Building a trading system

Hello everyone,

To be honest I am fairly new to bitcoin. I wanted to get your views on the idea of building an automated trading system for bitcoin, mostly using the usual mid-frequency strategies (using basic signal processing and machine learning, etc) with a few high-frequency ones (exchange arbitrage, news analytics for example). This would include some system to get market data from exchanges, a front-end to create strategies, a system to run backtests, a system to connect to the market and send orders, a system to aggregate strategies and control risk/manage positions, etc. To give me a bit of credibility, I will say that I work as a quant in a major financial institution where I help develop trading algorithms for traditional asset classes.

I am in the (very) early stages of this idea but am fairly enthusiastic about it. Bitcoin seems to have huge spreads, I don't know much about other transaction costs. I'm really open to everyone's ideas and input. I'm giving myself a few weeks to see if it's feasible at all and if it has potential. Depending on this I would like to setup a small team of people who know how to write good software (I can write code myself but I am by no means an expert) to work on it (starting sometime in January?).

I welcome everyone's input. What do you think are the main characteristics and structure of the Bitcoin market? Spreads, liquidity, exchanges, participants, etc. ?

Thank you,

Gentil.