COMMENT "MAKER"
Market-making: earn the spread with a free bot (start on paper)
Instead of betting a coin goes up, market-making earns the tiny gap between the buy and sell price, over and over. A free bot made $4.12 on a paper Bitcoin test, and showed the setting that would have made 4x more. No moonshots, just the spread, and you start on fake money. Most people lose money trading, so this is not financial advice.
01Quick steps
- 1Free tool: github.com/hummingbot/hummingbot.
- 2Run it in PAPER mode first (fake money, zero risk).
- 3Set a small spread each side of the price on a big pair.
- 4Watch the heatmap and nudge toward the better setting.
02Your ready to use prompt
Explain market-making to me like a beginner, then help me set up hummingbot in paper mode on a BTC pair: what spread to start with, what order size, and how to read the pnl heatmap to find a better spread. Remind me to stay on paper until I understand the worst case.
03Full tutorial
You place a buy just below the price and a sell just above it, and pocket the small gap (the spread) each time both fill. Pros do this all day. No betting on direction.
hummingbot (github.com/hummingbot/hummingbot) is free and open-source, about 20.7k stars, and you run it yourself.
Follow the repo's setup, then run it in paper-trading mode on Binance. That's fake money, so you risk nothing while you learn.
Start on something like BTC-USDT, where there's always trading, so your orders actually fill.
Start around 0.1 to 0.15% above and below the price, with a small order size. Too wide and nothing fills, too tight and fees eat you.
The bot shows a grid of what different spreads would have made. The viral test made $4.12 but a nearby square would have made $16.85, so nudge toward the better setting.
Market-making can still lose if the price runs one way hard. Only move off paper once you know your worst case, and start tiny.
Market-making is small and steady, not a jackpot, and real money adds real risk. Stay on paper while you learn. Not financial advice.