GDAX Trader

Automated and manual cryptocurrency trading on the GDAX exchange without fees.

!DANGER!

You could loose money. Use gdaxtrader at your own risk! I do not accept any responsibility for any losses.

Gdaxtrader is Alpha quality! Use at your own risk.

Features

• Supports: Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, and Bitcoin Cash

• Avoid fees. Avoids fees by ensuring all orders are "market maker" orders. See more on [Avoiding Fees].

• Multiple Funds within one GDAX account. All manual or bot trading is associated with a Fund which is a certain amount of value (USD, BTC, ETH, LTC, BCH) and a history of trades. Manual and bot trades cannot spend more than is in the Fund.

• Manual trading with buy/sell orders. These are "market maker" orders versus the GDAX web interface which only places "market taker" orders.

• [Experimental] Market Maker Bot. An automated trading strategy described here and also some in this crypto automated trading video on youtube here.

Installation

gdaxtrader is a Django app, but it only uses the Django ORM and the Django management commands. Below is the minimal install info, for a complete guide see the full install.

Install the app

Install the library from pip:

pip install gdaxtrader

Install the library from source:

pip install develop

Enable the app

Once installed, enable it in your Django's settings.py file by adding an entry like:

INSTALLED_APPS = [
    ...
    'gdaxtrader',
    ...
]

Apply the migrations

gdaxtrader uses the Django database, so apply the database migrations with:

python manage.py migrate gdaxtrader

Configure the credentials

Set your API credentials as environment variables. Create a file with the following contents:

#! /usr/bin/bash
export GDAX_KEY='...'
export GDAX_B64SECRET='...'
export GDAX_PASSPHRASE='...'

Assuming your file is called my_secrets.sh, you can load those variables into your environment using: source my_secrets.sh.

Quick Start

Create a Fund

1. Transfer some funds into your GDAX wallet. You can "deposit" a variety of ways through the web interface.

2. Create a "Fund" in the system, which is a specific amount of a variety of currencies (USD,ETC, BTC, etc). For example create a Fund with $30 USD by starting a django-aware shell with python manage.py shell and running:

>>> from gdaxtrader.models import Fund
>>> my_fund = Fund(name="Test Fund", usd_balance=30)
>>> my_fund.save()

Viewing a Fund's value

As orders associated with a Fund are completed the value as measured in various currencies chages. View the current state of the Fund, including it's current value and any associated and unfilled buy or sell orders. View a fund by running:

python manage.py orders

You should see output like:

(gdaxtrader) [bmbouter@localhost cryptosite]$ python manage.py orders

Fund "Test Fund": USD=30.000000000000:
No Open Orders

Trading

A few rules should always true withing the system:

• All trades come in the form of a buy or sell order and are represented in the database as a BuyOrder or SellOrder respectively.

• All orders must be associated with a Fund. Orders not associated with a Fund won't save in the database.

• Outstanding orders are called 'unfilled'.

• All unfilled orders encumber the corresponding amount of value from the Fund. This prevents additional trades from using that same currency twice for another buy or sell order. For each currency, a Fund has an available and a total value. Each currency is the total value minus encumbered value.

• Prior to placing an order, all orders are checked that the corresponding Fund has enough available currency to place the order.

• As orders are 'filled' they update the associated Fund's available and total currency values.

Manual Trading

Buy Orders

Place a buy order to purchase $15 worth of Ethereum at a price of $1161.

python manage.py buy --coin ETH --buy-price 1161 --amount 15 --fund 'Test Fund'

For buy orders, the --amount is always in USD. See all the options with python manage.py buy --help.

Sell Orders

Plae a sell order to sell 0.04271681 of Bitcoin at a sell price of $16507.19.

python manage.py sell --coin BTC --sell-price 16507.19 --amount 0.04271681 --fund 'Test Fund'

For sell orders, the --amount is always in the units being sold. See all the options with python manage.py sell --help.

Report a Bug

Please report issues here: https://github.com/bmbouter/gdaxtrader/issues

Avoiding Fees

GDAX maintains an order book with buy and sell orders in it. For example it could be an order to buy 0.01 BTC at 100 USD. For any newly placed order GDAX receives, it tries to fill it against the existing order book. If it can be filled the transaction occurs immediately, if it can't the order is added to the order book.

An order that is placed but is never put onto the order book is a "market taker" in the sense that it is taking an order off of the order book which decreases liquidity. An order that is placed and ends up being added to the order book is a "market maker" order because it is increasing liquidity. GDAX fees are only paid entirely by the "market taker", while the "market maker" pays no fees.

gdaxtrader avoids fees by looking at the order book and making sure there is always an existing order on the book that is more attractive. For a new buy order, the price per currency needs to be lower than the highest buy order on the book already. For a new sell order, the price per currency needs to be higher than the lowest sell order on the book already.

The manual trading commands and the bots all adhere to a no-fees-for-all-trades rule. Many of the commands and bots had options to disable override this behavior.

Note that during times of high volume trading it is possible to incur fees. Specifically in between the time the order book is checked and gdaxtrader places the new order on GDAX, the order book could have changed such that the new order, unexpectedly, is the "market taker". In practice, this happens very rarely.