gphummer / coinbase_exchange_bot

a trade bot for the coinbase exchange

Coinbase Exchange Trade Bot

This is an experimental / prototype project. Use with careful consideration.

About

A Coinbase exchange trade bot that uses the Websocket Feed and Authenticated API to make trades based on market spread or moving average trends. Utilizes the coinbase-exchange-node official node library.

The Bot

Overview:

• API Access configured through config.json
• intitializes the current USD and BTC account balance
• attempts to keep an up to date order book based on the websocket feed
• attempts to track the highest buy order price and lowest sell order price
• stores match orders in a "order" postgres table as defined in /bot/util/definitions.js
• stores settled buys and sells made by the bot in a "trade" postgres table also defined in /bot/util/definitions.js
• uses stored match data to calculate moving averages over 1, 3, 5, 10, and 15 minute time intervals
• differences in moving averages defined in /bot/trend.js
• primary app logic defined in /bot/macd.js
• buy and sell order wrappers are defined in /bot/order/buy_order.js and /bot/order/sell_order.js
• the primary logic for deciding trade price margins, trade amounts, and tracking active and last active orders is located in /bot/trade_manager/trade_manager.js
• when a buy or sell order is placed, the api will be polled at an interval as defined in /bot/order/order.js until the order is settled or hits a max try count and is cancelled, at which point a trend shift is identified or the order is retried at a new price
• the bot will only make one buy or sell order at a time, attempting to pair one with the other, unless the trend changes and the next order is no longer favorable. e.g. If the trend is bullish, a buy order is placed. If the buy order is successful it will then wait until the trend switches to bearish and then place a sell order.

Set up your environment

Edit config.json and enter your key, secret, and passphrase. DO NOT COMMIT THESE VALUES TO GITHUB.

Install dependencies:

npm install

Initialize postgres:

initdb /usr/local/var/postgres -E utf8

Run postgres:

postgres -D /usr/local/var/postgres

Create your postgres database:

createdb

Set the DATABASE_URL environment variable:

export DATABASE_URL=postgres:///$(whoami)

To run the bot:

./bot/run.js -a macd

Note: most bot status info and debugging done through the console

The Dash Server

An unfinished dash server is also included. If started after the bot it will connect to the websocket feed exposed by the bot which emits successful buy and sell order data. Order data will then be emitted in turn to a dash which is simply appended to the page.

The dash requires gulp to be run in order to include compiled js and less. Gulpfile is setup to support Babel and Browserify

Notes

I'm opening this project up because it's success is marginal or not currently worthwhile at scale. Also, I hope that someone else can benefit from the example of interacting with the exchange API. This was an experiment in learning more about BTC exchanges and automated trading. At very small order sizes, trading on the spread or using moving averages is sometimes successful. However, when attempting to increase trade size, the bot does not account for partial order fills, and the exchange volume and trade sizes make success more complex / difficult.