Trading
Automated Crypto Trading Using HaasOnline
Funding
I recommend starting with at least $3,000 to get into trading. You can start with less but your gains will be minimal and may not be enough to cover the reoccurring cost of the HaasOnline license renewal. The more you start with, the more rapidly your portfolio can grow. A 10% gain on $10,000 is considerably more than a 10% gain on $1,000!
Research
You will need to do a lot of research before purchasing the program. You should have a game plan going into this so you can begin trading the moment you purchase the program and set it up. Waste as little time as possible after your purchase!
Exchanges
HaasOnline supports a limited number of exchanges at the moment so you need to chose wisely of which ones you want to use. Higher volume exchanges are the most ideal. More volume gives the bots more data to analyze the market and it makes it easier to enter and exit positions. You can use the this information to determine which exchanges are the most ideal places to begin trading.
One of my favorites is Bitfinex. If you wish to get a 10% discount off your trading and margin funding fees on Bitfinex for the first month, use this link!
The below spreadsheet was updated 08/18/2017 and is based on the data from Coin Market Cap in combination with pair info from Crypto Compare. In addition to the exchanges below, HaasOnline also has a scripted driver in case you want to run your own scripted bots.
Pairs
Selecting pairs can be the most time consuming part of this process. It can be very tempting to sort a list of coins by the one with the most percentage increase in the last 24 hours and pick the top one but that would usually be a mistake as by that time most coins have already peaked or will start a downtrend very soon or have very little volume.
Look for coins with a lot of volume or market cap that have consistent gains. Avoid coins that have a spike in value. An ideal coin will have a nice gradual increase from the lower left to the upper right side of the chart. Check out the BTC, ETH, MAID, and WAVES charts in the image below! MAID being almost perfect! Using the graphs here you can quickly identify some excellent choices for your investment. Slow and steady wins the race.
Once you have picked the pair you want to trade, you need to decide which exchange to trade it on. I use Crypto Compare to pick a coin and then figure out what exchange to trade it on. They have a very useful BTC and USD top list. This part takes some patience as you need to work your way from the lowest volume coin to the highest picking which exchange to trade on. Also, you need to determine if it is supported on the exchanges HaasOnline is compatible with.
HaasOnline works best with one pair per coin/currency as the bots are not smart enough to know which fund belong to them at this point. For example, if you had a BTC/USD bot and a ETH/USD bot and both of them sold, their combined value of USD would be scooped up by the first bot receiving a buy signal if they are both set to be "All In". You can program the bots to trade with a set value but that potentially leaves the gains from your trades untouched unless you manually add it to the total the bot is able to trade with.
Record which pairs and on what exchanges you wish to start with and we will use that to build the bots off of later in the tutorial.
Diversification
Exchanges have been know to have various issues from outages, being hacked, or sometimes even being involved with fraud. Any of these issues can take you out of the game for a time or even permanently. I had about $1,000 worth of LTC on BTC-e when it was shut down by the authorities. Thankfully I have funds distributed on 5 other exchanges so it was not a total loss.
I recommend you put no more than $1,000 on each exchange when starting and split that between 2 pairs. 1 USD pair and 1 BTC (or other crypto) pair. Each time you earn an additional $1,000 worth, move it to another exchange and follow the same strategy there. Continue this until you have at least 4 or more of the major exchanges covered.
You should diversify your coin parings as well. Don't pick the same coins on each exchange. There are some coins that have almost a mirror image to main coins like BTC so that when BTC is down 5%, they are up 5% or more. This will balance your portfolio and minimize losses. The behavior of coins change continually so you need to check the market and see which coins performed the best during the last dip or current dip and make your move to that as a hedge against dips.
Hardware
Once you have your funds spread out properly, it is time to get some hardware to run the program on. Since the program must have a running (Windows/Mac/Linux) machine at all times and an unbroken connection to the internet you would be wise to set up a dedicated machine to run the program. In Puerto Rico we have very frequent power outages with some lasting for days! My setup may be a little overboard but it may give you an idea of what is required.
I recommend using a laptop with at least an i7 chip as there is a lot of data to process and calculations to be made on top of running the program. A power efficient laptop is good to have but sometimes they lack the processing power needed. I have my Lenovo ideapad Y700 laptop connected to an APC UPS XS-1300 battery backup and an Alcatel Linkzone WM41 hotspot from T-Mobile connected via USB to the laptop so once the battery backup is depleted the hotspot will continue to run off the laptop's power. I have the laptop in airplane mode with the WiFi disabled and the hotspot providing internet via the USB to further reduce battery drain in the case the battery backup is drained. The laptop is connected via Ethernet cable directly to the cable modem. Once it loses connection to the network due to a power outage it switches to the wireless network.
