In this article we will cover how to quickly setup a trading bot for crypto-currencies. As the difficulty for BTC continues to rise the profit in mining coins continues to drop. A good method to make up those losses is with a trading bot which will work to increase your profit margin by making the moves needed on the market while you are away.

For this we will use the following tools:

• Turnkey Linux NODE.js VM
• Gekko Trading Bot
• Mt.Gox or BTCe account (w/ funds)

Setting up the Environment

First we will download the following Linux VM image

http://www.turnkeylinux.org/nodejs

(alternately you can just run the bot directly by downloading & installing http://nodejs.org/)

For step by step instructions for a Windows based install refer to this:

https://github.com/askmike/gekko/blob/master/docs/installing_gekko_on_windows.md

After downloading and booting the Linux VM image we prepare the host. After initial boot we choose the “Quit” option from the menu to get to a shell.

Once there:

apt-get install byobu
adduser coinmaker

(assign some strong passwords if required setup SSH keys)

git clone https://github.com/askmike/gekko.git /opt/gekko
chown -R coinmaker /opt/gekko
su – coinmaker
cd /opt/gekko/ && npm install

We can now run the bot to verify its functional:

node gekko

We can refer to https://github.com/askmike/gekko/blob/master/docs/Configuring_gekko.md for a full list of options available for the config.js file. To get going quickly change the following options:

cp config.js config.bkup && vi config.js

• Change the “exchange” to your preferred trading hub
• Change the currency setting to match your desired currency
• If you want to enable trading then add the API key/secret generated by your trading hub for your account
• Also change the tradingEnabled to true to allow trading.

config.normal = {
  enabled: true,
  exchange: 'MtGox', // 'MtGox', 'BTCe', 'Bitstamp' or 'cexio'
  currency: 'USD',
  asset: 'BTC',
  tradingEnabled: false,
  key: '',
  secret: '',
  username: 0 // only fill this is when using Bitstamp or cexio
}

Also ensure the “Advanced section” matches the settings in the config.normal section if you enable trading. This would include the Trading Hub set to “true” along with the same API key/secret used.

Now we can launch the bot and monitor its performance and trading from the console

 byobu && node gekko

2013-12-10 18:12:11 (INFO): Profit reporter active on simulated balance
2013-12-10 18:12:11 (INFO): Calculating EMA on historical data…
2013-12-10 18:14:31 (INFO): ADVICE is to BUY @ xxx.xxx (x.xxx)

And that’s it! Take a snapshot of the VM instance and clone away if you need to trade on more than one hub at a time.