vtraha/bybit-trading-bot

This is an automated trading bot for the Bybit cryptocurrency exchange, designed to trade USDT-margined perpetual futures contracts. Perpetual futures are a type of derivative that lets traders bet on whether the price of a coin like Bitcoin or Ethereum will go up or down, without owning the actual coin. The bot is written in TypeScript and is intended to run continuously in the background, checking prices and placing trades according to a set of technical rules. The core strategy follows what is called trend-following: the bot looks at recent price history to decide whether the market is trending up or down, then opens a position in that direction. It uses three technical indicators to make decisions. The first is an EMA crossover, which compares two moving averages of different lengths to identify direction. The second is ADX with directional movement, which measures whether a trend is strong enough to trade or whether the market is just moving sideways. The third is ATR, which measures recent price volatility and is used to set stop-loss distances and calculate how large each position should be relative to the account. The bot has a dry-run mode that shows what trades it would make without placing any real orders, and it supports Bybit's testnet (a practice environment using fake money) before trading with real funds. The README is notably thorough and beginner-friendly, walking first-time users through every step from installing Node.js and cloning the repository, to creating API keys on Bybit, running in dry-run mode to see signals, then testnet trading, and finally switching to live trading. It explicitly warns users to never skip the practice stages. Configuration is done through an environment file where users set their API key, which trading pair to use, the lengths for the two moving averages, and risk parameters like how much of the account to risk per trade. The bot requires Node.js 20 or newer and a Bybit account with API access. The README carries a clear disclaimer that this is research software, not a product with guaranteed returns, and that cryptocurrency derivatives carry significant risk. The full README is longer than what was shown.