Go into your power settings and make sure the "on power" and "on battery" are configured to never sleep/hibernate/or put the drive to sleep. It need to keep running until the bitter end. You should set your brightness "on battery" to the very minimum. To cut down even more battery drain, I have set my laptop to not respond to the lid being closed except to shut off the backlit keyboard and it will still run as if it is open. Lastly, if your device has a touch screen, you can disable it through the Device Manager. In Windows 10 press the Win+X keys and select Device Manager. Select Human Interface Devices (HID) and then select the touchscreen and disable it.
In addition I have a wireless backlit Logitech K800 keyboard and a wireless Logitech M570 trackball connected and I have run an HDMI cable to my Hisense 50H8C 4K TV so that I can conveniently access all this from the comfort of my couch even with the laptop lid closed. The Laptop has a native resolution of 1080p but the graphics card is capable of displaying a 4K signal to external monitors so I take full advantage of that!
As far as browsers go, both Chrome and Firefox work but I recommend Firefox as it is a little more lightweight and less resource intensive. You can use a free password manager like Dashlane to store your passwords and info between browsers and devices. Dashlane also has a mobile app.
Cloud Alternative
If all that sounds like too much or you don't want to acquire all that hardware you can use Amazon WorkSpaces to run a virtual machine in the cloud.
Here is their pricing info. It will cost you $78 a month but you will have the peace of mind of 100% uptime and connectivity.
Follow this setup guide for AWS using the setting below for your virtual device.
Workspaces Requirements
Windows 7 or 10
2 Virtual CPUs
4GB of Ram
You can see the system resource usage in the image below with the above setting for the virtual machine while running HaasOnline with 67 active bots. Making a more powerful Virtual Machine will only cost you more money and you will not see any difference with HaasOnline.
Go to your WorkSpaces dashboard and select your virtual machine, click actions, select Modify Running Mode Properties, then select Always On.
After receiving the notification email from AWS, you can access your virtual device across many platforms with their WorkSpaces Client.
Upon first login, update Windows and the proceed to the software.
UPDATE: I began using AWS on 08/20/2017 and have found it to run HaasOnline faster and more stable than my setup at home. I highly recommend this solution!
Software
Before installing the trading program make sure that you install Net Time to keep your computer's clock as accurate as possible as some exchanges require your time to be very precise when placing orders.
Go to HaasOnline to select the license you desire. I recommend the "Advanced" license with no limits as you will find quickly that 3 bots are not enough and the lower licenses are missing some excellent indicators! The time period of the license is up to you.
The pricing is a little steep as it is in BTC and has not been updated for some time. I have hopes that soon the pricing will be set to a less volatile currency such as USD with payments in the equivalent amount of BTC.
Don't worry too much about the price as you should be making enough to cover the fees in a short period of time if you make some good trades.
After you purchase the program you should receive and email with a download link or use this link to access it from your account.
Once downloaded, go to C:\Program Files (x86)\Haasonline Software\Haasonline Trade Server\Updater and right click Update.EXE and run it as an administrator.
After the update has finished right click HTS.EXE and run as administrator. (You can make a desktop shortcut for HTS.EXE and go into advanced settings and set it to always run as administrator.)
Now go to Orders and copy your unlock key and paste it when the program prompts you for the login info.
Set your username and password.
Next you will need to select the exchanges you plan to use and activate them. After this, the program will restart and once you are logged in you can begin to set up the bots.
NOTE: The embedded videos are about 2 years old and the interface has changed drastically since then but many of the processes have stayed the same.
Pricing/Drivers Setup and Settings
As soon as you are up and running, go to the pop-out menu on the left and go to Settings>Settings>General Settings set the Timeout to 999999. If you do get timed out the program will continue to run in the background. No other changes are necessary as the default settings are perfect except for the timeout.
Next go to the pop-out menu and select Settings>Price Drivers & Accounts. Here you will first need to activate each exchange you plan to trade on with the "Online/Offline" switches.
On the exchange of your choice you need to find the API settings and create a key and give it all the permissions EXCEPT withdraw and deposit. It will then give you the public and private key to access the API.
Go back to HaasOnline and click the "Add New Account" button, name the driver, and paste in the API keys from the exchange. If you see a green check mark, you are good to go. If a red "X" appears, you messed up some part of the process.
Spot Bot Setup
After activating the price and driver accounts you can then begin to set up your first bot. Select from the side menu Trade Bots>TradeBots and then click the plus sign. Name you bot something like BitFinex BTC/USD or whatever exchange and pair you plan to use it for. Select the exchange and pair and and click "Add Bot".
