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Gunbot quickstart guide

This guide will help you get up and running with Gunbot in just a few minutes.

Please make sure you have the following prepared already:

  • Your Gunthy Wallet Address - You can find out here how to create one
  • Your Exchange API key & secret - Find out here how to create API keys
  • You have already activated your license - This guide will only work if your license has already been fully activated. You can do so here.

1) Installation & startup​

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Download Gunbot
The latest stable release of Gunbot can always be downloaded from the official Github here

The steps are generally the same on each operating system. Although they may differ slightly. The general steps are:

  • Download the zip file dedicated for your operational system
  • Unzip the zip file into a new folder
  • Depending on your firewall, allow TCP traffic on the port used for the user interface (port: 5000)
  • Start the executable and visit the user interface in your browser on: http://localhost:5000

Detailed steps per operating system can be found here:

2) Connect to an exchange​

When you first open the interface, it takes you to the /setup page where you have to connect to your exchange account with the API Keys you've created and connect the Gunbot license.

  • Make sure that you enter the correct API credentials here. Usually they API Key field is already pre-filled with the exchange you've submitted during your activation.
  • The Gunthy Wallet address is the 0x... Address you've entered during the activation and which holds the Gunthy Token.

In case of any issues, the GUI will notify you in the right sidebar.

You can find detailed steps about this step here.

3) Select and configure a trading pair​

Assuming you want to trade USDT-ETH (buying ETH with USDT, selling ETH for gain in USDT), with a capital of 2500 USDT which you would like to spread over a max of 50 buy orders.

All it takes to configure the above is 3 settings in the bot:

  1. Select the USDT-ETH trading pair
  2. Select as a strategy Builder, Buy Method Stepgrid, Sell Method Stepgrid
  3. Set the trading limit to 50 (2500 of capital divided by 50 max. trades equals the amount of capital Gunbot should use per trade)
  4. Set the max buy count to 50. This stops the bot for buying when the total current ETH holdings are worth 50x trading limit.

As the name of the strategy implies, it is a grid-like strategy mainly meant for long term trading. What this basically means is that the next order is always at a predictable price distance away from the previous order. It is a strategy that works well when it is able to do many relatively small trades, and take many small profits. What you would want to avoid is the bot running out of funds to place additional buy orders.

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You can learn more about the stepgrid strategy in the wiki.

Trading Limit Calculator​

Simply enter the amount of base funds you have on your exchange and your desired max buy count to get the resulting Trading Limit (and Max Buy Count) to define in Gunbot.

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About step sizes​

When you use auto step size, setting a 'max buy count' of 40 to 60 is considered relatively safe and will usually get the bot through hefty market movements without running out of funds. Extreme market conditions may require a higher max buy count to not run out of funds.

Because auto step size is not completely predictable it is not possible to calculate exactly how many possible buy orders there can be between a current market price and the lowest possible price. Using auto step size makes it easy to trade various assets with each their own particular price movements: it will detect tradable ranges automatically.

When you use a manual step size (for example set at as: asset price / planned number of buys), it is possible to exactly calculate how much funds can be spent in a certain price range. This allows you to go for a very safe setup that cannot run out of funds to trade with. Using manual step size requires more planning and monitoring.

About starting funds​

When you start trading a new pair, like USDT-ETH, it is recommended to not own any significant amount of ETH. This way the strategy can build up it's own trade, and make sure it only places profitable sell orders.

If you do have assets you for example bought manually and would like the bot to sell, the 'forever bags' option makes the bot ignore any past trading history. Running 'forever bags' with buys disabled can be an interesting way to sell assets in many small parts while the market is moving up.

3) Start trading​

Hit the Save Settings & Start Trading button at the top and Gunbot will start trading the pair and the strategy you've configured.

That's all! Gunbot now does the rest for you.

4) Monitoring​

The main chart shows exactly what the bot is doing:

  • Break even: shows the overall break even price of your current holdings, measuring all orders between opening a new trade and selling the last of that trade.
  • Grid DCA target: shows the target for starting buy trailing for the next buy order. Each buy order buys for '1x trading limit'.
  • Grid sell target: shows the target for starting sell trailing for the next sell order. When below break even, each sell order sells '1x trading limit' to take partial profits, above break even it takes profits in bigger increments.

There are a few exceptions where trading targets do not show on the chart:

  • When above break even, a buy step can act as a stop in profit
  • When in no position, it is possible that an (invisible) sell step target leads to a buy order

Trading results​

It is not easy to determine the 'exact current profit' of a grid strategy, because most of the times there will be funds held that still need to get sold in the future. The failsafe way to monitor your trading results is to look at your total wallet balance on the exchange, at times when the bot just sold off the last holdings.

The Gunbot interface shows stats about profit and loss on the dashboard, these are always calculated per order. Buy orders can have a negative result because of the fees paid to place the order. There is no guarantee that these statistics are always valid.

5) Changing settings​

Strategy settings can be changed while the bot is running, new criteria apply immediately after saving.

To change settings for a running pair, edit its strategy settings on the Trading Settings page, in the Active Pairs tab.

To make changes that fundamentally affect the strategy (trading limit, settings that affect step size), wait until a moment there are no remaining holdings left to sell.

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The 'Stop after next sell' option can be useful to pause the bot after the next complete sell order, so you can adjust settings afterwards.