[ANN] MarginBot - A Bitfinex Margin Lending Management Bot

[HowardF]

Just a warning for everyone running MarginBot on default settings.  The Bitfinex FRR monster is pushing interest rates below .065%, which is the default "Minimum Lend Rate" setting.    If you want to insure your money stays lent out, make sure to change this to a lower number, or alternatively, move your money into other investments while waiting for the Bitfinex rate to increase.  For reference, 0.065% is about 23% / year after fees, and .05% which is the lowest I will take before moving to other investments ends up being about 17% / year after fees...

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[Sukrim]

The Bitfinex FRR monster is pushing interest rates below .065%

And your bot is helping that by automatically undercutting it, forcing it down further...

I agree that everybody should set their minimal rate they are comfortable with and then also stick to that. That way interest rates will sort themselves out, no matter the FRR or not.

[HowardF]

Just released a new version of the bot, v0.1.05.

This is an important update for everyone to install, as it fixes a bug that was allowing the bot to put in loan offers under your "Minimum Lend Rate" setting at times.

To update, just save a copy of your existing inc/config.php file, download the latest version and overwrite everything on the server, then upload your saved inc/config.php file.  Everything should be ready to go.

New features include:

v0.1.05

• If only 1 user account is set up, stats page only shows 1 chart
        (instead of "Global" and that user, which would always be identical)
• Lots of small fixes for WAMP servers
• Added a pause feature to disable lending

[Sukrim]

Got some recent return numbers? As you're forced to undercut FRR most of the time it would be interesting to compare December returns...

[jabetizo]

I noticed in the taskbar that the website interface of the bot sometimes loads google-analytics.com, is this normal?

[HowardF]

Got some recent return numbers? As you're forced to undercut FRR most of the time it would be interesting to compare December returns...

Yeah, results are posted for a $5,000 account here daily:

http://fuckedgox.com/MBot/

I did change minimum rate to .025 on that bot, so I can at least get results, but I haven't updated the page explanation.

I noticed in the taskbar that the website interface of the bot sometimes loads google-analytics.com, is this normal?

Yeah, it's just a Google code I accidentally left in the footer from my base template.  You can delete it if you don't like it there, it won't hurt the bot any, and I'll pull it from the next release.

[Sukrim]

Hm, interestingly I get significantly better results than the bot now with 30 day FRR autolend - but that likely will change once the market goes upwards again because there's no chance to catch some short high rate profits with that strategy. Looking at the BTC lending market though even with fluctuating prices FRR seems to be mostly "good enough" still, even with undercutting bots.

The difference is about 0.1% less over December with 0 maintenance and managing costs (your returns: ~1.44%, mine 1.34%).

[noggin-scratcher]

Hm, interestingly I get significantly better results than the bot now with 30 day FRR autolend

I'm curious; what's the wait-time like to get a swap taken at FRR? Seems like there's a lot of funds on offer compared to the number/value of FRR swaps taken in a day.

[Sukrim]

If you tell me an automated way to extract this information from the downloadable CSV files, I'm happy to help. When I wrote this, FRR was the lowest offer for borrowing for 30 days btw.

[ASutas]

Not by me at least so far, I might have to do it though, as the returns seem viable (I'd still love to see data points back to before November, back when swaps rates were more sideways). I am not much of a fan of PHP and setting up MySQL just to run something that checks a market every 10 minutes and sends a couple orders - also I don't need the UI and stuff like that, so I might just carve out the algorithm and put it into a smaller commandline only bot...

I felt the same way so I built https://github.com/eAndrius/BitfinexLendingBot in my spare time (no LAMP required). Pull requests encouraged!

[HowardF]

Hm, interestingly I get significantly better results than the bot now w
...
The difference is about 0.1% less over December with 0 maintenance and managing costs (your returns: ~1.44%, mine 1.34%).

So, are your results better than the bot, or just better than they were?  from the above I take it your return is .1% lower than the bots?  Also, I'd point out so far this month, I've logged into MarginBot once, just too look at my charts.  So, maintenance and management are a non-issue.

[HowardF]

Not by me at least so far, I might have to do it though, as the returns seem viable (I'd still love to see data points back to before November, back when swaps rates were more sideways). I am not much of a fan of PHP and setting up MySQL just to run something that checks a market every 10 minutes and sends a couple orders - also I don't need the UI and stuff like that, so I might just carve out the algorithm and put it into a smaller commandline only bot...

I felt the same way so I built https://github.com/eAndrius/BitfinexLendingBot in my spare time (no LAMP required). Pull requests encouraged!

Good Work.  I built MarginBot to live on a webserver because I didn't want to constantly leave a desktop on and running the bot.  I'd rather not hear loud fans running all night, and I'd rather the bot live on a rack with guaranteed power and 100% internet uptime, but for people with a good server or extra desktop at home, a command-line bot makes sense.

For those that don't want to run it at home though, this bot will perform well on any cheap php hosting plan, like bluehosts or godaddys $2/month plans.

[Sukrim]

Hm, interestingly I get significantly better results than the bot now w
...
The difference is about 0.1% less over December with 0 maintenance and managing costs (your returns: ~1.44%, mine 1.34%).

So, are your results better than the bot, or just better than they were?