Start by clicking the icon that looks like a dollar bill ("Trade Settings") below the "i" and the gears. There you need to click on the coin or currency that you want the bot to use for the trading. If you want to trade with 100% of that, click "Show Advanced" to reveal the options for "All In" and "Enable Max Trade". Next select "Market Orders" on all exchanges except BitTrex where "Limit Orders" are necessary. Market orders get you in or out of a position the fastest.
Next, select the checkered flag ("Safeties"). Take some time to check all the options there and the stop-losses if you use them. Be careful with the stop loss as I have found undesirable results. See the bugs section below. The only one I use is the "Reset Last Sell Price" set to 1 minute. The reason being is there is a bug that causes the bot to "only buy higher" (it will never purchase in at a lower amount than the last buy) if you don't use that.
Now to the good stuff, the lightning bolt ("Indicators")! Here is where you will find about 30 different indicators if you opted to go with the "Advanced" license. If not you will only see a handful of indicators. My favorite indicator from the advanced license is the "Regression Slope" REVERSED! I normally use "Triple Exponential Average (TRIX)" REVERSED on pairs that are volatile and all over the place. I also find the "EMA" to be an excellent indicator and it is available in the cheapest license. I will discuss more on strategy later in the guide. You can play around with all the variables on each of the indicators but I have found those 3 to perform wonderfully with their default settings except for the two I suggest reversing. You can find the setting to reverse them under the "Signal Settings" drop down. If you wish to fine tune the variables of the indicator, click the icon that looks like a gauge from a car's dashboard ("Indicator Scanner") to allow HaasOnline to find the optimal setting for each variable based on market data.
Lastly, the leaf ("Insurances"). Here you will find more handly tweaks for the bot but I do not use any of them. I prefer my bots to sell no matter what. I learned this the hard way during the large market correction that began mid June of 2017.
Once you have backtested (broken at this time) your strategy using the rewind button and are satisfied with it you are ready to activate the bot! Press the play button at the top of the bot and select "Activate"!
Custom Bot Setup
The below video is rather long but it goes very deep into detail on setup and operation of custom bots.
Bot Strategies
This is going to depend largely on you trading style. I am a swing trader and I have found much success with that in combination with this program however you can certainly scalp trade if you wish.
Each indicator has an optimal time interval on each pair and it changes between pairs. I find that the majority of the time "Regression Slope" looks lovely at a 6 hour interval. Ideally you want long periods of unbroken green/red bars at the top of the indicator. The green/red bars show when the bot would be bought (green) and sold (red). At shorter time periods you may begin to see frequent breaks in the green/red bars. It is not ideal to be jumping in and out of positions as each trade usualy gets a 0.25% fee for a buy/sell. I like very strong signals. I find that by applying a default setting and then playing around with the time interval is usually perfect for me however if you desire to tweak the indicator variables, go for it!
It doesn't sound like much of a strategy but it has worked wonderfully for me. Your results may vary.
Dashboard Configuration
There are tons of widgets to chose from but the more bots you make, the more dashboards you will likely create. I have one dashboard for each of the exchanges I trade on and one just for my wallets.
Notifications
HaasOnline has the ability to send you information via a Telegram Bot. The setup is a little complex but if you follow this guide and you will be up and running in no time at all.
Once you get the bot code, go to Settings>Settings>Notifications and paste the code in the text field, check the things you wish to be notified of, and click "Save". You will need to close the HTS.exe and restart it and then type hello on the Telegram app. You should receive a notification immediately with a few commands you can use to get info from the program.
Know Bugs and Workarounds
All Builds Are BETA!
There is a "stable" RELEASE version that is the default but is usually plagued with so many bugs or missing critical features or fixes. I highly suggest going for the BETA builds as they have the least bugs ironically. You can find the option to go BETA in the Setting menu. The next time you restart the program, HTS will download the beta and boot you into that.
"Trade Amounts"
Bots on the same exchange sharing a coin/currency cannot be set to "All In" or they will starve one another. You must manually allot amounts to each bot.
"Telegram Notifications"
Script errors abound and seem to crash the web interface and HTS.exe from time to time when this is active. Use with caution.
Portfolio Tracking
I highly recommend you use CoinTracking to monitor your portfolio over time. Here is a link to my public portfolio that is tracked automatically by API keys (paid feature)! By default portfolios are set to private.
Below is a video highlighting some of their main features!
Taxes
You can find the tax forms and information here.
Thank you so much for reading this article in its entirety. Stay tuned for more great opportunities coming soon. Good luck and happy investing!
If you have any questions after reading this article in its entirety, please feel free to reach out to me at Edward@MakeMoneyWithBTC.com or through social media.
If you found this information useful, consider a donation!
The author of this article is not a financial advisor or tax professional. You should always consult with a licensed professional when regarding your financial investments and tax situations. Do your own research into all aspects of your investments and do not invest in something you do not understand. Remember the first rule of investing; never invest more than you can afford to lose!