I couldn’t take it anymore, so I set out to build a simple trading bot. I set it up with Kraken, which has a nice API, and built it on my VPS with Codex.

The shills on Twitter are always posting about how these bots make so much money overnight. My problem is that I am extremely risk-averse. I want zero exposure to shitcoins, or even stocks for that matter. I am really only interested in BTC/USD.

My thought process is that if I entered a position and ended up holding Bitcoin during a drawdown, I would be okay with that. My thesis is NGU over time. I know it will come back up. You can’t say that about the shitcoins.

The big question I haven’t answered is whether I can outperform simply buying and holding BTC. My gut instinct is NO because I am an amateur, and it is honestly insane to think I can outperform Bitcoin. BUT sometimes you have to get reckless, and here we are.

I am trying to use Bitcoin’s price volatility to my advantage by entering short-term buy and sell positions that make enough profit to cover the fees.

Tier	30-Day Volume	Assets on Platform	Maker Fee	Taker Fee
Tier 1 (Base)	$0+	N/A	0.40%	0.80%
Tier 3	$10,000+	$20,000+	0.22%	0.38%
Tier 5	$50,000+	$100,000+	0.15%	0.30%
Tier 7	$250,000+	$400,000+	0.10%	0.22%
Tier 12	$10M+	$10M+	0.00%	0.10%
Pro 5 (Lowest)	$500M+	$100M+	0.00%	0.05%

This chart shows how much you can make on each trade if you roll your profits into the next one. It takes 30-plus trades at 2.25% each to double your money. The question is how long it will take to reach that goal, and whether this strategy can outperform simply buying and holding Bitcoin.

The platform is called Traderboy. It allows me to create multiple sleeves with different rules for entering and exiting positions. For example, a sleeve might watch the daily high, place a buy order after an X% drop, and then sell that position after a Y% gain.

I have multiple positions set up with different rules, and each one rolls its proceeds into the next position.

Here is what the dashboard looks like. You can get an idea of the different sleeves and see the buy and sell activity on the chart.

I only have $200 deployed, and it has made a little over a dollar. That is a tiny amount, yes, I know. But I am going to keep tweaking it and see what happens over time.

One thing I have noticed is that during a drawdown, especially a big dip, you can get stuck holding BTC. You won’t be able to keep trading the volatility until the price rises again. Because I don’t want to exit the position and lose money on the tight fee margins, I will just hold that BTC in the sleeve until the price reaches the necessary level.

I will deploy some more cash next paycheck so I can create more sleeves. Over time, there will be more capital deployed, and I will keep adding to the positions. Dips slow things down, but in a market with an upward trajectory, you can get the action you need.

With enough time, I should hit the number of trades needed to double my money. But can this outpace simply buying and holding Bitcoin?

Unlikely, but we will see.

This will probably be more fun, anyway. Activity bias is real, after all.