AI and automated trading bots

The claim

“I built a simple strategy using ChatGPT and made $71,500 trading $BTC

You can build the same trading bot in just 10 minutes”

@rektfencer, 24 April 2024, 1,769,357 views¹

“I wrote a Bot, that’s made me $35K from $100 last night. This isn’t clickbait—just an AI Trading Bot powered by DeepSeek.”

@piyascode9, 25 September 2026, 13,555 views¹

A trading bot is a program that buys and sells in your account by rule. In the most-viewed version, an AI coding tool writes the bot from a ready-made prompt¹.

The sums

The first tweet gives no starting sum and no period¹. The second implies about 350 times the stake in one night (our sum)¹.

The accounts in the tweets are $68 to $1,000¹. To pay $1,000 a month, the largest must gain 100% a month (our sum)¹. The best 500 day traders in Taiwan, who traded by hand, earned about 8% a month after fees (our sum)²⁰.

On the crypto exchange Hyperliquid, a bot that opens and closes five positions a day with orders filled at once pays about 13.5% of the account a month in fees (our estimate, on an assumed trade count)⁸.

What happens to most people who try

• Public pools. Hyperliquid’s public pools are run by hand or by program. Of 218 pools at least a year old, 36.7% are in profit over their life and the middle pool is down 30.7%; 21% lost 90% or more (our estimate from an analytics site’s file, which appears to count only pools that once held about $5,000)⁷⁹. In the exchange’s own file of all 9,468 user-created pools, 22.8% show a lifetime profit and 67% are closed (our counts)⁸³.
• AI agents. In a September 2026 paper, 500 to 599 user-created AI agents trading on Hyperliquid were not profitable as a group. They won 41% of their trades, against 50% for a matched group of ordinary Hyperliquid traders⁹⁷. The paper is not yet reviewed; its authors appear to run the platforms⁹⁷.
• Prediction-market bots. On Polymarket, where people bet on events, 34.4% of 3,362 machine-run wallets finished a nine-day window in August 2026 ahead, and the group lost $2,822,122 after fees⁹⁹.

The upside

• The top of the pools. Among those 218 pools, the top quarter gained 20.7% or more over their life (one to 3.4 years) and the top tenth 77% or more; about 8% at least doubled (our estimate, from blockchain data)⁷⁹. These gains are not compared with simply holding bitcoin in a strong market.
• A named example. Growi HF, the largest user-run pool, calls itself “Fully automated”. It has returned about 99% after fees in 2.2 years, about 36% a year, with a worst fall of 32.4% (third-party site, blockchain data)⁸⁰. It holds about $13.4 million of deposits and its operator takes 10% of depositors’ profits; we did not check who runs it⁸⁰⁸¹.
• Bots on a prediction market. A summary of Bloomberg’s analysis says about 800 bot-like Polymarket wallets cleared more than $100,000 each; the owners are not identified⁸⁵.
• Long records elsewhere. The broker Darwinex shows four recorded strategies, the ones it chose to display, whose owners earned €231,000 to €1.01 million in fees on investors’ money, over 7 to 12 years⁸⁸. We did not check whether they are automated.

For a competent newcomer with a slow bot, the likely first year is a result somewhat below simply holding the asset; with a fast or leveraged bot, a loss (our estimate)⁷⁴⁹⁷. A good result, not the likely one, is to be among the roughly one in three year-old pools in profit⁷⁹. On $5,000, the gains of the top quarter to top tenth would be about $1,000 to $3,900 (our sum)⁷⁹. Not a wage.

What it takes to compete

• Skill in code. The main free framework says: “We strongly recommend you to have basic coding skills and Python knowledge.”⁴⁷
• Risk rules, not a better prompt. In the AI-agent study, the risk setting each user chose shaped how much borrowed money the agents used, and how often they were forced to close, more than the prompt did⁹⁷.
• Capital. At the best measured rate, $1,000 a month needs about $12,500 (our estimate)²⁰. Among Hyperliquid accounts active last month, 25.7% of those under $1,000 were in profit, against 70.2% of those holding $100,000 to $1 million (our counts; size is partly a result of winning)⁸².
• Low fees. At very high volume, Hyperliquid’s fee for an order filled at once falls to about half a newcomer’s⁸.
• Time. The verified records run two years or more, and the Darwinex fee earners’ for 7 to 12 years⁸⁰⁸⁸.

How to tell early: set a month of fees against your account size, judge the bot over months, compare it with simply holding, and never give a bought bot an access key that allows withdrawals⁵⁴.

Who else makes money from it

The exchange is paid on every trade, win or lose⁸. Hyperliquid pays a referrer “10% of referred users’ fees”⁵². A pool leader there takes 10% of depositors’ profits⁸¹.

Regulators’ cases concern a different situation: money sent to someone else’s bot or pool⁴.