kraken-grid

v1.2.9

Published

a year ago

Bot repeatedly buys & sells on kraken from a conditional close order.

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dscotese

kraken bot grid crypto

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kraken-grid BETA

kraken-grid BETA

A bot that extends grid trading once you use it to create a grid using orders with conditional closes.

This was developed with NodeJS running in the BASH shell provided by Windows 11. I believe it's using "Windows Subsystem for Linux" and that there are some oddities because of this. I don't see them as odd because I'm not familiar enough with Linux yet.

Upgrading

This version stores your API key and secret using your password. This information is stored without encryption in previous versions, but this one will read that file, use the data as default values when it prompts you for the API Key and secret, and replace it with the encrypted data. I recommend finding your keys.txt file in your home directory and making a copy of it just in case. If you forget your password, you must re-enter the API keys to reset it.

Installation

Get your API key and secret from Kraken. Otherwise, you will have to go through this process again if you want to run kraken on a machine that doesn't have these keys yet, or if you forget your password.
- 1.1 Click the box in the upper right corner on kraken.com after you log in that has your name in it.
- 1.2 Click the "Security" item in the dropdown box.
- 1.3 Click "API" in the list of options under Security.
- 1.4 Choose the "Add Key" link.
- 1.5 We recommend that you give your key a better description.
- 1.6 Check the "Query Funds" box under "Funds" and all the boxes under "Orders & Trades".
- 1.7 We recommend that you record this set of codes (a key and a private key, called "Secret" in kraken-grid).
Install NodeJS
Run npm -g install kraken-grid from a command line ("Command Prompt", "Terminal Window", or "Shell").
If Node installed kraken-grid successfully, you can now run kraken-grid from the command line on your computer. It will ask you for a password. If it has no previous record of a password being entered into kraken-grid, then it will also ask you for the API key and secret ("private key" is what Kraken calls the secret). Your password is used to encrypt information that kraken-grid stores on your computer, like the API keys.

This software will save a file keys.txt to your home folder.

Usage

Web UI

web [on|off] This turns the web User Interface on or off.

This readme is displayed in the web User Interface. It contains code that looks like this which you can click to send commands to the bot. If you just tried it, check the console and you will see that it's asking you to "Try code raw"...

Answering with anything that starts with a y will send it to kraken which will reject it. The error also causes the bot to abandon auto mode if it was in auto mode.
All other answers will cause process.TESTING to be set to the first word of the command ("code" in this case) and also turn on caching, which saves Kraken's responses in cleartext on your machine. To prevent that, send the bot notest and answer no to trying it raw. This will set process.TESTING back to false.

Three tables and two pie charts are displayed in the web page. Some of the cells in the tables have blue entries because you can click them:

Orders table

Column headers will sort by that column.
less, more, kill, addlev, and delev can be used to alter orders as described if you follow those links.

Allocation table

Entries in the Desired row can be clicked to adjust your allocation.
Entries in the Difference row can be used to execute trades to become more balanced. Note that this does not account for limit orders such as what the balance command places, or if you include a close price on a buy or sell.
The cell under "Allocation" shows a tolerance for being out of balance which you can change by clicking it.
Entries in the Prices row can be used to issue a balance command using the tolerance.

Assets table

Each asset can be clicked to open a second tab or window (named "chart") with the chart from the exchange. If you have assets that are not on the exchange, it will open whatever page the exchange displays when the URL is formed for such a chart.
The data cells can be clicked to update how much of that asset you have in that account. If you'd like to add a new account or asset, simply change the name or ticker in the proposed command. The only account displayed at first is "OnExchange" and you can click the amounts to get a template asset command.

Pie Charts

The pie pieces in the corresponding pie charts can be used for the same purposes as you find in the list above.

For commands that do not prompt you in the console, you should get an alert containing the response. You can always copy the command from the prompt and paste it into the console where you issued the web on command.

In this section, prospective documentaiton is marked with an asterisk* to indicate features that are being added. If all is correctly updated, such asterisks will only ever appear in this readme file on branches, and those branches will be where the features are being developed. This gives devs a handy way to find the specs for a new feature.

Changing your password

When you start the bot, it asks for a password. If you enter the wrong password (or there is no password yet), it will assume that you want to set a new password and ask you to enter your API keys from Kraken again. You can simply enter 'x' to start over if you want to keep your old password and think you mistyped it.

Mistyped passwords

If you think you mistyped your password, just enter x as described above.

