Cryptocurrency in python

In , Wei Dai published a description of "b-money", characterized as an anonymous, distributed electronic cash system. Shortly thereafter, Nick Szabo described bit gold. Like bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies that would follow it, bit gold not to be confused with the later gold-based exchange, BitGold was described as an electronic currency system which required users to complete a proof of work function with solutions being cryptographically put together and published.

The first decentralized cryptocurrency, bitcoin, was created in by presumably pseudonymous developer Satoshi Nakamoto. It used SHA, a cryptographic hash function, as its proof-of-work scheme. In April , Namecoin was created as an attempt at forming a decentralized DNS, which would make internet censorship very difficult. Soon after, in October , Litecoin was released.

It was the first successful cryptocurrency to use scrypt as its hash function instead of SHA On 6 August , the UK announced its Treasury had been commissioned a study of cryptocurrencies, and what role, if any, they can play in the UK economy. The study was also to report on whether regulation should be considered. Architecture Decentralized cryptocurrency is produced by the entire cryptocurrency system collectively, at a rate which is defined when the system is created and which is publicly known.

In centralized banking and economic systems such as the Federal Reserve System, corporate boards or governments control the supply of currency by printing units of fiat money or demanding additions to digital banking ledgers.

In the case of decentralized cryptocurrency, companies or governments cannot produce new units, and have not so far provided backing for other firms, banks or corporate entities which hold asset value measured in it. The underlying technical system upon which decentralized cryptocurrencies are based was created by the group or individual known as Satoshi Nakamoto.

As of May , over 1, cryptocurrency specifications existed. Within a cryptocurrency system, the safety, integrity and balance of ledgers is maintained by a community of mutually distrustful parties referred to as miners: who use their computers to help validate and timestamp transactions, adding them to the ledger in accordance with a particular timestamping scheme.

Most cryptocurrencies are designed to gradually decrease production of that currency, placing a cap on the total amount of that currency that will ever be in circulation. Compared with ordinary currencies held by financial institutions or kept as cash on hand, cryptocurrencies can be more difficult for seizure by law enforcement. This difficulty is derived from leveraging cryptographic technologies. Blockchain The validity of each cryptocurrency's coins is provided by a blockchain. A blockchain is a continuously growing list of records, called blocks, which are linked and secured using cryptography.

Each block typically contains a hash pointer as a link to a previous block, a timestamp and transaction data. By design, blockchains are inherently resistant to modification of the data. It is "an open, distributed ledger that can record transactions between two parties efficiently and in a verifiable and permanent way".

For use as a distributed ledger, a blockchain is typically managed by a peer-to-peer network collectively adhering to a protocol for validating new blocks. Once recorded, the data in any given block cannot be altered retroactively without the alteration of all subsequent blocks, which requires collusion of the network majority.

Blockchains are secure by design and are an example of a distributed computing system with high Byzantine fault tolerance. Decentralized consensus has therefore been achieved with a blockchain. The public nature of the blockchain ledger protects the integrity of whatever is being transacted since no one entity owns the database. Timestamping Cryptocurrencies use various timestamping schemes to "prove" the validity of transactions added to the blockchain ledger without the need for a trusted third party.

The first timestamping scheme invented was the proof-of-work scheme. The most widely used proof-of-work schemes are based on SHA and scrypt. The proof-of-stake is a method of securing a cryptocurrency network and achieving distributed consensus through requesting users to show ownership of a certain amount of currency.

It is different from proof-of-work systems that run difficult hashing algorithms to validate electronic transactions. The scheme is largely dependent on the coin, and there's currently no standard form of it. Some cryptocurrencies use a combined proof-of-work and proof-of-stake scheme. Mining In cryptocurrency networks, mining is a validation of transactions. Summary metrics Personally, this is the area I usually look at first.

The most important parts to point out are the following: Trades per day - the average number of closed trades per day. I'm usually looking for strategies that make about ten trades per day. When trading more than one coin-pair, this metric is the average of market changes that all pairs incur, from the beginning to the end of the specified period. It's crucial to test a strategy in different market conditions, not just upward trending markets. To understand the report in its entirety, make sure to read the relevant docs.

Notes and improvements We can see that only six trades occurred. These trades generated a profit of 5. This result is not impressive, considering the risk involved. However, this strategy is as simple as it gets and has vast room for improvement: Comparing to buy and hold Just holding ETH, i. It is important to test our strategy in different conditions - that is not only when the market is growing, but also when it is shrinking.

