Cryptowatch: Cross-Exchange Trading Terminal

In the fast-paced, inherently volatile world of crypto asset trading, the ability to recognise patterns through charting is of utmost importance.

Indeed, this is the skill that traders seek to refine and ultimately master on a regular basis, and it’s what they primarily use to determine the strength of a current trend during key market movements and to assess opportunities for potential entries and exits. In essence, charting enables traders to somewhat determine which direction price is likely to go in the short, medium and long-term outlook.

Furthermore, using advanced trading terminals, traders can distinguish between what is real and what is fake when a break occurs in the market structure of a specific asset pair. Thus, selecting a robust, sophisticated terminal to trade on constitutes one of the most vital elements in the toolkit of any successful trader.

This is because today, in an age where trading and investment technologies are evolving at such a rapid pace, outdated systems can actually put traders at risk of competitive disadvantage, which means missed trading opportunities and security threats.

A well-designed trading terminal should ideally offer users non-latency in trade execution, efficient technical and fundamental analysis tools, risk management tools, multi-exchange operability, depth of market and, potentially, even some strategy back-testers.

Currently, there are many different crypto trading terminals in existence, with each platform boasting its own functionalities, applications and respective infrastructures. Shrimpy, Coinigy and Caspian are perhaps the most widely-recognised, universally adopted terminals for beginner, intermediate and advanced traders alike. However, in tandem with them, there are quite a few platforms out there offering similar tools and trading systems.

One of these terminals is, of course, Cryptowatch.

About Cryptowatch

Cryptowatch is a real-time crypto markets platform founded in 2014 by Artur Sapek. In March 2017, trusted global digital asset exchange Kraken announced its decision to acquire the already popular trading terminal Cryptowatch and on-board its founder in order to continue developing the platform as well as Kraken’s interface.

Cryptowatch is a browser-based crypto charting platform and multi-exchange trading terminal, providing traders with charts, order books, market data, and the possibility to trade on several digital asset exchanges. The platform provides cryptocurrency market data and charts for over 25 digital asset exchanges, with data being provided in real-time directly from the exchanges through their APIs, covering over 4,000 different markets.

Cryptowatch employs a rather simple, minimalist design and it aspires to deliver all the necessary tools for traders to gain in-depth insights on market movements, different crypto asset pairs and on-chain trading volumes.

Being powered by the well-established Kraken, Cryptowatch is able to gain access to a wide array of functionalities and different networks. In fact, the trading terminal specifically tracks the markets on 28 exchanges, including:

Furthermore, Cryptowatch provides the most up-to-date price feeds and on-chain trading volumes for all the exchanges listed above. The terminal also gives traders the latest price updates for both the most popular as well as the less frequently used cryptocurrencies, including BTC, ETH, LTC, DOGE, PPC, DASH, ZEC, and a dozen other crypto assets.

Before progressing onto Cryptowatch’s diverse set of applications and discussing how to use the platform, a brief introduction to trading terminals is indeed required.

About Trading Terminals

Until about the 1990s, trading the Stock Market used to be a physical activity. Traders used to go to the Stock Broker’s office or the Stock Exchange, check the day’s value of each stock, figure out which stock they would want to invest in and then place the order with the Broker to buy or sell the shares they wanted.

However, with time and especially with crypto, things have changed drastically since then. Nowadays, in fact, traders are no longer required to place their trades in person at a Stock Broker’s office nor must they hop on a quick call to place a trade with a broker, as they can simply carry out their investments with a few clicks of a button on Centralised Exchanges (CEXes) and Decentralised Exchanges (DEXes), for crypto related trades, or through trading terminals.

Now, in 2021, trading terminals are used by crypto traders to connect to exchanges through APIs. In fact, with third party trading terminals, traders have access to additional features that are usually not available on individual exchanges.

By plugging into multiple exchanges at once, trading terminals can essentially act as a central hub connecting a user’s portfolio across a complex of different exchanges. Furthermore, via trading terminals, investors can place orders to buy and sell digital assets, automate order execution, and implement strategies that wouldn’t be possible without a terminal, such as making trades for multiple assets at the same time and from one platform.

Some of the most common functions offered by trading terminals include:

• Connecting to exchanges to collect account information.
• Placing and cancelling orders.
• Displaying market data in the form of graphs and charts.
• Executing advanced order types like smart orders.
• Calculating and displaying various technical indicators.

Cryptowatch Features And Benefits

The terminal offers two separate account types, Basic and Upgraded. Basic accounts are free to use and provide users with market charts customised in accordance with their personal preferences. Upgraded accounts, instead, give users access to integrated trading platforms and also allow them to receive volume updates as well as price alerts on a daily basis.

As of 2021, Cryptowatch has replaced its SaaS-style price tiers with a new, more flexible à la carte pricing model called Credits. As opposed to employing a monthly fee mechanism, in the new Credits system, each account has a running balance of ‘credits’ which are spent in a ‘pay as you go’ manner on any combination of Cryptowatch services.

