In the past I was typically developing strategies and indicators for automated Forex and Futures trading, using Ninjatrader, Tradingview and Metatrader. But since some time I get more and more requests for trading cryptocurrencies. There are clearly a lot of tools out there for Crypto-trading, however there are in my opinion very basic, typically using Python scripts and missing all nice features you got used to, like backtesting and optimization.
Therefore I want to focus here on options which do exists to my knowledge, automatically trading Cryptocurrencies while using a sophisticated trading environment/tool. With automatically trading I mean using a bot or tool which runs a strategy 24/7 unobserved.
The options listed below are just a quick overview, for detailed description of installation and usage please shoot us an email.
Ninjatrader 8
While NinjaTrader 8 is great in automation and scripting, it does not support trading cryptocurrencies out of the box. But there are now options out there which add Cryptocurrency support to NinjaTrader 8. Clearly the advantage of this solution is the rich and complete scripting (C# .NET language support), backtesting and optimization features of NinjaTrader.
NinjaTrader 8 is free for backtesting w/o any limitation, but must be leased or bought for trading live accounts, however for the Add-Ons listed below, this requirement does not exist.
Coinbase NinjaTrader Integration
The latest NinjaTrader 8 version supports Coinbase API natively. However, it only implements the market data API; it does not allow live-trading.
BitMEX NinjaTrader Integration
Link: see here
This integration allows access to the BitMEX market data, which allows leverages Cryptocurrency trading.
Unfortunately the API only integrates market data, but does not come with trading support. So it can be leveraged for backtesting e.g. XBTUSD in NinjaTrader 8, but for live-trading someone has to look for another solution.
Poloniex, Binance, Bitfinex, Deribit, BinancePlus Add-Ons
Link: see here
The Add-Ons are typically in the $150 to $250 area. If added to NinjaTrader they allow to access market data, but also enable trading of Cryptocurrencies.
I personally use the Binance adapter for some time, and didn’t find any bigger issues. One minor issue seems to be the fact that NinjaTrader’s internal performance handler can’t deal with split order executions, where one split has the size 0; this seems to happen only at certain Crypto-exchanges.
However, these Add-Ons don’t have the official NinjaTrader blessing, so you can’t expect any support from the NinjaTrader.
Tradingview and Autoview Chrome extension
Tradingview is a great tool in regard to charting, quick implementation of ideas, it supports a zillion of Crypto-exchanges, but lacks automation. Latter is clearly a big minus. However, even if supported the question would remain how useful it would be running a strategy 24/7 in a Chrome browser environment.
That being said, there is a Chrome extension out there, called Autoview, which uses Tradingview Pine script alerts to trigger orders. Bit disadvantage of this solution is that there is no feedback about the trades, it’s basically submitting orders blindly into the dark
The Chrome extension costs $5 per month, or $50 per year and can be found here: https://autoview.with.pink/. Tradingview is free, but also provides subscriptions, which do enable more features.
The built-in Pine script feature allows to add own strategies and indicators. But the features of Pine are clearly limited and can hardly be compared with the scripting capability of NinjaTrader for instance.
Please shoot us an email for any detailed question about the NinjaTrader and Tradingview features and support.