Arena Blog
Data-driven insights on trading strategies, backtests, and market analysis.
1–12 of 175 posts · page 1 of 15
The Strategy Library: Not a Leaderboard, a Toolbox
25+ strategies, and the honest question is never "which is best?" It's: which fits what, and when? Four truths that run through the whole library — timeframe decides, "beats B&H" often means losing less, win rate isn't profit, and fit beats breadth.
Backtesting Arena Is Now a Claude Connector
Backtesting Arena can now be connected to claude.ai with a single click — 65 tools for Bitcoin cycle, on-chain data, macro regime and validated backtests. Instead of generic web-search answers, Claude pulls real, DSR-corrected and point-in-time data. Plus a new interactive tool: the Dip Decision calculator.
We Just Shipped an API That Charges $0.01 Per Call — In USDC, On-Chain, No Account
Phase 4 is live: the same Bitcoin cycle data, on-chain indicators, and aggregated strategy insights now reachable through three channels — REST, MCP, and x402 pay-per-call in USDC on Base. No account required for the third. An AI agent gets HTTP 402, signs a USDC authorization, retries, and has the data three seconds later. What's actually live, why we built it this way, and the Coinbase detour that cost us a day.
MiCA Regulates the Platform, Not You — What That Means for Your Exchange, DeFi and Your Wallet
Since 1 July 2026 every crypto platform serving the EU needs a licence. For you as a user that means no ban, but this: without a licence you lose protections — segregated assets, liability, a complaints route. Which platforms are in the register, what happens to DeFi, USDT and your own wallet, and how to check a venue.
The AI Copilot in Your Chart Is Reliable When It Measures and Invents When It Describes Itself
TradingView's chart copilot can connect to your own MCP servers. Tested on the Backtesting Arena connector: it answered market questions correctly and invented instructions about its own settings four times. Why that happens, and how to tell which answers to check.
A Backtest Parameter You Never Set Moves Your Return by up to 12 Points a Year
A backtest has more parameters than the strategy description lists. The start day of a 3-day candle grid alone moves annual return by 6.66 points on average. What that means for every interval comparison, and the three questions that make the effect visible.
When the Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Poorer, That Is a K-Shaped Economy. Are We in One?
The Richmond Fed tested 30 years of income data against a strict definition: a K appeared in 2002–06 and 2010–13, not after COVID. Why short stretches still last, and why no average can show one.
Why your 5× grid bot rarely gets liquidated — and why that isn't safety
A leveraged long grid was liquidated in 1 of 70 ninety-day windows since 2017 — because a grid never deploys more than half its notional. What leverage does instead: it deepens every drawdown and pays funding in the down windows.
Bitcoin doesn't tip when enough managers understand it. It tips when a zero allocationbecomes the risky choice.
The 25 percent tipping point quoted in every adoption argument comes from a naming game with 18 to 30 players per group and no right answer. It counts people; prices respond to dollars. What tips in large portfolios is not understanding but the answer to one question: what happens to me if I am the only one at zero?
Your grid bot is not a hedge. It is half a portfolio in cash.
A grid bot had the flatter drawdown in 138 of 138 windows since 2017, ranges set in advance. Not because it trades well: because it never invests more than half the money. What that protection costs in rally windows, and what a hindsight range was worth.
What 100,000 Backtests Say Actually Works in Crypto — and 4 Questions That Expose a Lying Number
Four findings you can trade on — win rates, timeframes, regime filters, costs — and four questions that expose any performance claim. From 100,000 systematic backtests.
The Interest Rate for 14 African Countries Is Set in Frankfurt. The ECB Will Not Answer for It.
The CFA franc's end was announced in 2019. The rate has not moved since — and the binding part was never the part that was announced. What a currency peg costs, who sets the price of money for fourteen countries, and what it is costing Senegal and Central Africa right now.
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