Trading more coin-pairs We only considered Ethereum, which is one of the hundreds of coins we can trade. This limit only allows for one trade to happen at a time, which is clearly suboptimal. Using more advanced strategies We used arguably one of the simplest strategies out there, which used only simple moving averages as indicators. Adding complexity doesn't necessarily mean better performance, but there's a massive number of indicator combinations we can backtest against eachother to find the best strategy.

Optimizing parameters Currently, we haven't attempted to optimized any hyperparameters, such as moving average period, return of investment, and stop-loss. Smaller time periods We only considered daily candlesticks, which is one of the reasons why the bot finds only about 0.

A bot can potentially make more profit by making more frequent trades and looking at more fine-detailed candlesticks. Plotting results To utilize freqtrade's plot commands, we will need to alter the docker-compose. The only thing we need to do is comment out one line and uncomment another. This tells docker-compose to pull the freqtrade Docker image that contains the correct plotting libraries.

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Once the values have been placed inside the hashing module, the algorithm will return a bit string denoting the contents of the block. So, this is what gives the blockchain immutability. Since each block will be represented by a hash, which will be computed from the hash of the previous block, corrupting any block in the chain will make the other blocks have invalid hashes, resulting in breakage of the whole blockchain network.

It will keep the transactions data and include other helper methods for completing various roles, such as adding new blocks. Here are the roles of its attributes: self. The genesis block is what represents the beginning of the blockchain.

As explained earlier, hashes are pivotal for realizing the security of the cryptocurrency blockchain, because any slight alteration in an object will result in the creation of an entirely different hash. Furthermore, it also compares the hash values of every two successive blocks to identify any anomalies. If the chain is working properly, it returns true; otherwise, it returns false.

For example, the PoW can be implemented by identifying a number that solves a problem whenever a user completes some computing work. Anyone on the blockchain network should find the number complex to identify but easy to verify — this is the main concept of PoW. This way, it discourages spamming and compromising the integrity of the network.

Here is the code: Implementing Blockchain Mining Now, this is the most exciting section! Initially, the transactions are kept in a list of unverified transactions. Mining refers to the process of placing the unverified transactions in a block and solving the PoW problem. Load the Required Libraries For this tutorial, we will need to use some libraries. If you want to follow along with the reproducible examples, you should have installed these libraries. We will use the Kraken API and all the available cryptocurrencies.

Note that we will remove any cryptocurrency that has missing data during this time period. We will keep the closing daily prices. Note that the date is in Unix timestamp. DataFrame resp.

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This is how security is achieved in blockchains—every block will have a hash and that hash will rely on the hash of the previous block. As such, if someone tries to compromise any block in the chain, the other blocks will have invalid hashes, leading to disruption of the entire blockchain network.

This is where most of the action is going to take place. The Blockchain class will have various helper methods for completing various tasks in the blockchain. Let me explain the role of each of the methods in the class. Constructor method This method ensures the blockchain is instantiated.

In the blockchain convention, this block is special because it symbolizes the start of the blockchain. If a block has been constructed and the transactions allocated to it, the list is reset to ensure that future transactions are added into this list. And, this process will take place continuously; self.

As mentioned earlier, hashes are essential for the security of the blockchain as even the slightest change in the object will lead to the generation of a completely new hash. It also verifies if every block points to the right previous block, through comparing the value of their hashes.

If everything is correct, it returns true; otherwise, it returns false. Once the transaction data has been added to the list, the index of the next block to be created is returned. This index is calculated by adding 1 to the index of the current block which is the last in the blockchain.

The data will assist a user in submitting the transaction in future. Adding proof of work Proof of work is a concept that prevents the blockchain from abuse. Simply, its objective is to identify a number that solves a problem after a certain amount of computing work is done.

If the difficulty level of identifying the number is high, it discourages spamming and tampering with the blockchain. Remember that the last block is actually the current block in the chain. Anyone on the blockchain network should find the number complex to identify but easy to verify — this is the main concept of PoW. This way, it discourages spamming and compromising the integrity of the network. Here is the code: Implementing Blockchain Mining Now, this is the most exciting section!

Initially, the transactions are kept in a list of unverified transactions. Mining refers to the process of placing the unverified transactions in a block and solving the PoW problem. It can be referred to as the computing work involved in verifying the transactions. If everything has been figured out correctly, a block is created or mined and joined together with the others in the blockchain.

If users have successfully mined a block, they are often rewarded for using their computing resources to solve the PoW problem. Wow, it worked! Conclusion That is it! We hope that this article has assisted you to understand the underlying technology that powers cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum. We just illustrated the basic ideas for making your feet wet in the innovative blockchain technology.

The project above can still be enhanced by incorporating other features to make it more useful and robust. Of course, if you need something advanced, you can always grab a tutorial and fully immerse yourself in the world of cryptos. Do you have any comments or questions?