How Fast Can a Bot Trade?

Most people think trading is just about buying low and selling high. But there's a whole world hidden behind those green and red candles... from manual chart-watchers - to machines placing thousands of orders faster than any human can set their stop-losses! This trading style is known as high-frequency trading (HFT) - and that is exactly what I'm about to explore today.
So, if you've ever built a bot, played with APIs, or wondered how far automation can go in finance - you're more than welcome to follow along this modest market tale.

Let's just quickly look at how different trading styles how different trading styles break down by pace and tools:

The further you move down the list, the more trading shifts from human intuition to machine logic. Unlike other styles that rely on human judgment and reaction time, HFT is fully automated. Specialized bots scan markets across exchanges, place and cancel thousands of orders per second, and capture tiny price discrepancies before anyone else reacts. Instead of chasing trends, they optimize for execution speed, spread efficiency, and market neutrality. Most of the time, a a caffeinated bro (like you or me) behind the screen is just watching dashboards - the code does the thinking.

What makes HFT thrive in crypto? One major factor is exchanges actively incentivizing liquidity provision. Unlike traditional markets, crypto platforms openly compete for high-volume & high-speed traders by offering them perks like negative fees, raw data access, and low-latency infrastructure. For many HFT players, this opens the door to market making (MM) programs - a structured way to monetize their speed and scale.

To avoid staying abstract, let's look at how a few major exchanges structure their MM-programs in practice. While the exact numbers vary, the logic is the same: reward speed, reward volume, and make it easy for algorithmic players to plug in. The biggest European exchange WhiteBIT, for example, offers up to –0.012% maker rebates, direct server access to minimize latency, and a fully-featured API secured via OAuth 2.0.

Of course, not every HFT strategy involves market making, and not every exchange plays by the same rules - but the pattern is clear: speed and structure are rewarded. And while HFT stays invisible to most traders, it quietly shapes the very environment they trade in.

For a deeper dive into how HFT strategies operate, the tech behind them, and their impact on modern markets, I highly recommend this piece published on CoinMarketCap - it goes beyond surface-level definitions and into real mechanics.