Aricie: Announcing a new trading bots platform

[Aricie]

Hi,

I did a couple of updates today, and apparently something went wrong with the invalid credentials detection mechanism.
I'm investigating that right now.

Sorry for the inconvenience,

Jesse

[Aricie]

Things should be alright now.

I had to restore many bots, which got disabled for some reason.
I'm sorry if you got notification emails related to that issues.
In case something similar happen again, further notification email will include the Json Response that triggered the ban, and I'll keep a log of that event too.

Cheers

[zapeta]

Things should be alright now.

I had to restore many bots, which got disabled for some reason.
I'm sorry if you got notification emails related to that issues.
In case something similar happen again, further notification email will include the Json Response that triggered the ban, and I'll keep a log of that event too.

Cheers

Thanks for fixing this!  I really like the platform and it keeps getting better, so thank you for your hard work.

[Aricie]

Thanks for fixing this!  I really like the platform and it keeps getting better, so thank you for your hard work.

Thanks for your support.
As you may know, we're looking for active contributors now.
If you have .Net skills or if you can think of improvements, please let us know.

Cheers

[matthewh3]

Trying this out with 1BTC 

[matthewh3]

Hi can this bot be used on BTC-E USD/BTC or Intersango GBP/BTC which both have a bigger volume than Cypto X change also Mt.Gox EUR/BTC would be good too.  Also will the standard definitions for the bot ever be updated in future.

[marked]

You have to scrape BTC-e as it doesn't currently have a working trading api.

marked

[Aricie]

Hi can this bot be used on BTC-E USD/BTC or Intersango GBP/BTC which both have a bigger volume than Cypto X change also Mt.Gox EUR/BTC would be good too.  Also will the standard definitions for the bot ever be updated in future.

Hi,

We are currently concentrating our efforts on releasing a documented version of the underlying general purpose bot platform.
When this is done, I will update the source repository with a clean package, and I will make another call for contributions.
Supporting new APIs or implementing distinct Strategies is quite straight forward if you know C# or any other .Net language.
Hopefully we can get a couple of coders to adopt the hosting environment and contribute to the trading material or simply push their own flavor of the dnnbitcoin demo website.

Cheers,

Jesse

[ohforf]

After many hours of tweaking the Bots Parameters, i finally got it trading like i want.
Some Criticism:
- The User Interface is horrible. I have to click back and forth through the (slow) Menu,
while all the Parameters of 1 Bot would fit on the Screen just fine.
- It takes 10-20 Minutes to see the Result of the Trading Strategy.
a Preview would make it much faster and easier to tweak the Parameters.
- I get logged out without a Warning or Notification and have to enter Username and Password again (using Firefox "Nightly").
- Why the "Master Bot" ? AFAIK, i can only make one MtGox Account without breaking the Rules there.
so a single Bot for each User should be enough. Keep it simple.

I'm sure with some Improvements of Userfriendlyness, Dnn Bitcoin would attract a lot more People.
Also, thank you for providing this free Service.

[Aricie]

Hi,
thanks for you valuable feedback.
I'll try to address some of your concerns

- The User Interface is horrible. I have to click back and forth through the (slow) Menu,
while all the Parameters of 1 Bot would fit on the Screen just fine.

I have to agree the user interface is far from perfect. This is mainly due to the fact that it is automatically generated by Reflection on the DOM classes properties (there is no Bitcoin specific UI).
Although that default behavior won't be changed soon, I reckon I can improve the usability by reducing the number of postbacks needed to navigate the various sections.
I'll look into this before applying the next upgrade

- It takes 10-20 Minutes to see the Result of the Trading Strategy.
a Preview would make it much faster and easier to tweak the Parameters.

That was asked already, and I'll consider introducing previews and charts although that probably won't be for the next release.
In the mean time, if you want to experiment with the available parameters, I highly encourage you to install the platform locally from the source repository.
You'll be able to run your bot on demand with no delay, and you can report your settings online when you're happy with your local custom strategy.

- I get logged out without a Warning or Notification and have to enter Username and Password again (using Firefox "Nightly").

It is quite unusual but we've add a couple of issues with our web farming environment recently, which required application restarts.
This is getting sorted and it might have been the cause for your account getting logged out.

- Why the "Master Bot" ? AFAIK, i can only make one MtGox Account without breaking the Rules there.
so a single Bot for each User should be enough. Keep it simple.

