Cryptohopper
An Introduction to the Cryptohopper Trading Bot: Cryptohopper Review, Explanation, Set up, Tips, and More
Cryptohopper is an easy-to-use and affordable web-based cryptocurrency trading bot. With Cryptohopper you create custom trading strategies and automatically trade cryptocurrencies on all the major exchanges.
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An Overview and Review of Cryptohopper
In my opinion, Cryptohopper is arguably the best choice for someone new to automated trading as:
- It is cloud-based and doesn’t require you to have hosting, install and run a program, or to code.
- It is web-based and can be accessed via any device with a web browser.
- It comes with a 30-day free trial.
- Even the paid version is affordable (as low as $20 a month).
Every other bot on the market requires you to either commit before you buy, requires you to code, and/or can be pricy or will require you to host software.
Cryptohopper avoids all those problems by offering an inexpensive web-based / cloud-based automated trading platform that requires zero knowledge of coding that can be tested out via a 30-day free trial.
Creating a Custom Strategy
One thing to note is that while other bots come with pre-programmed strategies, which may or may not “just work” out of the box, Cryptohopper mostly requires you to create a custom strategy using its tools, allowing you to set a custom base configuration for all coins and specific configurations for specific coins.
This doesn’t mean you’ll start from scratch, it means you’ll configure your “hopper” by tweaking the default settings and building out a custom strategy that suits your needs (for example, defining parameters like where to take profits and percentage-based stop losses).
Technical Indicators
For an example of how you would customize Cryptohopper, you can set your hopper to automatically trade using popular technical indicators like MACD, EMA, RSI, Bands, Stoch, etc, but from there would likely want to tweak the default settings and define parameters such as the lengths of moving averages, the overbought and oversold thresholds of RSI, and the timeframe on which these indicators are working on.
Triggers
Meanwhile, to get even more nuanced, you can set custom “triggers” to essentially do “if…then” commands that can apply to specific coins or your hopper in general.
So you can, for example, have a strategy that buys specific altcoins (like Ether ETH or Ripple XRP) on the oversold RSI on 15-minute candles with 2% of your funds, and then set a trigger that stops buying if Bitcoin drops below a certain price (for one of the countless examples).
Backtesting and Getting Help on Strategies
Luckily, given the complexity all those options can create, you can back-test a strategy (but not triggers) to see how it would have performed historically to get a sense of how it might perform moving forward.
Meanwhile, if you need assistance, Cryptohopper has a great community that can help offer suggestions on how to build out your strategy. Thus, while there is a bit of work to do on a user’s end, backtesting and the community help ensure you are not left in the dark.
Trailing Stop Losses
All the customizing aside, at its simplest, Cryptohopper provides something useful and absent from all the major exchanges, a trailing stop loss feature.
That feature allows you to make a buy and then automatically take profits when a coin goes up and then starts to drop again.
Trailing stop losses (also called creeping stop losses) are common with broker platforms in the stock market, but they aren’t native features on any of the major cryptocurrency exchanges.
This feature alone is worth the $20 in my opinion (because it helps to have a way to take profits when you sleep without having to set limit orders by hand and guess the trend).
With that in mind, I’ll note that I find it preferable to trade using Cryptohopper rather than logging into exchanges and setting orders by hand all the time. You can do any order type via Cryptohopper (market buys, limits, stops, etc.) It just requires a slight learning curve.
Signals
But wait, there’s another cool feature of Cryptohopper, and that is its signal feature. Signal groups offer the buy and sell signals on cryptos via Cryptohopper (which your hopper will automatically buy or sell if you have the crypto in your tradable coins).
Some signal feeds are free; some cost a bit of money. Most are under $10.
With that noted, signal feeds can be dangerous. What I mean here is this.
- Signals can require rather loose stop losses to avoid a stop triggering a stop loss before the coin has room to run.
- Signaled coins can at times dump pretty hard, so you will need to not only set a stop but exit the trade with tact.
That said, they can be very useful if you don’t understand how to pick or time coins and want to take some moonshots. You just need to be a little more careful than you do if you are for example trading something less volatile like BTC/ETH or BTC/USDT.
NOTE: From what I’ve seen, it is common for signals to provide about 3% – 30% returns. However, it is just as common to see 5%+ losses before they take off (and then big losses over time after the run). Buy and HODL is a fairly poor strategy with signals. A better strategy is a loose trailing stop armed at 0% (for example a 5% trailing stop armed at 0%).