Command Line Interface

At the prompt that kraken-grid presents (>), you can enter one of these commands:

Trading

buy

buy Ticker Price Amount ClosePrice If closePrice is not a number but evaluates to true, the code will create this buy with a conditional close at the last price it saw. If it is 1, that might be because you want it to evaluate to true and close at the current price, or because you want to close at 1. The bot plays it safe and closes at the current price. To change that, you can use the risky command (see below). If you don't want the code to place a trade with a conditional close, leave closePrice off or pass false for it.

sell

sell Ticker Price Amount ClosePrice The semantics are the same as for buy

kill

kill X X can be an Order ID from Kraken (recognized by the presence of dashes), a userref (which often identifies more than one order, and, importantly, both the initial buy or sell, and the series of sells and buys resulting from partial executions), or a Counter as shown from list. This cancels the order or orders. list will still show such orders, prefixed with Killed, until report runs again to update the internal record of open orders.

limits

limits AtLeast AtMost The bot starts out with no limits, using 0 as AtLeast and -1 as AtMost. You can use this command to prevent it from trading unless the trade amount in USD (other fiat currencies will be supported soon) is inclusively between these two limits.

less

less Counter Amount All C must be a Counter as shown by executing list. This command reduces the amount of crypto in the limit order identified by C in list by amount, and if ALL (optional) is "all", update any other orders for the same crypto for which the current amount to be traded matches (to three decimal places, after rounding) the pre-adjusted amount of the identified trade. Example: You have a limit sell order at 45000 for 0.015 BTC and another above that at 45900 for 0.015 BTC, each with its own conditional close. When you issue list they show up as numbers 3 and 6. You issue less 3 0.0025 all and that causes both orders (because of the "all" at the end) to be cancelled and replaced with new orders. The new orders have the same conditional closes, and the same prices, but their amounts are both 0.0125 (0.015 - 0.0025). If you issued less 3 0.0025 without "all" at the end, then only the order numbered 3 would be replaced.

more Counter Amount All Increase the amount of crypto to be traded. Otherwise, this command is the same as less.

delev

delev Counter C must be a Counter as shown by executing list. If the identified order uses leverage, this command will first create an order without any leverage to replace it, and then kill the one identified. The order that was killed will still be in the list, prefixed with Killed: NOTE: The new order often (or always?) appears at the top of list after this, so the Counters identifying other orders may change.

addlev

addlev Counter The semantics are the same as for delev.

Information Gathering

assets

assets [Filter] This provides you with a list of assets in each account (see asset under bot management), and if Filter is anything, only accounts and assets with the label or ticker Filter.

list [Search]

This simply prints out a list of all the open orders the code last retrieved (it does NOT retrieve them again, so...) It may have orders in it that have already been executed or which you canceled. Each order is presented as: Counter K trade amount pair @ limit price [with A:B leverage] userref [close position @ limit price] ...where:

Counter gives you a handle to use for other commands like delev and kill.
K is Killed if you used the kill command to cancel an order and the bot hasn't yet updated the list. For existing orders, K is missing.
Trade is either buy or sell.
Amount is the number of coins.
Pair is symbol (see buy) with the 'USD' suffix.
Price is the price for this trade.
The corresponding bracketed items will be missing for an order with no leverage or without a conditional close.
userref is a user-reference number created when you use the buy or sell command. It starts with 1 for buys and 0 for sells (but since userrefs are integers, the 0 gets removed), followed by three digits that identify the cryptocurrency pair, and then the price without the decimal point and with leading zeroes. Note that this causes collisions in very rare cases like a price of $35.01 and another price for the same crypto of $350.10. I expect this to be too rare to fix at this time.

If you enter anything for [Search], the list will only display lines that contain what you entered, except in one case, C. If it's just the C, it will retrieve the last 50 orders that are no longer open (Filled, Cancelled, or Expired), but only list those that actually executed (Filled). If you add the userref after C, then it will fetch only orders with that userref, which means the buys and sells between one set of prices. Use set for a list of the userrefs for the grid points. Such orders also include the time at which the order filled completely.

margin

margin Whether or not you use this command, the bot will try to use leverage when there isn't enough USD or crypto. Whether or not it succeeds, it will still be able to report how much you are long or short for each supported crypto. Reporting that is all this command does.

report

report This is the default command, meaning that if you don't enter a command, but you hit enter, this command will execute. It does several things:

Retrieves balances for the cryptos you have on Kraken and reports the values in a table:

ZUSD    AMT       undefined
XXBT    AMT       PRICE
XLTC ...
...