Master and User bots are website administrators concerns: admins can create master bot definitions online, and optionally turn them into "user bots" available individually to the regular website users with a subset of editable parameters.
The read-only Master bot definition, which you can browse below your configuration, simply displays the inner workings of your bot.

Regards,

Jesse

[ohforf]

...
In the mean time, if you want to experiment with the available parameters, I highly encourage you to install the platform locally from the source repository.
You'll be able to run your bot on demand with no delay, and you can report your settings online when you're happy with your local custom strategy.
...

I tried that with Version 12044. Didnt work for me. IIS config was broken.
Then I downloaded 12594. This one works. 

[mroth7684]

Is there a way to adjust the ask/bid ratio? for example all the bitcoin value asks are set significantly higher than the bids. I keep finding that the majority of my bitcoins get sold off into USD and barely get converted back to bitcoins to be reinvested. I'd rather have it set more equal to where it's buying and selling equal or simular amounts bitcoins.

[Aricie]

Is there a way to adjust the ask/bid ratio? for example all the bitcoin value asks are set significantly higher than the bids. I keep finding that the majority of my bitcoins get sold off into USD and barely get converted back to bitcoins to be reinvested. I'd rather have it set more equal to where it's buying and selling equal or simular amounts bitcoins.

Hi,

there are several parameters to adjust the ask/bid ratio:

The easiest are the reserve percentages: if you have significantly more btcs than $ and wish to keep the unbalance, then define a higher ask reserve percentage than the bid reserve percentage. Otherwise, the bot will naturally tend  to balance both resources on the long run thus issue higher asks than bids.

Now this is because the inner order values are computed from the outer order boundaries, which in turn are issued automatically as the "Default Max Order" percentage of your available resources (accounting for your reserve percentages), and then dynamically increased by the "Volume increase factor" parameter or reset by the "Low resource reset factor" parameter while your available resources change.
You can also choose to manually define your outer orders as you see fit and control the whole distribution that way; just make sure that those last 2 parameters won't cancel your manual setup (for instance you may increase "volume increase factor" to prevent a small outer order being automatically increased, and decrease "low resource reset factor" to prevent a high outer order relative to the corresponding resource triggering a cancel)

Finally, you can also start playing with the inner orders distributions and pricer expressions, which can be defined independently for asks and for bids. i'm pretty sure there is some room for improvements in that section, and that the default asymmetrical expressions to account for linear order values are largely sub-optimal.

In any case, feel free to install the platform locally to do your tests as suggested earlier, since having to wait for each run is not very practical.

Cheers,

Jesse

[mroth7684]

I've been reading the information section on the site about the different customization parameters for the bot but I seem to be having a pickle of a time trying to get the bot to make larger value trades. By default it's setup to buy and sell fractions of a bitcoin and then increase throughout the trading band. I'm trying to get it to make larger initial trades say 20-30 bitcoins and then increasing from there throughout the trading band. Maybe you can provide some help to see what I'm doing wrong; my username is the same.

[Aricie]

I've been reading the information section on the site about the different customization parameters for the bot but I seem to be having a pickle of a time trying to get the bot to make larger value trades. By default it's setup to buy and sell fractions of a bitcoin and then increase throughout the trading band. I'm trying to get it to make larger initial trades say 20-30 bitcoins and then increasing from there throughout the trading band. Maybe you can provide some help to see what I'm doing wrong; my username is the same.

The key is to reduce the number of orders if you want them of higher value, to account for your limited resources. This is explained in those earlier posts.   

I just checked your account; you chose to reduce the band width to 8% of the price, with 20% of your resources allocated to outer orders, 30% of those 20% to central orders and a linear variation in value in between. You also kept the 99% linear step progression, while reducing the central margin to 0.3%.
From your history, it seems that your asks have been getting cancelled every other run, probably because of the "Low resource reset factor" parameter, which I just set from 2 to 0 to prevent further cancels for now (about 8 orders from 20% to 7% of your resources ==> there was less than 2 * the outer ask value =40% of resources after everything issued, thus the reset)

That also means your current settings are still a little too high. Also, I reckon that only reducing the band width is a bit risky to account for larger price changes. I would suggest looking at the orders distribution steps: either go for an exponential distribution to have close steps near the ticker and larger steps going outwards, or set a larger near constant linear step (e.g 95% instead of 99%), which implies increasing the central margin, because you won't want a central margin narrower than the central distribution steps.

I also unchecked the "Account for trends" parameter to make sure asks and bids always get issued while you're updating your configuration.
You may want to check that parameter again when you're satisfied and everything is set.

