tl;dr - crypto trading bots make up around 38% of all trading volume. Some bots are overpriced and bad, some are slightly better and others are good.

Upon reading a thread in this sub not long ago, I came across someone wondering how much of the trading done in crypto is performed by bots. This got me thinking so I decided to delve deeper into how much they are used and whether they are any good.

How popular are these trading bots?

According to a survey published by Adam Cochran, (https://twitter.com/AdamScochran), “only 38% of users say they use bots, this number rises to about 86% if the amount of money moved is considered” (source: https://en.cryptonomist.ch/2019/08/21/research-crypto-trading-bots/).

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Trading bot services

Suffice to say that there are hundreds of these bots online, most of which aren’t very good. The majority of them have a subscription fee of around $20 per month for basic features, and then higher tiers that are more expensive, with more features.

For example, one of the most common crypto trading bots, 3Commas, has 4 plans:

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Doubtless, to say that many of these bots are very overpriced for what they offer, you can trade yourself for nearly free! I even found one called Pionex, which offered a “spot-futures arbitrage bot: low risk 15% to 50% APR”. I doubt it.

Needless to say, a lot of institutional investing is done by trading bots. Professional traders have strategies that need automated, and they can’t just stay up 24 hours a day and continuously trade. These bots are only as good as the trader commanding them and need to be changed constantly to reflect changing macro conditions etc.

There are some good boys (bots)

For example, many exchanges offer auto-investing features that allow you to pick a crypto that you want to buy or sell on a particular date or time. You can set these up to reoccur so that you can do your DCA hands-off (just remember to take your funds off the exchange afterward). Binance has a bot called Auto-Invest that does this, and which I personally use.

Conclusion

If you are looking to invest in cryptocurrency, do it yourself. Bots are not going to be much help and by the time you pay for your subscription, you will have less profit. However, if you believe that you have a trading strategy that works for you then trading bots may be helpful to execute that.

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