Just as any other novice investor, I too lack the time to allocate towards properly learning the ropes of the stock market and crypto trading. While I certainly wouldn’t discourage anyone from learning these things (trust me it’s handy to know) sometimes you just need to turn to a trading platform.
Two particular platforms that caught my eye, one of which I’ve been a user of for a short time, are UpBots and eToro. While UpBots is still technically in beta it has gained much traction in the crypto community. You may have also heard of eToro’s recent public listing on the NYSE. Both platforms have gained a lot of momentum and I feel this is only the beginning for both.
I decided to compare both platforms to see what specific strengths/weaknesses they possessed. My experiences with both are documented here to inform you, if you are curious about trying either one.
A look inside at eToro
So I will admit, I didn’t use eToro for as long as others may have. There might be some points that went over my head or that I didn’t catch when navigating through this platform.
A major draw of eToro for me was their specialization in social copy trading. If you have no clue what social copy trading is, basically it allows your portfolio to automatically follow that of a more advanced trader’s.
Once I made my account, I discovered the UI of eToro to be a little overwhelming but packed with useful tools.
eToro offers several trading options including stocks, crypto, commodities, currencies, and more. With a robust number of sectors to trade from, it’s quite appealing for those who may not want to stick to only one sector.
Perhaps what stuck out about eToro the most is the focus on the “social” part of social copy trading. A news feed, trader profiles, and ratings provide users with all the information they need to choose a trader to follow.
As you hunt for a great trader to choose you’ll have full details on their past performances and trading history when making a judgement. In addition, you can also copy several traders and markets through the “CopyPortfolio” feature.
Several specialty portfolios are available for different industries that you can follow. The community’s top traders even create and list their own unique portfolios.
If you wish to have more control over your trades, a manual trading option is also included. There are also several guides and customization options for users to tinker with.
Overall, the social aspects that eToro brings to trading are a major plus. Being able to review who you’ll be following the trades of and being able to follow multiple traders or markets is huge. Social copy trading is definitely eToro’s strong point, but there are some aspects it falls short on.
Being a “specialist” in social copy trading doesn’t give eToro a lot of wiggle room when it comes to other possible trading features. The platform felt a bit restrictive to only have social copy trading or manual trading.
Plus even though you’ll be following the trades of other traders, it would probably be a good idea to have some trading knowledge already, to know who is worth your time. This isn’t super friendly for those who are absolute beginners.
When using eToro you’ll need to pay a spread fee on the buy/sell of an asset. There is only one fee charged when you buy an asset and it’s adjusted when sold. This can either be seen as a pro or a con depending on how you view it.
eToro comes with some drawbacks as with any other platform, but if you really want to use social copy trading, it might be the platform for you.
Piloting trading bots with UpBots
Not only am I an active UpBots user but I also am following the project closely. I need to note that the project is still in beta but the team has announced an official launch coming very soon.
The goal of UpBots is to be the first true all-in-one trading platform. If you take a look at their laundry list of planned features on their roadmap, you’ll see it’s quite an impressive project!
Let’s not dwell too much on what’s planned though. I’m here to discuss the current live features of UpBots. Since the team is constantly working to pump out new features, there may even be some new ones that come out shortly after this article is published.
UpBots is all about automation and AI and their trading bots are some of the best out there. They’re also super easy to get started with, just pick the bot you want, input some information on how it should trade, hit activate, and then it’s off.
All the bots on UpBots are created by 3rd party developers. This allows for algo devs to earn through their performance fees (more on this later) and create quality algorithms for users to enjoy profits with.
Currently, there are bots that trade BTC, ETH, and BNB with a special community bot for AVAX. They’ve also mentioned plans to bring more bots to trade a variety of crypto pairs.
They’ve also had quite an impressive performance!
Similar to eToro, UpBots offers manual trading for the Binance Spot exchange, with FTX coming soon. Even if you do use algo bots, their manual trade feature is great for quick conversions or just to test out your trading skills. It’s also great that you don’t need to log into another account just to conduct a trade manually.
The platform isn’t only restricted to only centralized exchanges (CEXs), they provide plenty of DeFi tools and options. Users can simply connect their MetaMask account and start using DEX swaps for a variety of DeFi tokens.
There’s also their advanced portfolio monitoring tools which give users a complete view of their capital allocated across several platforms. Users can connect a CEX, ETH, or BSC wallet and view rich data dashboards.
One of UpBots’ latest features to launch is their on-platform is UBXT staking and farming. UBXT is UpBot’s native token and has a variety of uses on the platform. Now users can stake the token and earn some pretty sweet rewards.
UBXT or UBXT-ETH LP tokens are two options for staking. Having these two options is great for those who wish to earn additional yields. The best part is, both of these stakings are available right on the platform! Oh, and when you stake 10,000 UBXT on the UpBots interface, you’ll earn automatic access to their algo trading bots.
The last point I’d like to make about UpBots, and perhaps the biggest, is their performance fees model. I’ve never been so impressed by fees before in my life! This model is the whole backbone of UpBots and creates a win-win situation between users and algo developers.
Basically, when a user rents an algo bot on UpBots and they earn a profit, a percentage of perf fees are taken from that profit. These taken fees are used to pay the algo dev and also reinvested into UpBots. Since users only pay when they win no one will have to pay for tools they aren’t profiting with!
Performance fees are still on their way to the platform but the development appears to be nearing completion.
While a majority of UpBots features are still due to come down the road they have made impressive progress thus far. One con to mention is that the selection of exchanges, predominantly CEXs, that the platform supports is quite few.
The team has addressed that they are actively reaching out to various exchanges and other partners to expand their supported features.
With having so much done already, one can only expect big things to come of UpBots. If you’re interested in watching this project grow and mature, I’d highly suggest joining their Telegram and Discord to get inside peek and what’s coming.