Edit: Apparently you're doing some changes yourself at the moment, so I'd rather post this now.
BTW, did you try installing the platform locally to do your tests in real time?

Regards,

Jesse

[mroth7684]

Hey thanks for responding. I haven't been able to install my own to test bot since I would need to setup a windows web server.

I had tried to reset the changes I made earlier today back to the defaults and then make minor changes to the reserve and band sizes since the changes I made last night seemed to have borked things up. The changes I keep making are conflicting with other settings like you said so I guess I'm not reading the descriptions of the variables correctly to know exactly what the changes I'm making are doing.

Currently I just dropped my reserve to 5%, dropped the default band size to 20%, and changed max order to 10% with min order to 30% of that. I also switched it to the exponential instead of linear. I decided to keep the default 0.6 for central margin and order updates.

I tried doing the math for changing the linear to 95 instead of 99 like you suggested but it seemed like the steps would then be way larger than they needed to be to turn a profit. I'll have to keep an eye on the history to see if its still canceling orders and try to make sure I didn't sent my settings too high still.

I think it might be more profitable to try to make more trades at the inner band with higher min orders than to wait for large shifts in bitcoin price and trading at the outer band. It seems more common for bitcoin to fluctuate 10-15 cents higher or lower than the market price than 50 cents to $1.

[Aricie]

Hey thanks for responding. I haven't been able to install my own to test bot since I would need to setup a windows web server.

You don't need a windows web server. Any windows will do, provided you have IIS enabled and sql server express installed.
Using Web Platform Installer or Web Matrix from the DotNetNuke download page will take care of most of those things.
DotNetNuke in turns has got an install wizard that does most of the job, and there's another wizard to install the bot farm extensions, with the bitcoin bots and user bots installed by default.
It's really all about checking boxes and clicking buttons before you can have your own dnnbitcoin locally with admin access to the engine and definitions.

I had tried to reset the changes I made earlier today back to the defaults and then make minor changes to the reserve and band sizes since the changes I made last night seemed to have borked things up. The changes I keep making are conflicting with other settings like you said so I guess I'm not reading the descriptions of the variables correctly to know exactly what the changes I'm making are doing.

It's ok, the variable names are a bit cumbersome and they haven't changed for a while. Just keep in mind that the bot won't issue orders with unprovisioned resources to you have to figure out the right tradeoff, by making progressive changes from a stable config. Don't hesitate to make the 2 changes mentioned in my previous post to get rid of cancels and trends accounting.
 

Currently I just dropped my reserve to 5%, dropped the default band size to 20%, and changed max order to 10% with min order to 30% of that. I also switched it to the exponential instead of linear. I decided to keep the default 0.6 for central margin and order updates.

I tried doing the math for changing the linear to 95 instead of 99 like you suggested but it seemed like the steps would then be way larger than they needed to be to turn a profit. I'll have to keep an eye on the history to see if its still canceling orders and try to make sure I didn't sent my settings too high still.

That looks alright to me. The exponential distribution will change everything. You can progressively increase the boundaries by refering to your history: the balance associated with passed series or orders represents the available resources at the time of the computation (accounting for the reserve and provisioned resources for existing orders). This is the value to compare to your outer bounds and update multipliers.

[mroth7684]

I just decided to go back to the defaults and then change settings by 1 or 2 numbers at a time until I get it how I want it or it breaks. However I noticed now it is making 22 asks and no bids. I've seen it do a bunch of bids and no asks before also yesterday. Is this normal? I've got resources in BTC and USD so I'd think it would be creating both asks and bids...

[Aricie]

I just decided to go back to the defaults and then change settings by 1 or 2 numbers at a time until I get it how I want it or it breaks. However I noticed now it is making 22 asks and no bids. I've seen it do a bunch of bids and no asks before also yesterday. Is this normal? I've got resources in BTC and USD so I'd think it would be creating both asks and bids...

That has to be the "Account for trends" parameters, which won't issue orders against the current trend if any.
Feel free to uncheck it so that both kinds of orders get issued, and maybe check it again when everything is in place, as it prevents potential duplicates with small oscillations.

[matthewh3]

In using the bot over the last month for the first time the bot has made -

6.088% earnings per period, $0.27942 total earnings, 6.088% total earnings,  -0.17068% total earnings fixed price, -3.386% total earnings fixed price $.

Also it looks like it hasn't made a trade in nearly four weeks.  I understand the market has been very steady recently but is this normal or is it because I'm using CryptoXchange.  If so would it be better to use MtGox as the exchange or do the settings need changing?