Retrieves the list of open orders, which is immediately processed to:
1. replace conditional closes resulting from partial executions with a single conditional close which, itself, has a conditional close to continue buying and selling between the two prices, but only up to the amount originally specified, and only for orders with a User Reference Number (such as all orders placed through this program).
2. fill out the internal record of buy/sell prices using the open orders and their conditional closes (see set and reset).
3. extend the grid if there are only buys or only sells remaining for the crypto identified in each order.
4. identify any orders that are gone or new using Kraken's Order ID and for new orders, it also describes them.

show

show displays some bot internals which will only be useful to you if you understand the code enough to figure out what passing a parameter to it does.

verbose

verbose There is a little bit of logic in the code to spit out a lot more information when verbose is on. It's off by default and this command just toggles it.

web

web S [port] is used to turn on (S = on) or off (S = off) the web interface. This interface is rudimentary at this point, but it's more convenient for me than the command line. They are best used together. If you don't specify a port, the website will be on port 8000.

Bot Management

adjust

adjust Ticker AllocPct PctPriceRange This feature currently only affects your desired allocation by reading the price history of the selected asset and moving up to AllocPct percent from USD in your savings to the allocation for that asset based on where the current price is within the most recent range that is P% wide. As you go back in time through the price history, the ratio between the highest and lowest price (high over low) slowly increases, so that at some point, the high will be more than 100+P percent of the low. If the current price is near the bottom of the range, it makes sense to buy a little more, or increase your allocation.

EXAMPLE: Suppose you have some Litecoin and chose for it to be (at least) 20% of your savings. You can issue adjust LTC 5 25. This will cause lower prices of LTC to increase that 20% allocation for LTC. How much it goes up depends on where the current price is within the most recent price range in which the highest price was (100 + PctPriceRange =) 125% of the lowest price. Suppose LTC is at 100, was recently as low as 95, and before that it was at 200. The most recent price range in which the high was 125% of the low is from 95 to 95x1.25, or 118.75. The current price of 100 is (100/(118.75-95) = ) 4.2% from the bottom of the range, or 95.8% from the top of the range. The bot will therefore add 95.8% of the (AllocPct =) 5% to your 20% and thus aim to have LTC be (20 + 5x0.958 =) 24.79% of your savings, and USD be 4.79% less than usual.

As LTC bumps around near the price of 100, you will be trading more of it and thus make more profit from round trips.

Note: The bot does not (yet) adjust the volume on trades when the price of an adjusted allocation exceeds the current range. It does adjust the allocation and so you will see that the trades need to be reset when you look at the Allocation table in the Web UI.

allocate [S P [A]]

allocate starts a process through which you can enter how you want your savings allocated (see Balancing the Present, which is the motivation for this software). It will ask if you want to erase your current allocation even if you don't have one. When you have no allocation, it starts with the actual current allocation as a default and allows you to adjust it. When you are satisfied with your allocation settings, enter N instead of a ticker to get back to the bot. If you include parameters to allocate:

S is a symbol and if it is found in the list of asset tickers from the exchange (only Kraken at the time of writing), the bot will record P as the percentage allocation target for your savings.
P must be a number (any more than two decimal places will be ignored). It is interpreted as the percentage of your entire savings you would like this asset to be. If such an allocation is already recorded (and A is not present and "false"), the bot will ask you to confirm that you want to update it. Your default currency allocation will be adjusted so that the full allocation adds up to 100%.
A is for Ask. (optional) It must be the string 'false' if it is present because it prevents the bot from asking before overwriting existing data.

allocation

allocation [F] will display your current actual allocation across all the assets you have entered (see asset below) as well as the assets you have on the exchange, including any positions you hold. F can be ? to review what the command does, or "fresh" to have the code get new prices from the exchange.

asset

asset Ticker Units Label Ask allows you to describe your savings to the bot so that it can automatically trade without you entering any trades yourself.

Ticker is a symbol and if it is found in the list of asset tickers from the exchange (only Kraken at the time of writing), the bot will take into account that you hold U units of this asset, but not on the exchange.
asset REMOVE Ticker Label can be used to eliminate a ticker from an account, and asset REMOVE ACCOUNT Label to remove an entire account.
Units is the number of units that you'd like the bot to record. This information is saved to disk (as a JSON object) after being encrypted with your password. If you call asset on the same symbol twice, the bot will ask you to confirm that you want to overwrite the old value. To REMOVE an entire account, issue asset REMOVE ACCOUNT [Label]
Label is for Label. (optional) This string will be used as an account label. If there is no such account, the bot will create one. If that was a mistake, you can use the REMOVE ACCOUNT feature described above. If you hold cryptos in two different wallets, W1 and W2, you can tell the bot how much is in each one using the two different labels and it will keep separate records for them. The "default" account will be used if Label is missing (its label is "default").
Ask is for Ask. (optional) It must be the string 'false' if it is present because it prevents the bot from asking before overwriting existing data. This is handy if you make your own list of assets and would like to copy/paste it to the bot.

