My Algo Developer Journey: Interview with I-Robot

Welcome to our new interview series “My Algo Developer Journey”. In this interview series, we will introduce you to the developers behind the algorithms that power the trading bots on UpBots. You’ll be able to get a better idea of who they are and how their algorithms are designed.

For our first interview, we’re pleased to welcome I-Robot, the creator of the algorithms behind the Sonny and Spooner trading bots. These bots can trade USDT pairs alongside Bitcoin, Ethereum, BNB, and FTT.

At the time of this interview, I-Robot is one of the most profitable developers on UpBots to date!

Let’s meet I-Robot!

How and when did you learn about the cryptocurrency market and started to trade?

My background is in engineering. I first learned about Bitcoin in 2013, but I felt like I was too late to invest in Bitcoin at 250 USD, since it was already up 100x! I wish, like everyone reading this interview, to go back and buy as many Bitcoins as I can in 2013!

Then, since I did not invest in Bitcoin I was not following any Bitcoin or blockchain news closely. As you know, in 2017 Bitcoin popularity topped, I started to see Bitcoin related news everywhere that was talking about how its ROI went up 1000x or more since it launched. It was then that I decided to be involved in Bitcoin.

Back then, the idea of holding an asset that made 1000x already was not enough to me so I wanted to trade it. That’s how my trading journey started too. I asked myself that if I could manage to move equity between coins before everyone pumps and sells near the top, I would make huge gains! Then my learning journey had begun.

Tell us more about your trading journey

I learned everything myself from a basic level. I didn’t know basic terminology and often asked questions like: what are those candles? What is OHLCV? What are other charting options (Renko, Point & Figure)…etc? What are indicators? What is Ichimoku Cloud? What is price action? How to abstract information from volume? What is support & resistance? What is supply & demand?

I also didn’t know about Eliot waves, Wyckoff analysis and most other trading techniques/strategies. I had to read many books about trading to understand everyone’s point of view!

During this period, my equity was on a real roller coaster going up & down with all the emotions attached!

How did your algo trading journey start and why did you decide to become an algo trader?

I believe that following a systematic approach is the right solution to trading in any financial market!

I started to experience more about systematic trading and back-testing, which opened my eyes to the fact that many of the strategies that you thought would work are not actually profitable!

Then, I tried to find a solution to the problem from a data-science point of view enabled by machine learning to achieve the goal of trading and this helped me a lot to come up with my current strategies!

I created my first systematic strategy and developed a bot that ran on my PC which was connected to an exchange that did all the work needed like fetching the balance, getting all the data needed, determining when to enter, position size, when to exit, place orders, check order status, cancel orders, calculate profit and losses, and generate a report for all this data.

Throughout the process, I have fine-tuned my strategy more to produce more gains with lower drawdowns.

I’ve spent years reading and trading by myself using technical analysis and on-chain data deploying a systematic approach! I chose to have a systematic approach, I chose to have a life. I chose trading with robots, and then I created I-Robot!

What can you tell UpBots users about how your algo works?

I-Robot trading bots are designed with multiple indicator strategies that I developed using technical indicators blended with machine learning to catch trends early and stay in a trend trade as long as possible.

“No one can trade several strategies on several coins for 24 hours, 365 days!”