I'm sitting in my friend's living room. He's sitting cross-legged in white linen pants, with his hands casually placed on his knees, nodding gently. His guests are part of a fairly successful pop band, and they're recounting their adventures from their latest tour around Europe and Asia in a sailboat, magic tiny-home-schoolbus, or some hip mode of transportation. I noticed the only quiet guy there. The only thing I know about him is that he's supposed to be a music production wizard. He's typing away furiously, concentrated on his screen. I ask him what he's doing, and he gently replies, "I'm creating a Python script to execute an automated bitcoin trading strategy." I have no idea whether his bot yielded a good return or whether he even finished it. However, actually hearing that string of buzzwords out loud and watching those words casually leave his lips left an impression on me — I too must play that game one day. Well, here I am.
InfluxDB as a Learning Tool to Develop a Trading Strategy
I stumbled across Alpaca, the commission-free REST API stock brokerage. It's pretty cool. You have the option of paper trading or live trading. Plus, the documentation comes with example algorithms and instructions for how to deploy on Heroku so you can actually implement your trading commission free.