead of wait to EMA lines cross back as they need the price to go very high until that happen, then it buy high and sold cheap,

i already lose 60% of my bitcoins with the bot,
i gave a lot of easy tips for make this bot much more wise into buy and sell decisions but i guess it takes time to implement them...
and i still have a lot of them to perfect the bot,
meanwhile i am making manual decisions, i success to recovery half of my money that way, butter would keep throwing my bitcoins otherwise.

Value column represents the atual amount of dollars you have at that point.

[joefox]

I have another dumb question...

Am I right to say that this bot is designed to mainly rise our fiat value, not btc one. I've just went through several settings and all three exchanges, run tests and then calculated onmy own and in last month during this rally I would be good in fiat but down in btc in any of tests.

Could anyone confirm I'm right or wrong here please?

You are right.  This bot is designed to increase USD, not BTC.

This question has been answered multiple times already in this thread!

[fible1]

I think it is time to hire a support team...

Hey ,
   Yep, we are actually in the process of doing that; programmers first so we can pop those neat features all you guys want out a bit faster .

Pablo.

[joefox]

You are wrong,

its not designed to increase your fiat and decrease your bitcoins, its designed to decrease your fiat and also your bitcoins.

becuase just holding your 49 bitcoins would return you more fiat in exchange than using the bot.

I'm really getting tired of the "because I said so" buy-and-hold argument.  It sounds awesome, compared to the performance of BTC over the past two years... but it only makes long-term sense if the price always goes up, in perpetuity.  No investment ever does that.  Moreover, you're bluntly advocating a strategy without acknowledging the risks of using the strategy.  People lost their livelihoods by putting all their eggs into baskets at Nortel and Blackberry/RIM.  At some point in the future, Google will fall.  And so will Apple.  And everything else... because entropy is a fundamental force in the universe.

So: how does "buy and hold" play out when the price drops or crashes?  We all know it happens; we all know crashes can be big or small.  The history of BTC price looks fantastic, but the past performance is no guarantee of future performance.  What will happen when central banks and governments attempt to regulate it (or ban it)?  When commercial banks start to sully it by creating derivative products based on bitcoin that will sully and confuse investors AND tie BTC to the existing debt-based system?  When large commercial banks make it impossible to transfer fiat to BTC by shutting down accounts tied to exchanges?  When governments unite to assert that BTC will never be currency?  When a new and better crypto is inevitably created at some point in the future?  When the market arrives at a consensus about what the "fundamentals" of Bitcoin are and then decides the market is horribly overpriced?  Will you buy and hold then, plugging your ears and singing loudly until what you're holding becomes valueless?

I don't mean to harp on you.  I suspect you've thought about all of this.  I hope you've evaluated it, have asserted yourself as a bitcoin evangelist, and have decided that buy-and-hold is your strategy, and that's fine for you.  It's NOT fine for everyone, though, and I think that if you're going to advocate it, you need to do more than show a chart for the last few months and extend a line past the end of it, blindly.  Kids can do that.

TO be fair: I also have no sympathy for people who buy a trading bot they don't understand, to profit from a technology they don't understand, because it magically implements a trading strategy they don't understand.  If you look at "3464% PROFIT!" on the butter-bot web page, buy it without thinking, and transfer your whole 401-K into it, you're a sucker.

You need a PLAN in order to invest/trade profitably, and you have to stick to it objectively so that emotions don't overrule you.  I have decided that "buy and hold" is not a plan.  EMA-based trading is a simple, solid, long-term strategy that I have tested and found to work for my risk tolerance level, even though it means I will lose a little on 70% of my trades and earn a lot on 30% of them.  Your mileage may vary.

[Badonkadonk]

think ill disable the bot until btc over fiat is a possibility. started off with half a coin just to try the bot out and lost half of that in the dip lol

[Stingery64]

joefox what the hell are you talking about...

of course i am asuming bitcoin will keep rising, thats the main point to get more bitcoins,
so what if in 5 years a new better cryptcoin appears? what if exchangers become illegal? what if apple crash? what if blabla...

there are already p2p exchangers proyects, but any way, that thread is not about politics

lets focus on present time, squeeze the max profit of it, and don't risk more than you can lose, diversify your money...
Maybe i look hungry in my last post, but i am not, i don't write here to blame about
the bot, i am working with Pablo into trying to make it much better, but the truth is the truth, and if you want more bitcoins, the bot will not achieve this target easly.
I try to help and push this bot ahead because Pablo is giving very good support and free trials, so i belive in the bot, but right now i just see it as a dog that still needs to be trained, i have several ideas to make it much more wiser that sometimes are difficult to see when you are focused into coding and achieve some target, thats why always outside feedback is a need to success.

[itod]

I have decided that "buy and hold" is not a plan.  EMA-based trading is a simple, solid, long-term strategy that I have tested and found to work for my risk tolerance level

“The human brain is a complex organ with the wonderful power of enabling man to find reasons for continuing to believe whatever it is that he wants to believe.”
― Voltaire

Nobody is advocating the Buy&Hold strategy. You need strategy that beats B&H to successfully trade, point is - if you don't have such a strategy you'll always trade at loss, no exception. It's better to B&H than to trade at loss.

Trading to increase US$, but gaining less US$ than buying and holding BTC is trading at loss. Is that really so difficult to understand?

[joefox]

Trading to increase US$, but gaining less US$ than buying and holding BTC is trading at loss. Is that really so difficult to understand?

