Interview with Liquidity Miner MrBig¶
During the past nine months since we launched liquidity mining, we witnessed great participation from our ever-increasing miner community. Together, we’ve reached one milestone after another. In this post, we introduce one of our top liquidity miners, MrBig1964, to you. Hope you can learn something from him!
MrBig1964 is one of our Eagle Club members, who has been trading cryptocurrency and Forex for years. In his interview, he emphasizes the compounding effect of daily small profits (0.6-0.7% in his case) and suggests fellow traders do stay calm and do not be greedy.
Disclaimer: Not financial advice. All views expressed in this interview are the interviewee’s and do not represent the opinions of hummingbot.io. Hummingbot does not guarantee nor claim to guarantee profits.
Can you tell us a little bit about your background?¶
I’m Portuguese, 56 years old. I'm a chemical engineer, working daily at a ceramic tiles factory for the last 32 years. I’ve been involved with computers and programming since I was at a very young age. My first computer was a Sinclair ZX80. That was many many years ago… So I always kept a lot of interest in everything related to information systems, computers, programming and so on.
When did you start investing in crypto?¶
Just a couple of years ago. I started investing in funds first, after that in stocks, then I was attracted to Forex and algorithmic trading. I only started to trade crypto a couple of years ago although I've been aware of it since almost the very beginning. I still regret not buying 100 BTC at a couple of hundreds a few years ago…
Did you hear about Hummingbot or liquidity mining first? How did you hear about it?¶
I don’t really remember the details. After starting trading cryptos manually for a while, I started looking for ways to do it with some kind of automation. After some web search, I ran into Hummingbot.
How has your experience been so far with hummingbot?¶
Absolutely great! It’s a great piece of software, with many enthusiastic people surrounding it. I’m looking nowhere else now!
How long did you spend figuring out Hummingbot? How much effort did you put into it?¶
Quite a bit, I guess. I was trying to understand not only Hummingbot but also all the concepts of liquidity mining, the best configuration to run it, adjusting my VPS, etc. There were a lot of different things. I’m also trying to start experimenting with custom scripts. Deep inside, I’m still a programmer, but I quit programming years ago so I must relearn a lot of new things.
You are one of our top liquidity miners. How has your experience been with liquidity mining?¶
Amazing! In fact, it is a whole new world that was uncovered. I was acquainted with the concept but I always thought that was something reserved for the professional investors in the business. Things like Hummingbot are doing a lot in the democratization of liquidity mining.
Have you been able to make money so far?¶
I just confessed that in the beginning it was a little bit difficult, and I’ve lost some money. Especially when the markets went like a roller coaster. But I’ve got some equilibrium between returns from liquidity mining and the pure PnL from the market making bots so I’m steadily recovering from losses and now clearly in the green zone.
What strategies do you use to participate in liquidity mining? And why?¶
I use the pure market making strategy in all my bots. I didn’t have the time to explore other strategies at the moment. I made this choice because it seems to be the more appropriate strategy for me, also the easiest to configure and earn profits.
Have you tried to set up different instances of the bot?¶
Yes, sure! I’m running 20 instances at this precise moment. I’m using Docker installations on top of a Debian 10-based VPS with 8 vCores, 16 GB memory and some 160 GB of SSD disk.
Did you change your bots’ settings often, and how often did you change them?¶
I used to in the very beginning. Sometimes 3 or 4 times a day, trying to experiment with different configurations. Now I only check them a couple of times per day, usually the first thing in the morning and later in the evening. Normally I just adjust the spreads, nothing more.
What pairs are you trading currently? Why did you choose these pairs?¶
I’m in all the pairs available in the liquidity mining campaigns from Hummingbot. I’m not looking for pairs with more or less yield. I’m just trying to split the risk between all of them. I know some give you a more favourable yield for your investment and others less, but there are also different behaviours regarding the PnL you get without taking the liquidity mining rewards in consideration. I don’t like to put all the eggs in the same basket.
What other tools besides Hummingbot do you use to help you trade?¶
I have an Excel spreadsheet to calculate the different allocations, order sizes and balance limits, and give me the initial spreads. It’s a simple tool, which helps me with the bot configuration. Apart from this, I use an app to monitor my Binance, Celsius, Nexo and Metamask accounts. Also I take some time to look at the news from the Crypto markets and overall financial markets because I’m still trading Forex.
What important lessons or insights have you learned while trading using Hummingbot?¶
Don’t be greedy. Keep an open mind. Keep calm. Use a stop loss (kill_switch_enable: True).
Lastly, do you have any recommendations or trading tips for fellow miners?¶
Take some time using the paper trading mode before throwing your money in the market. Use some time to look at the market action of each pair you’re looking to trade. See how it behaves, how the waves of the order book oscillates. Do not try to be in the front row of the order book, the market will kill you. Stay out of very trendy markets. Stable markets are market makers’ best friends.
Configure your bot using larger spreads and reduce them slowly until you get a balance in your filled transactions that don’t make you run into loss. If you are able to configure your bot to give you a small profit or, at least, not lose money after taking fees in account, then the liquidity mining will give you the profit. With some 0.6% to 0.7% profit per day, with compounding, you will get good money. Don’t be greedy...
Learn More¶
For exchanges and projects who would like to learn more about liquidity mining, please contact us at [email protected].