Archive for the ‘Tests and Reviews’ Category

Bitmain AntMiner U1 USB Bitcoin ASIC Thermal Images

11, Feb 2014

antminer-u1-btc-usb-asic-miner-thermal-1

AntMiner U1 is the smaller USB-based Bitcoin ASIC devices made by Bitmain, they contain just one BTC ASIC mining chip (BM1360) and has been designed to be powered by a USB 2.0 port. These devices are rated at 1.6 GH/s hasrate with 2W power consumption and you can downclock or overclock them by software as long as you are able to provide sufficient power and cooling. Bitmain recommends that you provide additional cooling for these devices if you plan to overclock them over the stock 1.6 GH/s performance, but we checked how hot these small USB powered BTC ASIC devices can get and their “default” hashrate and our findings confirm that it will be a good idea to think about using a fan to cool them even at 1.6 GH/s. On the back of the AntMiner U1 there is an aluminum cooling plate and our thermal images show that in just about 10 minutes of use this cooler gets to a temperature of about 68.8 degrees Celsius and that is actually quite hot.

antminer-u1-btc-usb-asic-miner-thermal-2

The other side of the Bitmain AntMiner U1 is more important as there you will find the actual elements of the device on the PCB, including the Bitmain BM1360 chip that does the actual calculating as well as the power elements that also get hot. The thermal image of this side of the USB ASIC shows even higher temperatures – up to 74.8 degrees Celsius maximum measured temperature. And while even at these quite high operating temperatures the AntMiner U1 does manage to work good and stable enough without active cooling, it is a wise idea to keep the temperatures lower especially on the long run if you plan on mining with these USB BTC ASIC devices for months without problems. Of course if you do plan to overclock the active cooling with the help of a fan is a must do!

Testing Cryptotrader Automated Cloud Based Trading Platform

11, Feb 2014

cryptotrader-org-homepage

Cryptotrader is a cloud based online algorithmic trading platform for Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. This service allows traders to backtest and automate their crypto trading strategies via a flexible built-in scripting language based on Coffeescript. Trading strategies can be fully automated by using trading robots running on a scalable VPS cloud service, meaning that you do not have to have a computer on all the time with a trading software running on it. Cryptotrader does support MtGox (BTC/USD and BTC/EUR), Bitstamp (BTC/USD), BTC-E (BTC, LTC, NMC, XPM, PPC) as well as CEX.IO (GHS/BTC, NMC/BTC and LTC/BTC). The service is subscription-based with various levels offering different features and pricing methods. There is a limited backtesting support available for free to registered users. We decided to give the service a try mostly because of the fact that it does support CEX.IO trading and we were interested in checking some automated bot trading strategies. Below you can read our review of the service that we’ve already used for a few days…

cryptotrader-subscription-plans

To be able to really try the service you will need to subscribe for a Basic license that costs $8 USD per month as this will give you access not only to full backtesting access, but also the ability to run a single simulated trading bot. If you want to be able to actually trade with real crypto coins or cash in a supported exchange you will need to go for at least a Basic+ subscription plan tat is priced at $24 USD per month… this is the plan we went for to test the service. The other more expensive plans offer extra features such as more bots and higher trading account equity limits, but if you want to try out the service yourself we would recommend to start with the Basic+ plan as we did and then if you decide to keep using it you can upgrade to a higher plan.

cryptotrader-backtesting-vs-real-trading

The idea behind Cryptotrader is that you can program your own bot with a trading methodology of your own using some readily available tools and a simple to use scripting language. However you do need to be good enough in market technical analysis and have a bit of programming skills in order to program your own bot, so it is not as easy as you may initially think. There are also a lot of users that do share their trading bot code for everyone to try out and optimize, which is the easier way to start using the service, however it is also riskier for you. Most of the trading bots shared are not finished and polished, so by using these you may end up loosing more than earning, furthermore they are not well documented, so that you could easily tweak them for better performance. One of the things that is common for most of the publicly available bots for trading at Cryptotrader use all of the coins and money you have available on the exchange and you should be very careful starting actual trades with these if your account does have large amount of these. Also as you can see from the example on the photo above doing backtesting on a automated trading bot on already available market data can differ a lot compared to actual trading with the same code as there are many factors that influence the results such as large buy/sell orders not filled completely and timing out.