balance

balance Tolerance Ticker Tolerance is the tolerable difference between your desired allocation and your current allocation. If you don't specify Ticker, the bot will identify the most out-of balance asset and propose a trade to balance it. If Ticker is present, it will create a trade to balance that ticker along with a limit buy and a limit sell at prices TOL percent (this is a number between 0.00 and 100.00) above and below the current price. These trades will then be used by the bot (in auto mode) to keep your savings in balance.

set

set [UserRef BuyOrSell Price] This lists the userrefs and prices at which buys and sells have been (and will be) placed. UserRef must be a userref, BuyOrSell must be either buy or sell, and P is the price you want to add (or replace) for that grid point. If the bot fails to determine either the buy price or the sell price, it displays a ?, and this will prevent the creation of a new order as described under refnum. This command allows you to fix that so that Step 2.1 under report will work properly as described under refnum. Collecting profit data: If you issue set ~ [N] the bot will go through the grid points it knows about from open orders and query the exchange for any userrefs it finds in order to collect all the buys and sells that happened for those two prices. Because the API rate is limited, it will make up to N requests to the exchange, one every 2 seconds until it has exhausted the known userrefs. It remembers the results but will lose them when you terminate the program or run reset.

quit

quit terminates the program.

risky

risky is intended to give you access to features that are, well, risky!

reset

reset This erases the list of userrefs and prices at which buys and sells will be placed, but that list gets immediately rebuilt because it performs the second step in report.

auto

auto [N] This automatically and repeatedly executes the second step of report and then waits N seconds. N defaults to 60 but when you call auto with a new value for it, it is updated.

manual

This stops the automatic calling of report. The bot will do nothing until you give it a new command.

refnum

refnum Counter UserReference Counter must be a Counter as shown by executing list, and it must be an order that was entered without a userref. It will cancel the existing order and create a new one with the specified userref UserReference. All orders added by the bot (automatically and manually) have a userref. This function is to allow you to enter an order on Kraken's website using the same price and no conditional close so that the bot will include it into the existing grid point with the same userref (use set to make sure both the buy and sell prices are known for the userref) as UserReference. If you use refnum to assign the reference number of an order that is at a different price, the behavior is undefined.

safe

safe When the bot starts, it is in "safe" mode, which means that it will not actually add or cancel any orders. The idea is that it won't do anything, but instead just show you what it would do if safe were off. Your have to enter safe to turn this off so that the bot will actually do things. It allows for startup with a lot less risk with a possibly buggy bot.

Experimental features (Not Recommended and not well tested)

ws - EXPERIMENTAL

ws This connects to Kraken's WebSockets, which, I have to warn you, send you something about every second, and sometimes silently disconnects.

Internals

Userref

When you place an order through Kraken's website, it will have a userref of zero. It will be ignored for the purposes of grid trading. When you place an order through the bot, it will have a userref.

Partial Execution

Because grid orders have conditional closes (at a price I'll call C, for close, where I'll call the price on the opening order O), a new trade is created each time a partial execution occurs, but any such new trades do not have conditional closes (which would need to have C and O swapped). These conditional closes all have the same userref as the order that produced them. The bot detects this, sums the amount executed at price O, cancels the new orders created by the partial executions, and creates a new order for the sum at price C using the same userref and with a conditional close of its own that uses price O (see how C and O are now swapped?). Rarely, only part of an order will have executed (at price O) and the price will move back to C and cause the conditional close(s) to execute. If they were combined and thus already have their own conditional close (at O), new orders will appear at O, in addition to the original. At trade.kraken.com, this looks like it will be trading too much at O, but that is because the partial execution reduced the size of the original trade, and trade.kraken.com still shows the original trade amount. You can click the trade on trade.kraken.com to verify that the sum of the new order at O and the original one add to the right amount. You got a round trip on less volume than the bot was set to try, because the market didn't fully execute your original order. All is well.

HELP!

This code is messy. It works for me and I didn't want to keep waiting until I cleaned it up to publish it. One of the major motivations I have for publishing it is that as more people use a strategy like "grid trader" to balance their savings, the prices of the cryptos with which they do it will become more stable.

All calls to @nothingisdead's Kraken-API (which I have copied and renamed to kraka-djs to add CancelAll) are made through a function I called kapi so that any other exchange could be used by updating that funtion to translate Kraken's APIs to those of other exchanges.