How to automate cryptocurrency trading?

Oadmani · Dec 11, 2021

Hello,

I am relatively new to automated trading, and was wondering which is a good platform to connect with Binance?

I manually enter my strategies currently, and I am not that well-versed with programming in python. I have searched a few websites, but I cannot customize strategies at those websites.

Any suggestions are appreciated.

Snuskpelle · Dec 11, 2021

Check out QuantConnect.com I guess, IMO as easy as it gets to start up. They don't do much in the way hybrid discretionary/algo trading i.e. semi-automation though, but it's always possible to check if something could work there first and then port the algo to your own trading platform.

Writing Python code is not that hard to learn in a few weeks unless your brain really isn't wired for that kind of thinking. Yeah there are "visual coding" environments etc. but all of them ultimately become more complicated than actual coding for programs of any meaningful complexity.

Axon · Dec 11, 2021

Oadmani said:
Hello,
Any suggestions are appreciated.
More...

I posted https://www.elitetrader.com/et/threads/price-action-with-python.336412/#post-4937493
a while back. You might find it helpful. My system is built mostly in Python and has adhered pretty closely to what's in that post for years and it still works.
Check this out too: https://github.com/ccxt/ccxt/wiki/Manual
That's the ccxt library that abstracts the api of over a hundred different crypto exchanges so you can access them all the same way. Definitely works in python but I wanna say it's built for PHP and Node (Javascript) too. There's a Java api abstraction library too but the name escapes me and it isn't related to ccxt.

Axon said:
I may be a bit unorthodox and though I'm very familiar with it, I've never felt the need to use Pandas. The work flow is pretty straightforward so here's an example:
The feeds I'm familiar with use either FIX or web sockets and I'll assume the latter since it's more common. Check the data provider's documentation for the api endpoint you need for ticker data or whatever then use something like the lomond web socket library to connect to it and start pulling the data.

Then whether you're storing tick by tick or generating candle stick charts from the feed, you need to store it somewhere. My suggestion is either redis using the rejson library (in memory database so very fast and supports concurrent reads and writes), sqlite if you need the speed, want to save memory and don't mind having to fiddle to get concurrent reads and writes working, or something more traditional and heavy weight like mysql or postgresql. But put it somewhere. Personally while I store my data in a database, my scripts that actually perform the trading also keep all charts in memory to avoid the latency of hitting the database. The database is just there so the data is persistent.

So now you have data continuously being put in a database. Now you need to apply your edge to the data. My edge is statistical and doesn't make use of any traditional indicators so I don't use any libraries like ta-lib though if you are looking for that, ta-lib is quite good. For my edge, the scipy and built-in python statistics library are quite sufficient. So with those two, I have my algorithm do its thing and if it finds what I'm looking for, it sets an order.

After setting an order, I use the information generated with scipy and statistics to decide where to sell. This is all automated.

To actually see the charts is where matplotlib comes in and for candlesticks, you will specifically need the mpl_finance library. Matplotlib is very complex and has a steep learning curve but the upshot is it's extremely powerful and feature rich so you can use it to visually interact with the data however you want. You can set buys, sells, cancels, or whatever else you need by clicking directly on the chart, it updates in real time, etc. That's the most basic of what it does but when you learn it, you will be able to program it to do anything you can imagine a chart could do which in itself can give an edge since you will be able to see the data in ways maybe other people haven't thought of.

Lastly, if you're interested in crypto, check out the excellent ccxt library that abstracts the api for over a hundred exchanges and lets you interact with all of them the same way and makes things like cross exchange arbitrage easier. For a free stock feed that gives somewhat useful data, check out iexcloud (just google it). The free data is limited to orders ran through the IEX exchange which is a smaller one so it's not perfect but I've found it useful and it's free so there's that.

So a beginner's library list based on my experience:
lomond
rejson
scipy
statistics
ta-lib
matplotlib
mpl_finance
ccxt
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fan27 · Dec 11, 2021

Oadmani said:
Hello,

I am relatively new to automated trading, and was wondering which is a good platform to connect with Binance?

I manually enter my strategies currently, and I am not that well-versed with programming in python. I have searched a few websites, but I cannot customize strategies at those websites.

Any suggestions are appreciated.
More...

Do you have any programming experience?

GilYoungJo · Dec 11, 2021

Nice thread. I will follow

Gil Young Jo

traider · Dec 11, 2021

Github has tons of projects

persistence · Dec 11, 2021

https://binance-docs.github.io/apidocs/spot/en/#change-log

If you don't want to go this route, search for "binance + the programming language you know".

kroxobor · Dec 12, 2021

Oadmani said:
Hello,

I am relatively new to automated trading, and was wondering which is a good platform to connect with Binance?

I manually enter my strategies currently, and I am not that well-versed with programming in python. I have searched a few websites, but I cannot customize strategies at those websites.

Any suggestions are appreciated.
More...

They have Rest API as well as websockets, it's not a difficult to thing to pull data, however much harder to devise profitable strategies based on that data. However in the long-run for example altocoin returns are easy to make but relatively unsustainable because of crashes, I was surprised when I found out that some old algo things work perfectly there. But sudden crash erases those profits.

Oadmani · Dec 13, 2021

fan27 said:
Do you have any programming experience?
More...

I don't have much experience with programming apart from spreadsheets.

fan27 · Dec 13, 2021

Oadmani said:
I don't have much experience with programming apart from spreadsheets.
More...

In that case I suggest you don't attempt to automate anything. Plenty of money to be made without automation.