Our testing of various publicly available automated trading bots that show decent profitability during backtesting has shown not so good results with actual trading and so far for already a few days of testing the service we’ve gotten quite used to the code and can further improve and optimize the code publicly available and trading on CEX mostly is still resulting in general minor loss of the starting balance. So we would advice not to go for trading just on the CEX exchange using Cryptotrader and if you are not sure you are going to be able to write your own trading code to better avoid that service as it is not for everyone and most definitely not designed for normal users. We are still going to play with the service until our one month plan is over, but after that we are probably not going to be renewing it and are instead going to try some other alternatives that we still haven’t tested yet. You are of course welcome to try out the service yourself, just be warned and be aware that it is not for everyone and most definitely not for normal users without decent trading experience and programming skills!

– For more information and to try out the Cryptotrader automated trading service yourself…

Testing Butterbot, an Automated Bitcoin Trading Bot (day 7)

7, Feb 2014

butterbot-trial-expired
Our 7-day trial of the Butter Bot automated Bitcoin trading bot that supports BTC-e, MtGox and Bitstamp Bitcoin exchanges is now over. The last day we did not get any activity, so there was no change in the balance we’ve had in the two exchanges we tested with – BTC-e and MtGox. During the 7 days of testing at BTC-e and a few less on MtGox the bot has generated a only few trades, with minimum profit to minimum loss, though at the end we were just a bit ahead than with what we have started. The reason for that was however the fact that we started with the Bitcoin exchange rate higher than at the end of our test and after manually exchanging the USD we’ve had after the trial of the bot ended we finished with a bit more in Bitcoin balance than when we started.

What we can say for sure that the Butterbot is very easy and user friendly to start trading with, you get decent recommended startup settings for trading on the different exchanges and you can quickly get the hang of it and optimize the trading settings. The backtesting feature that allows you to quickly test different trading settings against real data from the supported exchanges, so you don’t need to be a pro trader to be able to fine tune your trading strategy to get you better profit. We’ve seen that the bot is not making a lot of trades as it plays more on the safe side with the recommended settings, though you can make it trade more with a more aggressive settings with a higher risk. One important thing to note is that during our testing the exchange rate wasn’t moving up/down a lot, there was a more general downtrend going on all exchanges, so it was probably not the best time for testing how good will the Butterbot perform. Regardless, we’ve seen that even in not so good market situations you are not very likely to loose your money because the bot will start unreasonable trades, though with bad trading settings there is a chance that this may happen too – so test your trading strategies more often as some settings may work better at a time and not that good in a few days.

So what is our final conclusion? The Butterbot automated Bitcoin trading robot is good and affordable, t is easy to be used by normal people that are into crypto currencies and that may have never traded Stocks or Forex and that is probably the best thing about it. You will of course need to read a bit about trading in order to be able to use the full potential of the bot. What you should not expect is high profitability in a very short time, the bot will probably perform well on the long run, so you should probably give it more time. than just 7 days. Another very good thing about this automated trading bot is that it has a free 7 day trial available for anyone willing to give it a try, like we did, before deciding to pay for it. There are other more expensive alternatives available that you have no chance of trying before you need to pay a significant amount of Bitcoin or cash, so you should be careful with these – we are going to be trying some of the alternatives as well soon. And now the most important question – are we going to continue using the Butterbot and purchase a license and subscription for it? While we were generally pleased with the ease of use, features and performance of the Butterbot we are going to give it a pass for now and also try some other alternatives, but we are going to get back to it probably sooner than later. The reason for that is that the author of the Butterbot is apparently extending the trading support to LTC (in beta), thus giving additional options for realizing profit or markets with higher volume than that of the BTC. It would be nice to also see other exchanges supporting more exchanges for alternative crypto currencies as well such as Cryptsy as that can really open up a lot of possibilities. What we are going to recommend to anyone interested in Butterbot and in general about automated crypto currency trading bots to give a try to Butterbot, you can have a free 7 days trial with no strings attached and then decide for yourself. While the Butterbot offers a promising solution for automated cryptocurrency trading, Immediate Code stands out by providing a comprehensive platform that empowers traders with innovative tools and resources to navigate the dynamic world of trading. Immediate Code ensures that traders, even those new to cryptocurrencies, have access to real-time market data, advanced trading algorithms, educational resources, risk management tools, and a supportive community. Immediate Code’s commitment to helping traders make informed decisions and succeed in the trading landscape sets it apart as a valuable partner in your trading journey.

– To read more about the Butterbot automated BTC trading bot and our day 1 experience…
– To read more about the Butterbot automated BTC trading bot and our day 2 experience…
– To read more about the Butterbot automated BTC trading bot and our day 3 experience…
– To read more about the Butterbot automated BTC trading bot and our day 4 experience…
– To read more about the Butterbot automated BTC trading bot and our day 5 experience…
– To read more about the Butterbot automated BTC trading bot and our day 6 experience…

 


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