Recently better than the bot, over whole december 0.1% less than the bot.

Here's a quick chart in Excel (depending on how you use your dates on your site, there might be an off by one error):


It seems your strategy might catch up soon, especially if some larger loans get returned and it takes some time to chew through undercutters (hence the 30 day limit, it doesn't take long to find takers at this duration even at rates that are >10% higher than the lowest current short term rates).
Unfortunately https://github.com/eAndrius/BitfinexLendingBot doesn't publish USD returns (only BTC, which are interesting too but far more jaggy usually, also I'm not too willing to publish returns there), otherwise it would be another interesting data point to have.

[gabbello]

Nice work.

How does this work for lending BTC? Since I only have BTC in my account I see that it shows my BTC balance where USD balance is shown (in UI). Does this mean that the Gap Bottom and Gap Top should also be expressed in BTC volume and not USD volume?

[HowardF]

Nice work.

How does this work for lending BTC? Since I only have BTC in my account I see that it shows my BTC balance where USD balance is shown (in UI). Does this mean that the Gap Bottom and Gap Top should also be expressed in BTC volume and not USD volume?

If your talking about MarginBot, it actually doesn't handle BTC or LTC lending right now, only USD.  I may add BTC in the near future, but up until recently it wasn't worth it for the rates in my mind to lend BTC.  The rates used to be so much lower that converting to USD and lending that, then converting back to BTC would have better returns even if the rate of BTC went up by $100's.   With margin rates how they are now though, I imagine theres a lot more reason to lend BTC.

[gabbello]

Thanks for the reply, I hope you will add this soon. I thought this works even now since for some reason my BTC balance appears as "Deposit Balance" in current implementation (e.g. I have 3 BTC in my account and I see $3.00 in MarginBot). I'll keep an eye on this thread for news.

[ASutas]

Not by me at least so far, I might have to do it though, as the returns seem viable (I'd still love to see data points back to before November, back when swaps rates were more sideways). I am not much of a fan of PHP and setting up MySQL just to run something that checks a market every 10 minutes and sends a couple orders - also I don't need the UI and stuff like that, so I might just carve out the algorithm and put it into a smaller commandline only bot...

I felt the same way so I built https://github.com/eAndrius/BitfinexLendingBot in my spare time (no LAMP required). Pull requests encouraged!

Good Work.  I built MarginBot to live on a webserver because I didn't want to constantly leave a desktop on and running the bot.  I'd rather not hear loud fans running all night, and I'd rather the bot live on a rack with guaranteed power and 100% internet uptime, but for people with a good server or extra desktop at home, a command-line bot makes sense.

For those that don't want to run it at home though, this bot will perform well on any cheap php hosting plan, like bluehosts or godaddys $2/month plans.

a webserver where you have access to crontab? Surely you will have access to GNU Screen as well Also, no need for a "good" server like LAMP stacks require, simple headless rpi will be more than enough! The nice thing about yours is that you can use a GUI.

[ASutas]

Nice work.

How does this work for lending BTC? Since I only have BTC in my account I see that it shows my BTC balance where USD balance is shown (in UI). Does this mean that the Gap Bottom and Gap Top should also be expressed in BTC volume and not USD volume?

https://github.com/eAndrius/BitfinexLendingBot can do any Bitfinex-supported currency trading Moreover, it has different trading strategies, which you can compare here: https://docs.google.com/a/sutas.eu/spreadsheets/d/1lUwuN0KUwVIDBCxXOMNBsZyx_XsB1ND_KFmAJlUMRKQ

[gabbello]

Unfortunately I'm not familiar with go and I have some difficulties starting this. I managed to install go under ubuntu, configured variables as below:
export GOROOT=/usr/lib/go
export GOPATH=$HOME/go
export PATH=$PATH:$GOROOT/bin:$GOPATH/bin

Then I do: go get -u github.com/eAndrius/bitfinex-go this creates the go folder in $HOME/go.

I'm not sure where I should run "go build". I presume I should run this from folder:  $HOME/go/src/github.com/eAndrius/bitfinex-go
I run this, there is no error, but nothing seems to happen.

And in this folder I just have the files:
LICENSE  README.md  bitfinex.go  bitfinex_test.go  glide.yaml  img

There is no default.conf and, of course, no ./BitfinexLendingBot script.

[HowardF]

Unfortunately I'm not familiar with go and I have some difficulties starting this. I managed to install go under ubuntu, configured variables as below:
export GOROOT=/usr/lib/go
export GOPATH=$HOME/go
export PATH=$PATH:$GOROOT/bin:$GOPATH/bin

Then I do: go get -u github.com/eAndrius/bitfinex-go this creates the go folder in $HOME/go.

I'm not sure where I should run "go build". I presume I should run this from folder:  $HOME/go/src/github.com/eAndrius/bitfinex-go
I run this, there is no error, but nothing seems to happen.

And in this folder I just have the files:
LICENSE  README.md  bitfinex.go  bitfinex_test.go  glide.yaml  img

There is no default.conf and, of course, no ./BitfinexLendingBot script.

Guys, can we keep this thread focused on MarginBot please?  I don't want people getting confused about what script your discussing.  If you want to discuss or need support on the other script, please start a thread for it.