I Tried out Algo Trading for Cryptocurrency. Not a Pleasant Experience.

Last year December, in between Black Friday deals and Christmas deals wanderings, I got to try out a couple of very popular algo trading plarforms for Cryptocurrencies.

The first I tried was 3commas

3Commas is the most talked about and highly ranked algo trading platform for Cryptocurrencies and it charges a hefty fee which made me feel it must be making its users very good money, at least enough to cover the monthly fees and still pocket some cool gains.

I connected it to my Binance exchange account, used Rave by Flutterwave to fund the Binance account and then attempted to turn on the 3commas to start buying and selling cryptos using algorithm generated signals. I didn't quite get it going before my trial period elapsed.

I kept coming upon a slick alternative to 3commas. It's called TradeSanta

It has a very compelling pitch, the site looked awesome that I felt the product must be well done if the owners put in as much effort as they did with the website, and it was also cheaper than 3commas.

I started with the basic plan's 5 days trial. And I was hooked. It was very easy to set up. And it was making me a steady $1 - $3 dollars a day on my $100 test fund. Until it lost about $25 in one day. Wiped all the previous 7 days gain and some of my original capital. I then abandoned it.

I kept getting pulled back to 3commas. Everyone online seemed to have very good things to say about it and it was constantly ranked high on reviews and by independent bloggers.

Luckily, it started a collaboration with Binance that allows one to use a slightly limited version of the platform for free. It was first as a special plan but later spun off as 3c Exchange

I funded it with about $100 and had some trouble getting familiar with the settings. 

Unlike TradeSanta it wasn't making me steady $1 - $3 dollars profit a day. Was making much less than that -- in the region of $0.20 to $1.20 a day (and more to the low side of that range). I felt happy and hopeful that I won't wake up to a $25 loss. But I did wake up to a $17 loss. MATIC crashed to half its price and the algo had piled up MATIC for higher sell prices following its earlier sustained price rise trend.

I turned it off and took out my remaining money after waiting for MATIC to recover some of its price drop.

I had also joined some Telegram group of Crypto traders and 3commas official groups. 

Overall, I came to the conclusion I have for Forex trading -- not for me. I went back to my hodl strategy in a cold wallet.