Trading cryptocurrencies is time consuming. While traditional exchanges would shut down each day to let people go home and live their lives, crypto exchanges never close for business. Trading digital assets is 24/7. There are no days off, no vacations, and no sick days. Every second of every day the market continues to hum along.

At first crypto trading is exciting. Each morning feels like a new adventure. The volatility of the market only compounds the feeling of wonder.

Eventually, everything changes.

Managing every aspect of a crypto portfolio becomes life consuming. Soon we find ourselves wide-eyed at 3am trying to perfectly time the exact moment to enter our next position before we head off to bed. It’s at that moment that it hits us – We have a problem.

That’s when most traders turn to automated trading bots.

This guide will liberate us from the unceasing march of the market. The following trading resources are the top portfolio management and automated trading services in the market. They help us simplify the way we manage our portfolio, execute the trades we want automatically, and keep our portfolio in check while we sleep.

Let’s jump right into our list of the top crypto trading bots to automate your portfolio.

1. Shrimpy - Automated Portfolio Management

Shrimpy is the culmination of everything you want in a portfolio management solution. Unlike many other services available in the market, they found their niche as the perfect long-term automation tool.

Rather than promoting features like signals, arbitrage trading, or algorithmic strategies, Shrimpy offers a complete set of portfolio strategies. Instead of focusing on the short term, they offer a simplified way to engage in the market over longer time horizons.

Shrimpy provides features for precisely managing your funds across exchanges. By plugging all your exchanges into their unified dashboard, you can systematically segment, track, and monitor your entire portfolio across a wide range of popular exchanges.

Tracking isn’t everything they do. Automation was where Shrimpy originated. They pride themselves as the leading portfolio rebalancing, dollar-cost averaging, and index fund building service in the market. There isn’t anything comparable in the market today.

Once you get settled into the application, you will notice several other game-changing features. Social portfolios is one of these features. It’s a new way to interact with other cryptocurrency traders by viewing their portfolio, copying their allocations or strategy, and automatically tracking portfolios over time. It’s a completely new way to think about social trading.

Finally, no trading service would be complete without backtesting. Shrimpy offers a robust backtesting tool which evaluates the market using precise order book data that is used to simulate historical performance.

If that’s not enough, Shrimpy also supports the Universal Crypto Trading APIs. These are trading APIs which connect to every major exchange and allow developers to build their own trading bots by taking advantage of the Shrimpy infrastructure. They are perfect for rapidly building complete trading services.

Shrimpy is the most highly regarded automated trading service in the market. Try them today by signing up here.

2. 3commas – Smart Trading Terminal

3Commas is perfect for the professional trader. Unlike portfolio management solutions like Shrimpy, you would never hear the words “simple” or “easy” used in the same sentence as 3Commas. This trading service is complex to say the least.

With enough time and effort, 3Commas can provide extremely detailed control over the way you execute your trading strategy across exchanges.

While 3Commas provides an extensive list of features, it’s not for everyone. It’s recommended for traders who are ready to commit the time necessary for learning everything about this trading service. Understanding how this trading bot works is a feat.

Once you understand 3Commas, the work isn’t done. 3Commas focuses on short term trading strategies. Rather than “Set it and forget it”, signal based strategies will require more intervention as the market changes over time. That means the strategy you use will need to be adjusted. Taking time out of your day to keep up you’re your trading bot.

3Commas is one of the most complete resources for professional crypto traders.

3. Haasonline - Automated Trading Strategies

Haasbot is somewhat different than other trading services in today’s day and age. Unlike most other services which are now managed in the cloud, Haasbot has remained as one of the only trading bots which still runs from a personal computer.

Running a trading bot from your personal computer has both advantages and disadvantages. On one front, it could feel safer because your API keys never leave your computer. On the other hand, running a trading bot from your own computer means you need to be online 24/7. When your computer shuts off, so does your bot.

Additionally, when there are issues with Haasonline, that means it could be a while before the problem is resolved. Not only do they need to update the source code, but everyone needs to download and update their software to the latest version. Cloud-base trading bots can typically be updated quicker and changes can be propagated to users in near real-time.

Regardless of the difficulties with a desktop application, Haasbot has a complete user experience. Everything from signals, complex algorithmic trading, and arbitrage is supported in this application. Even recently, they launched their visual editor which allows traders to build strategies using drag and drop blocks. While you still need to understand the logic behind your strategy using the visual editor, it becomes easier to conceptualize the decision-making process for your trading bot.

4. Hummingbot - Open Finance Software Client

Hummingbot targets a different user than other bots which we’ve discussed here. Hummingbot is really designed for building and deploying institutional strategies.

Unlike portfolio management or signal based strategies, you can automate things like arbitrage, market making, and liquidity cloning with Hummingbot.

While these features are not in any way designed for the average trader or investor, institutions and exchanges would find these automation features useful for maintaining their own liquidity.

In addition to the differences in functionality, this service is also open source. That allows anyone to view the source code and download the software to their personal computer for editing based on your own personal requirements.

If you’re an institution looking for market making, check out Hummingbot.

5. Gekko - Open Source Trading Bot

Gekko is the best open source trading bot for builders. Designed with developers in mind, Gekko decided to open source their project. This has allowed a community of builders to grow around the trading bot.

Reaching over 2,000 downloads a month, Gekko is one of the largest crypto github projects which are used by traders.

Implementing an algorithmic trading strategy with Gekko is a bit more involved than the other trading services discussed above. Gekko requires an intimate knowledge of both crypto trading and development.

To execute a live trading strategy, you will need to dig into the details of this open source project to understand how this bot interacts with exchanges, executes trades, and manages your portfolio. Without a detailed understanding of these crucial components, Gekko can be a confusing place for novice traders to begin their trading bot journey.

Remember your tax obligations

Automated trading has its perks but you might find yourself at a disadvantage when it comes to tax time. Every crypto to crypto trade is a taxable event and using any of the above tools is going to result in thousands of trades. It is wise to take a moment to revise your strategy to ensure you are not caught off guard!

Conclusion

Automating your cryptocurrency portfolio strategy can be a huge time saver. Keeping up with the 24/7 markets is draining and will eventually lead to burnout.

Explore how each of these trading bots can help you take back control of your time. Since they are all unique, it may take some time to understand how each trading bot can be effectively leveraged for your portfolio.

This article has been written by Robin Singh - founder of Koinly - a crypto tax software calculator that automates tax prep for bitcoin investors, and was first published here