redhelix / dcabot

Blindly buy crypto every day based on a weekly configuration.

Configurable DCA bot for crypto

I have wanted to try out dollar cost averaging (DCA) for quite some time now, as it's an easy way to stack coins without worrying about price fluctuations. However, Kraken---which is my exchange of choice---does not support automated daily orders, so I thought it would be a fun weekend project to actually make a bot that does this for me.

What exactly does it do?

From Binance Academy:

Dollar cost averaging refers to the practice of investing fixed amounts at regular intervals (for instance, $20 every week). This is a strategy used by investors that wish to reduce the influence of volatility over their investment and, therefore, reduce their risk exposure.

Simply put, the bot blindly buys some amount of crypto every day. The following things can be configured:

• What time of day to buy
• What crypto to buy (according to its code on Kraken)
• How much to spend

Further, each day of the week can be configured independently such that it will buy e.g. Bitcoin for 20€ on some days of the week, and Doge for 10€ on the others. Finally, it can be configured to not buy anything at all on specific weekdays.

Check src/config/config.ini directory for an example configuration.

Hardware

I wrote this bot for my Raspberry Pi, but it should be able to run on any machine with Python 3 installed. If you want my exact setup, you will need:

• Raspberry Pi (I use 3 B+) with Raspbian and power supply
• Pimoroni Inky pHAT
• Pibow 3 B+ Coupé

If you choose to run the bot on this setup, you can run a separate monitor program dcapoll.py to show some stats on the Inky pHAT display as seen in the picture---with 10 minute intervals. The left half of the display will show the following:

• Timestamp of last display update
• How much crypto the bot has bought
• How much it has spent in total
• How much the crypto is worth in total
• The change in FIAT
• The change in percent

The right half, on the other hand, will show the following:

• Today's configuration (time, crypto, amount)
• Current balance on Kraken
• How many days are left based on the weekly configuration
• The local (SSH) IP address

Note that the DCA bot is independent, and the e-ink display is therefore not necessary.

The BotStats class in src/BotStats.py makes it simple to write other monitor programs such as for the Inky wHAT or the terminal.

Installation

The bot uses the krakenex Kraken API. The monitor uses the inky and Pillow packages. Install all by running pip3 install -r requirements.txt in the root directory of the repo.

Make the database directory by running mkdir src/database.

Make the log directory by running mkdir src/log.

Generate an API key on Kraken and create the API key file src/config/kraken.key with the following content:

Public API key
Private API key

The API keys should allow the following:

• Fetching public information (prices, etc.)
• Fetching private information (balance, order information)
• Placing orders

Usage

The actual DCA bot can be found in src/dcabot.py. Run it by issuing the command python3 src/dcabot.py. It will write debug info to src/log/dca.log.

The monitor program that will fetch the DCA bot stats and display them on the screen can, as mentioned, be found in src/dcapoll.py. Run it by issuing the command python3 src/dcapoll.py. It will write debug info to src/log/poll.log.

If you want to run these on the Pi through SSH, you may want to use the nohup command. Entering make run in the src/ directory will run them using nohup and save their PIDs to individual dotfiles. Conversely, make kill will kill the processes using these dotfiles.

When the bot buys some amount of crypto, the order details are saved in a local SQLite3 database, src/database/orders.db. This way, any order you place manually (or with another bot) will not interfere with this bot. Further, the BotStats class uses this database to compute the stats we may want to show.

Note

I see myself as a functional programmer. This was a quick project of mine, and I usually don't code Python. As such, some (or much) of the code may be unelegant.

Also, the bot and monitor programs were written with Euro as the currency to buy with. If you want to use another currency, you'd have to change the the fiat variable in src/dcabot.py and src/dcapoll.py.

If you want the display to show other cryptos than XBT, ETH, and XTZ, you'd have to change src/dcapoll.py accordingly.

For the stats to be accurate, use only one FIAT currency with this bot.

Finally, though I have the yellow/black/white Inky pHAT display, I have set it to be black/white only for faster update times. If you want some color on the display, you must update the code and graphics accordingly yourself.

Use this bot at your own risk.

TO DO

• Display timestamp of latest buy (no room on Inky pHAT display)
• Perhaps handle exceptions in a more elegant manner
• Split bot and monitor up in different folders
• Make the cryptos shown on the display configurable
• Make the FIAT symbols shown on the display configurable
• A Shell script to run (and perhaps install) everything
• Give the color (red, yellow, or black) for the display as a command-line flag

Feedback

For any feedback and/or suggestions, contact me at larsvadgaard *at* gmail *dot* com.

Credits

First off, this small project was inspired by this project by u/brutang, and the background image was found on this page, though it has been edited a bit. I also got some code and ideas from this repo (e.g. config loading).

Donate

This isn't a grand project but if you feel like it, I would appreciate small donations.

Tezos    (XTZ)   @ tz1RWPDoMABjLect6dkETjPWgva5SRMtWGVw
Bitcoin  (BTC)   @ 38TM7xJnN4tV2U2La8bh5Rcu2muASkyQZn
Ethereum (ETH)   @ 0x6e9644FaD57F93b58573bAdEe3Cb0596F32C9852
Litecoin (LTC)   @ MUyMZejFyJsVpmZ5omg8yzh6nRQwhdQM5U
Dogecoin (DOGE)  @ DG82bQUFRTVyfkExwLwoSj8k6zQRoTCC6h
Stratis  (STRAT) @ SYWpro6QK8gbAfivNAkmiHy6wCuUs6qLjQ
Dash     (DASH)  @ Xe6VHQi5DPdufsGSSWRg5ZmPkiU4oBxebQ