I understand completely.  And I'm willing to accept a bit of loss in exchange for keeping my cortisol levels low.  But you keep holding, sir, if that's what you like to do.  You can reserve the right to gloat, and I waive the right to complain.

I have a few pots of bitcoin, and I use multiple strategies.  Some work better than others, and I'm happy to continue to play with several methods. My EMA strategy has been the most *consistent*... for me.

[chriswen]

LOL, too many people trading on EMA crossovers causes the market to be extremely volatile and you all can't make money (market can't support all ya botters)

[PuertoLibre]

LOL, too many people trading on EMA crossovers causes the market to be extremely volatile and you all can't make money (market can't support all ya botters)

Instability is good!

[joefox]

LOL, too many people trading on EMA crossovers causes the market to be extremely volatile and you all can't make money (market can't support all ya botters)

Not everyone is trading on the same EMA crossovers, or at the same intervals.  And there are many other bots that use many other strategies.  And a bunch of people who remain strong with their buy-and-hold.  And no shortage of n00bs who trade based on what they read in the BTC-e trollbox, or based on what Jupiter is doing, or based on what Reddit says, or based on what the Winklevii say....

But thanks for your concern.

[PaperClip]

You are wrong,

its not designed to increase your fiat and decrease your bitcoins, its designed to decrease your fiat and also your bitcoins.

becuase just holding your 49 bitcoins would return you more fiat in exchange than using the bot.

to increase your fiat you dont need any bot, you need just wait...


49.88 btc * 938 = 46787,44$
vs
42675$

In reality people will adjust their EMA constants every week or so, resulting with bigger profit then year long simulation with the same configuration for all period. Also, bot would earn some profit  even in case if btc price do not rises, but just fluctuates around certain value. This is huge difference than saving btc.

Another thing is that with EMA strategy you are protected against btc price drops. When price drops - bot simply converts your goods to usd. When price rises - goods are exchanged back to btc.

Like this morning when I saw huge BTC rate drop during last day - first thing I have checked is how much did I lost on my btc-e account. My bot configuration now is rather ok, but I did lost around 5% of usd value, until bot converted btc to usd. But its much less then losing 40% like those who just store btc. And awesome part is that if price will rise back to the old value - I will get these 40% as profit.

Soo, thank you Butter Bot, you are doing great job

[luicon]

you guys better buy manually in this drop before bot do it, so you take better profit...

[NginUS]

you guys better buy manually in this drop before bot do it, so you take better profit...

I made the mistake of pausing the bot manually at the beginning of the crash, thinking it would quickly recover, now I wish I had let it sell back when it had the chance.

I learned my lesson of getting in the bot's way. Should've trusted the bot & let it be.

[tralala33]

I also bought back in gradually for a mean price of 709$ at bitstamp, which means that I made around 45% profit in BTC (which is waaaay more than the bot "lost" during the last weeks' rally before)

I usually let the bot do it's thing but it's a trading tool, not a crystal ball or something, so sometimes I risk to interfer with manual trades. Buying back in after sharp drops like that one is one of those cases.

[Naelr]

I decided to test the bot and downloaded it  2 days ago.. it is setup with BTC-e suggested settings and the first thing it did was sell my BTC... no big deal only had a little bit... but since then it made 1 trade and has done nothing for the last 2 days.  For 1 of those 2 days I had Gox in there with different settings for both.. is this a no no ?  I have since disabled the MTGox trading part (about 15 hours ago) and still no trades... is something wrong?

Naelr

[NginUS]

I decided to test the bot and downloaded it  2 days ago.. it is setup with BTC-e suggested settings and the first thing it did was sell my BTC... no big deal only had a little bit... but since then it made 1 trade and has done nothing for the last 2 days.  For 1 of those 2 days I had Gox in there with different settings for both.. is this a no no ?  I have since disabled the MTGox trading part (about 15 hours ago) and still no trades... is something wrong?

Naelr

The bot uses EMA as it's underlying trade strategy, which is a long term strategy, and will sometimes take weeks between trades. It's diciplined & usually won't trade on market 'noise'.

You can change its settings so that it behaves more like a day trading bot, or even an HFT bot, but backtesting proves that doing so is far less profitable than a long term approach.

[Naelr]

I decided to test the bot and downloaded it  2 days ago.. it is setup with BTC-e suggested settings and the first thing it did was sell my BTC... no big deal only had a little bit... but since then it made 1 trade and has done nothing for the last 2 days.  For 1 of those 2 days I had Gox in there with different settings for both.. is this a no no ?  I have since disabled the MTGox trading part (about 15 hours ago) and still no trades... is something wrong?

Naelr

The bot uses EMA as it's underlying trade strategy, which is a long term strategy, and will sometimes take weeks between trades. It's diciplined & usually won't trade on market 'noise'.

You can change its settings so that it behaves more like a day trading bot, or even an HFT bot, but backtesting proves that doing so is far less profitable than a long term approach.

Then my next question would be is anyone running the suggested settings for BTC-E and have they had the bot trade at all in the last 48 hours?

The following settings are for Bitstamp and BTC-e:

Short EMA: 20    Long EMA: 42
Buy 1: 0    Buy 2: 0.15
Sell 1: 0    Sell 2: 0.1
30 minute time window.

These are the settings  I am using.  No trades since Dec 5, 2013 at 10:30 PM.