NOTE: The one limitation of Cryptohopper is that each hopper handles one base currency on one exchange (so USDT on Binance, BTC on Bittrex, or USD on GDAX, etc.) Further, the less expensive versions limit the number of coins you can trade. If you start running many base pairs, on many exchanges, and want to trade every coin on each one, things can get very pricey. If costs get expensive, you will need to make more profit to afford your bots (and you may want to start thinking about other premium bots with higher price tags that don’t require a purchase per base currency or exchange). I think that it makes sense to get a free trial to start and then a simple $20 package. This will be the best way to go for most users. Get the hang of it, prove to yourself you can be profitable, then get the upgrades that are right for you.
TIP: Cryptohopper has an affiliate program that allows any user to make a commission when someone signs up with your affiliate link. Considering that Cryptohopper is a good product which we would recommend anyway (like Coinbase or TREZOR) and has a free trial, the affiliate link is nice to share as it requires no commitment upfront from those you share it with. With that in mind, check out our Cryptohopper affiliate link and sign up for your free trial today.
Getting Started With Cryptohopper
Above we covered the basics of what Cryptohopper is and why it is worth at least checking out the trial. Below are the nuts and bolts on how to get started.
- Sign up for the trial.
- Pick an exchange (Gdax, Bitfinex, etc.) and base currency (USDT, BTC, ETH, etc.)
- Go to the Config screen.
- On the Config screen, you’ll need to enter API keys. Follow the directions for getting API keys for the exchange you want to use (see here). In all cases you will need at least a key and secret. A secret is a password no one should ever know (store it carefully), a key is like an account number. When you create the key and secret, make sure to not allow access to withdrawals. That will stop anyone from being able to withdraw funds if they get their hands on your keys.
- Now go down and enter the parameters (what coins you will allow, your strategy, your stop loss info, etc).
- Now turn your hopper on but make sure live trade is off. Let your bot run in test mode and see what it would do if it were turned on. If you like what is happening, click the live bot switch and let the good times roll.
Of course, this is a summary and not a detailed step-by-step. See the Cryptohopper documentation for that or see their support, forum, or discord which you can access via the site.
In summary, you need to fill set up the configuration in the “config” screen, connect your hopper and exchange using API keys, then run a test to make sure you have it right.
NOTE: I’ll do a detailed step-by-step guide at some point, but until, then please use the support, forum, discord, etc. accessed from within the site to ask questions.
Tips for Using Cryptohopper
The above is the what, why, and how. Below are some tips for getting started:
- Start small. Everyone wants big money now. That is how you lose big money. Start small and prove to yourself that you can be profitable in a bear or bull market. Once you are sure, then kick up your bid sizes.
- Cryptohopper is a work in progress. In my time using Cryptohopper there have been a few minor bugs (or at least times when something should have worked that didn’t). The team is quick, responsive, and actively works to improve the platform… but despite this you may from time to time run into issue. If you have an issue, make sure to open a ticket and let someone know!
- Use stop losses and trailing stops. This is crypto. Coins can go down 90%+ rather quickly, or go up as much and then right back down. Stop losses help with the down, trailing stops help with the up and then down. You can set a loose stop, but do set one if you are trading. If you are just managing long positions, then use your best judgment.
- Use two-factor authentication. Having your Cryptohopper account hacked is on the short list of things you don’t want to happen to you. Be safe. Use two factor and don’t allow access to withdrawals.
- To do a market order and make sure it fills, you have to set “percentage lower bid,” and “percentage higher ask” to negative numbers. Try -.03% that seems to have generally worked for me.
- Minor alts tend to have laughable spreads. The thing about automation like this is the bot isn’t necessarily going to know how bad the spread is. In simple terms, buying right now can mean paying a few percentage points more than you might have ideally wanted. That is true when trading by hand too, but you can make better choices based on data when trading by hand (as you can actually see the spread on the order book).
- Have a different strategy for bull, bear, and stagnant markets, or at least make sure your strat works for all markets. Sure, you can buy like crazy without stops in a bull run. However, that strategy will likely get you rekt quickly in a bear market. You must account for the volatile market.
- Low volume alts are more volatile, they need looser stops, but they tend to run harder when they run. High volume top coins can be played with tighter stops, but the upside is often limited. Top coins are safer.
- BTC based pairs tend to be less volatile than dollar pairs when it comes to the top coins, plus trading them will let you stay in crypto while you learn. If you want to get your feet wet, I would suggest BTC/ETH. It is the easiest pair to trade in many ways, has a nice upside, at worst leaves you with BTC or ETH bags (which you can then make your base currency), and you can generally make do with relatively tight stops (like 1.5% – 2.5%).
