Quote from: Lytse on July 21, 2013, 05:35:44 PM

Quote from: Rannasha on July 21, 2013, 01:19:41 PM

Quote from: Lytse on July 21, 2013, 12:50:53 PM

I agree, but I am wondering why someone creates a trading bot that blockes a fair price for others and trades towards a fixed price.....

People create trading bots for the same reason that people trade manually: For fun and profits. Bots don't "block a fair price", because what is a fair price anyway? Whatever people are willing to buy or sell for is a fair price. If the algorithm in a bot thinks 22 is a good price, then it doesn't matter that you were only willing to pay 21.

The only issue I personally have with bots on BTCT is the (too) small price increment (or 'tick') in orders. I can outbid someone by 1 satoshi per share and have my order executed first despite making what is effectively the same offer. This is already annoying when people do it manually, but bots can automate the process. This is one of the reasons I'm currently writing my own bot ^^

Does it take a lot of time to write such a bot? I would guess learning the techniques and creating a strategy takes about week.... Huh

Depends on your approach. With a week full-time, any decent programmer should be able to conjure up a decent bot (depending on the language used and required functionality you can do it in less time). Personally, I'm first focusing on making a complete library for all BTCT API calls, to make available for others to use. For just a bot you need a lot less functionality. Between that thoroughness and my need to divide time between my daughter, preparing my PhD thesis for printing and hobbies besides BTC-stuff, it is a very slow process