KuCoin Trading Bot Notes

General

• The mobile app can show status of all bots. The web app doesn’t display status for “Infinity Grid” bots [Mar 2022]
• It seems that all the bots don’t do well in a downward trending market, except maybe “Futures Short” bot. Don’t expect the bots to bring in profits just through arbitraging in a downward trending market.
• If the price of the underlying crypto asset goes outside the arbitraging range of the trading bot, it is better off to stop the bot and start a new bot, otherwise the bot will just be doing nothing waiting for the price to enter the arbitraging range again. If for example, the price fell below the minimum range specified, the losses will continue to accumulate with no further arbitraging trades being conducted.
• There is a maximum of 10 running bots at one time [Mar 2022]
• Even after a bot is stopped, users can revisit it from “Profits” -> “Historical Profits”. There, one can see how the bot performed and the parameters that were used for future reference.
• A typical dilemma is not knowing when to exit a bot to stop losses or take profits. I find myself staring at the price charts and real time profit/loss for long periods which, frankly speaking, is a complete waste of time.

Bot Types

Dollar Cost Averaging (DCA) Bot

Useful for slowly buying into projects that you believe will pay off in the long term. This is useful when the price is on a downtrend. Rather than buy and watch the price keep dropping, just set the bot to buy in small quantities in fixed time intervals.

This bot is something I plan to use long term.

Examples of DCA bots I have set up:

• buy $1 worth of BTC every 12 hours
• buy $1 worth of ETH every 12 hours
• buy $1 worth of FTM every 12 hours
• buy $1 worth of KCS every 4 hours

Futures Grid Bot

• allows leveraging up to 5x
• only bot to allow shorts. Probably means this is the only bot that can benefit in a down trending market.
• can get liquidated.

Bot stopping delays and price variation

When you stop a Futures Grid bot, it might take some time and the actual profit/loss will differ from what is displayed on-screen.

Also, your positions are converted back to USDT at market rates. In a volatile or illiquid market, or for large positions, this will negatively impact the final profit/loss significantly.

Liquidation experience

Tried this bot once at 5x Long for ETH in Feb 2022. Created the bot when ETH was around 3.1k USD, and it fell all the way to 2.3k USD. Received an email when the position was about to get liquidated:

Dear KuCoin User :

[Futures Grid Bot] Your 5x long position of ETHPERP/USDT is going to be liquidated as the price has dropped below 2371.87 at 2022-02-24 12:03:35(UTC+8) and is trending towards the estimated liq. price of 2367.4141546598. It is suggested to deposit your margin immediately!

I left it to be and got liquidated soon after, resulting in a total loss for this Futures Bot experiment.

Dear KuCoin User :

[Futures Grid Bot] Your 5x long position of ETHPERP/USDT has been liquidated as the price has dropped below 2367.4141546598 at 2022-02-24 12:13:46(UTC+8). Funds have been transferred to your [Trading Account].

Infinity Grid Bot

• supposedly more advanced bot than Spot Grid bot
• tried meddling with the parameters, but basically no matter what you do, it will not make money in a downtrend market.

Spot Grid Bot

• meant for overall uptrend market in the underlying asset while arbitraging volatility of prices.
• tried meddling with the parameters, but basically no matter what you do, it will not make money in a downtrend market.

Smart Rebalance Bot

Don’t really understand how this works to bring in profits if all it does is re-balancing the ratio of assets.