Crypto Algo Trading In 5 Minutes

Having created a trading account I have had my first taste of active trading.

How Easy Is It?

When I ask people if they’ve algo traded, typically, they look at me in surprise. Algo trading is a complex operation, requiring detailed market knowledge, careful forethought and expert level coding skills. Even then, the risks must be considered - consider a small typo… runaway code… Doesn’t bare thinking about. Right?

Au contraire…

On exchanges like BitMEX, you can trade with as little as 1 cent. At any level of trading - even just playing with a few dollars you’re an equal peer with everyone else. You can limit your risks to be as low as you wish them to be.

Okay - but it’s complex to do it - there’s a steep learning curve - isn’t there?

No not really (get some coin and create a BitMEX account and then):

from bitmex import bitmex
api_key = 'ABCDEfghijkLMNOPqrstuvwxyz'
secret = 'abcdefg1234567ZYXWVUT9876543HIJKLMOpqrstuv654321'
client = bitmex(test=False, api_key=api_key, api_secret=secret)
sym = 'ETHUSD'
qty = 10
c_order = client.Order.Order_new(symbol=sym, orderQty=qty).result()

There - you just bought 10 contracts - effectively $10 worth of Ethereum. Try it yourself right now!

(to be fair you must first install Python and then the bitmex package, but that's really easy).

But That’s Not An Algo!

To make the above code into an algo is basically putting it in a loop. Of course it must buy at the appropriate levels and probably sell at others. Various strategies are well-known and reasonable - and that’s where it gets fun. You’re now in competition with all the other traders (algo or not).