Thanks to the onslaught of different cryptocurrency exchanges, Bitcoin trading has gained staggering popularity over the past few years. Whether you are an established daytrader or someone who has never delved into this segment before, the promise of profit through the simple actions of buying and selling crypto assets is enough to have you try this mechanism at least once.
When you turn towards cryptocurrency trading, you understand that it is far from a walk in the park. It is essentially a fulltime job, which requires you to pay the utmost attention to market mechanisms, analysis, indicators, and the resulting movements. If you take your eyes off the screen for a long moment, you could miss on large amounts of profit. But that’s not all since the slightest amount of ignorance could hit you with losses.
That is why many traders rely upon automated crypto trading bots to save their time and money. Built with accuracy in mind, these bots could perform automatic trades after analyzing the market all by themselves. As a result, those traders who hold a day job don’t have to keep themselves glued to their trading computers, and those who have other profit-generating mechanisms in place could pay attention to them.
Gekko is one such Bitcoin bot, which is free and built for advanced users. Today we shall review the main pros and cons of this service.
How Long Has Gekko Been in Business?
Built using javascript, Gekko bot was first introduced to the world in 2013. It is an open-source trading bot project which has its code openly available on GitHub, where various developers who are interested in cryptocurrency work on its enhancement.
Over the past 6 years, the platform has amassed a sizeable community of users, which is mostly due to its open-source model. Through different features and support of multiple exchanges, Gekko has gone on to become quite a popular project in the crypto community.
Rather than a graphic user-interface (GUI) the bot is operated through a commandline interface, where traders need to uses javascript to avail its functionalities. This makes the open-source project almost exclusive to those who are either familiar with the aspect of coding, or who are not shy of learning to code.
TOP TRADING BOTS
How Reputable is Gekko?
Despite being an open-source platform that is open to contributions from everyone, Gekko bot holds a certain reputation in the cryptocurrency community and has a lot of positive reviews. The project was started by renowned Bitcoin developer Mike van Rossum, a programmer from Amsterdam who has worked with entities such as ING while also running projects for the likes of Gucci.
At the time of writing, the Gekko open-source project has over 2,600 commits on GitHub while also having 187 contributors to its name. Through the support of its community, the project has moved additional plugins and coding programs to the forefront and has also spawned a GUI version by the name of Gekko Plus that comes with different pricing models.
While it still remains quite a niche product in the already selective crypto community, these developments and statistics go on to show that it holds a certain stature to those who are very proficient with coding and using trading bots that work off of mainstream mechanisms.
What Exchanges Are Supported?
At the time of writing the review, Gekko trading bot supports over 10 active cryptocurrency exchanges through its online platform. Some exchanges have full support in terms of using the features that platform offers, while others get limited functionalities.
- Binance
- Poloniex
- GDAX (Coinbase Pro)
- Kraken
- Bitfinex
- Bittrex
- Coinfalcon
- The Rock Trading
- Luno (formerly BitX)
Other exchanges such as Gemini are included on the bot’s roster. But they have been disabled by the mods and cannot be used at the time of writing.
How Much Does Gekko Cost?
Gekko is a free open-source project that comes without any pricing tag associated with it. While this may sound like a very lucrative offer, this free Bitcoin trading bot service comes with its own restrictions in terms of ease of use.
For instance, if you want to utilize it, you need to be proficient with commandline interface or javascript coding. With it, you also need to have a computer or server that could host the application in order for it to run – but in the words of the developer himself, configuring Gekko on a server is “hard”. If you turn off the machine running the software, the application would stop working.
Due to these reasons, only those who are highly proficient in computers find this “free of cost” tag to be working in their favor.
How Easy to Use Is It?
As explained above, Gekko is many things, but easy isn’t one of them.
Based on a commandline interface and coming with complex coding requirements to set up anything, Gekko isn’t your run of the mill trading bot. While it offers different strategies that you can load and trade with, it wouldn’t be easy to apply them to trading mechanisms if you aren’t proficient with using commandline or javascript.
With that, the aforementioned requirements of running Gekko on your computer are also very specific. This makes it one of the most difficult to use cryptocurrency bots on the market.
What Settings Are Available?
Gekko offers its users an array of settings, which are based upon technical analysis indicators. The trading bot uses long and short investment advice as a baseline for its strategies.
Users could still create their own strategies using javascript. While it is not an easy concept to execute for even the most proficient of computer users, it is still present.
With it, Gekko also offers backtesting and paper trading, which allows traders to test their strategies against historical data and real-time market movement, respectively. It also offers additional plugins that allow more features such as running technical analysis strategies against a market. But as explained above, using these features remains difficult at best.
How Secure is Gekko?
The platform is based on javascript and operates by getting installed on user machines. This means that it is not a web or cloud-based program but one that is solely operated through the computer or server it is installed on.
This also means that Gekko bot is as secure as you would want it to be. This provides flexibility to expert computer users, but the lack of front-end features such as two-factor authentication (2FA) and a secure server by default makes the service quite vulnerable for the everyday trader not proficient with javascript.
How is the Customer Support?
Instead of a company supporting its operations, Gekko is a free, open-source Bitcoin bot with a community of contributors. This means that while you would get some updates to the core program and answers to questions through forums, there wouldn’t be any dedicated support personnel to help you out if you run into any issues.
Given that the service comes free of charge, Gekko’s way of handling this aspect is pretty standard.
How Profitable is Gekko?
The service doesn’t define any percentages of profit or any promises to double your funds overnight. But given that Bitcoin bots are unpredictable, this practice is simply logical.
The strong community behind Gekko and its evolvement into a paid service speak of the bot’s success. But at the same time, you should be cautious in using it just like you should while utilizing any other crypto bot.
As a general rule of thumb, you should be extremely vigilant in using cryptocurrency bots and only trade with money you can afford to lose. The same rule applies while using Gekko.
The best way to go about it is to keep an eye on your profits and how your funds are being treated by the script, and make quick decisions to stop trading the minute you see anything gone wrong.
Should I Use Gekko at All?
You can certainly use it if you can run javascript or a commandline based crypto bot. But if you are not familiar with coding, then checking out the Gekko Plus iteration with its GUI might be your best bet. With that being said, while Gekko is free, the Plus version comes with a price tag to it.
Overall, using Gekko bot would be a logical choice only if you are an advanced user who knows how to run a complex program. If javascript isn’t your strong suit, then you might need to look elsewhere for a trading bot that fits your needs the best.