My trading BOT made 1,440 crypto trades in 1 week

I noticed early on there were market inefficiencies in the crypto markets, even within the exchanges. With some simple python code and I was able to confirm that a 4-round trade could produce 5% and sometimes 10% gains even with trading fees in under a second.

This article is not investing advice, I am telling a story of my experiences.

This is called arbitrage: “The simultaneous purchase and sale of equivalent assets or of the same asset in multiple markets in order to exploit a temporary discrepancy in prices.”

This is a typical trade. My software would loop through over possible trade combinations and pick the highest estimated return and make 4 simultaneous trades at once.

Sounds simple and it is, but the mechanics are much more complex.

If you get one thing from this article, realize this is a story of liquidity. It may be crypto, but the laws of economics hold, just as if we are trading cows for sheep for corn back to cows.

Hurdle #1: Performing trades via code.

You’ll need an account on a cryptocurrency exchange that allows computerized trading. This means setting up code to interface with the exchange’s APIs. Given security is paramount all trading is done with an API Key unique to your account…