- Watch out for making trades too frequently. If you make a lot of trades, you need to be willing to take small profits (and account for fees). If you try to trade based on smaller candles (5 min, 10 min, 15 min) you can end up triggering a ton of buy/sell signals in a stagnant market. This can erode your portfolio. When you backtest, look at how often you are seeing buys and sells. To start, I’d always go with a strat that produced no more than one or two buy/sell signals a day. It is more manageable and won’t catch you off guard.
- When in doubt try something like this 12, 26, 9 MACD (the default) on 2-hr candles, with a 2.8% trailing stop armed at zero (it’ll act as both a stop and trailing stop). Then make it buy and sell based on that strat. This will work well enough on a more stable pair like ETH/BTC. This is a very cookie-cutter strategy that you should tweak, but it is also generally going to be profitable (or at least, not that unprofitable). I’m not going to go into details on all the reasons this is smart, but it is a strategy that is very simple, common, and hard to exploit. The way crypto works would have to change for someone to effectively exploit anyone using this over time. That said, always do your own research and pick a strategy the works for you. This strategy is a good starting point, but not an endgame (especially not for altcoins further down the list by volume and market cap).
- Signals can be awesome; however, they are not ALWAYS awesome. The signal groups I tried clearly produced a few signals rather late in some cases. In a few cases, I really questioned the integrity of a call. Once I had a coin that just had a systemic issue signaled more than once on the way down, while it was essentially in free fall. I removed it from my coins shortly after but didn’t have it removed at the time because I was trying to catch the bottom using my strat. Another time I had a coin called at the top of a wave right before it retracted and went up again. It was right about the run, but the timing of the call was something that I think benefited sellers more than me. I’m pretty sure if you turn on signals in anything other than a bull market and don’t use stops you will be in hot water. I vastly prefer the other features of Cryptohopper in general, but I none-the-less see the wisdom of this feature. It really comes down to the quality of the signal group you join and doesn’t really speak to the integrity of Cryptohopper. If I ran Cryptohopper, I wouldn’t change a thing; if I ran one of these groups, in a few cases, I would tweak my algo.
- No strategy I’ve ever seen provides positive returns on every trade in all markets. I know some people say they can manage this, but I’ve never actually seen this be the case (and my backtest show people who claim they have 100% success rate aren’t being fully honest or don’t realize the holes in their strat). You will lose, and you will go on losing streaks. If you know your strat works, suck it up, accept the losses, and aim to make up for them on the solid plays.
- There are times to turn your bot off. If we are in a market-wide free fall and you aren’t shorting, or if something just isn’t working right, it can make sense to turn your bot off or to disable buying… but make sure you turn it on again. Miss turning it back on, and you could miss a really big run. When in doubt, leave the bot on and accept the losses.
That I think covers the introduction. There are many things I haven’t covered, and I’ll get to those parts in other pages. For now, that is the gist.
Bottom line: In my opinion, Cryptohopper is the best cryptocurrency trading bot platform for a beginner bot trader. Cryptohopper is a great product, with a great team (judging based on my interactions with them, their updates, and how they speak to their community), and the underlying community is of quality and has value. My complaints were few and far between and are mostly focused on the few bugs/glitches I encountered (which were generally fixed shortly after they arose) and the signals (which are third-party signals that aren’t directly controlled by Cryptohopper). This is the #1 bot I recommend to new users and I use it myself. Hands down it is worth the $20 per base pair per exchange you use, even if you are only using the software to manage positions and set trailing stops. Click the affiliate link for a free trial and join the party, it is worth giving Cryptohopper a test run.
Warning: If this doesn’t go without saying, then let us say it 1. BOT TRADING IS NOT INHERENTLY PROFITABLE. All you are doing is automating a strategy you might otherwise implement by hand. 2. PAST RESULTS DON’T SPEAK TO FUTURE RESULTS. So a great backtest can provide pitiful returns in practice (often as a result of the constantly changing market). 3. YOU DON’T HAVE TO BUY ANYTHING aside from a $20 bunny hopper monthly subscription. You may benefit from paying for a custom strategy sold outside of the Cryptohopper ecosystem, but you don’t HAVE to buy any extras to find success. If you aren’t profitable, get on the Discord and ask questions and feel free to ask me on here or in there (I’m not saying I have perfected a strategy, but I am saying that I can help point you in the right direction).