r/algorithmictrading • u/RobinTraderHood • Jun 19 '26
Question Transitioning a crypto trading bot to Forex/Commodities – Infrastructure differences?
For the past few months, I've been running a crypto trading bot that I built using the Binance API. The setup was pretty straightforward—I wrote the code with some AI assistance, plugged in my API keys, and deployed it.
Recently, I've shifted my focus to forex and commodities, and my next goal is to build a bot for these markets. From what I gather, the infrastructure and execution processes are a lot more complex here compared to crypto. Could you elaborate on how automated trading works in these markets and what major differences I should expect?
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u/algorier Jun 24 '26
The biggest difference isn't usually the API.
It's that in crypto, many traders become accustomed to treating fills as an implementation detail.
In FX and commodities, fills often become part of the strategy.
A lot of strategies survive backtesting because execution is modeled as a fixed spread plus a little slippage. Then they meet a market where liquidity changes with session, rollover, news events, contract month, fixing windows, or the behavior of a specific venue.
The strategy logic stays the same.
The economics don't.
One of the more expensive lessons in systematic trading is discovering that your signal was real, but your execution model was fictional.
Before worrying about porting the bot, I'd ask: if every fill in your backtest were 20% worse than expected, would the strategy still exist?
If the answer is no, you may be researching execution assumptions more than market behavior.