Until late 2020, users looking to leverage the functionalities of Upgraded accounts on Cryptowatch had to pay a $15 monthly fee, whereas now users can simply purchase Credits to gain access to the services they are most in need of, which has actually proven to be a rather beneficial system thus far.

The platform’s Core Services, which include Portfolio, Trading, Charting and Chat, will remain free, and instead of having to choose a predetermined monthly pricing tier with a fixed set of features, clients will be able to use whichever services they’re interested in and pay only for those.

Cryptowatch is designed in such a way that users are by no means forced into one of several progressively more expensive pricing tiers, a model that has historically been established by single-purpose SaaS products, allowing for a more flexible, dynamic user experience.

Some of the additional free benefits that come with using Cryptowatch include:

• Free trading on multiple exchanges from one terminal, even on mobile.
• Viewing trade history, orders, and positions on the Portfolio page.

• Chatting with other traders in Cryptowatch’s TrollBox.

• Visualising price movements and analysing market trends through the terminal’s advanced charting interface.

• Analysing charts with popular technical indicators, such as Moving Averages (MAs), MACD, RSI and Bollinger Bands, among others.

• Viewing balances across multiple exchanges in real-time on the Portfolio page.
• Setting price, volume and technical analysis alerts.
• Creating and saving custom themes.

With regards to the Upgraded, Premium features offered by Cryptowatch, these include:

• Receiving price, volume, technical analysis and order-fill alerts as text messages or email on a 24/7 basis.
• Streaming prices and order books with the terminal’s Market Data Websocket API. This API offers trades, candlesticks and order books across 26 different exchanges, and users can easily access it via their public key.
• Pulling market data into Google Sheets through the Cryptofinance.ai add-on.
• Automating orders and alerts using triggers and actions with the Zapier integration.

Zapier is an online automation tool that interfaces and connects with more than a thousand different Apps, including Gmail, MailChimp and Slack. The Cryptowatch-Zapier integration also allows traders to use any of Zapier’s trigger actions to send a trade order to any trading-supported exchange on Cryptowatch.

Some of the functionalities of the integration include recurring buys, reminder emails to purchase specific assets and even entering buy/sell orders when top influencers on Crypto Twitter tweet about their upcoming moves, for example.

Cryptofinance Google Sheets

By using Cryptofinance.ai Sheets, Cryptowatch enables traders to pull market data from exchanges, historical trades and order book information and compartmentalise it in Google Sheets for reference.

Technically speaking, Cryptofinance is a Google Sheet add-on that lets users create their own customisable crypto trading tools, such as balance tracking, data visualisation or asset management features, for instance. Google Sheets, on the other hand, is a web-based spreadsheet application that is rather similar in functionality to Microsoft Excel and it allows anyone to create templates, perform advanced calculations and organise data.

All fundamental and ratings data is free to use, and participants can start a 14 Day free trial in order to become accustomed with how Cryptofinance works and see for themselves if it proves to be beneficial for their trading or not.

If a user has sufficient Credits in their Cryptowatch wallet, their trial will be automatically converted to a paid subscription at the end of the 14 Day trial period.

Cryptowatch’s Credit System

On Cryptowatch, users can purchase specific platform tokens, known as Credits, to access services such as Alerts and APIs. Users can spend their Credits on any combination of services, however, it is important to note that Credits are not interchangeable with other crypto assets and they are only liquid on the Cryptowatch terminal. Credits can be purchased via credit or debit card, and also with Bitcoin.

To refill an account’s balance using a debit/credit card, users should:

• Navigate to Cryptowatch’s Sign Up Portal.
• Add their preferred debit or credit card to their account.
• Purchase the desired amount of Credits proportional to the cost of the services on the terminal, bearing in mind that $1 equals 100 Credits.

• Credits can also be purchased using Bitcoin payments through BTCPay, a self-hosted, open-source cryptocurrency payment processor.

On Cryptowatch, Credits can be used to purchase two different types of services, with these being Subscription and Pay As You Go Services. If users find themselves being quite content with utilising the terminal’s extensive set of Free Services, which include Charts, Trading, Portfolio, Chat and Custom Theming, then there will of course be no need to purchase any Credits whatsoever.

Quite frankly, the Free Services mentioned above are usually the only tools required for beginner traders to get started. Thus, purchasing Credits to gain access to Pay As You Go or Subscription services might be something traders could potentially consider further down the line in their trading careers.

Primarily, Subscription services can be activated at any time and will renew on the first day of each month, at 00:00 UTC. Most Subscription services on Cryptowatch revolve around the various applications integrated with Cryptofinance, and they can be purchased with the Credits available in a user’s account. Subscription services may be deactivated at any point, though all paid services will remain active until the end of the month.

With regards to Pay As You Go Services on Cryptowatch, these services are billed by usage and include:

• Email/SMS Alerts, costing 1 Credit per triggered alert.
• APIs providing real-time data for exchanges, costing 2-15 Credits per 1,000 requests.
• WebSocket API for streaming trades, order books and candlesticks across 26 exchanges, costing 120 Credits.
• Zapier for cross-App automation features, costing 15 Credits per execution.

How To Use Cryptowatch

Cryptowatch acts as an all-in-one control centre for crypto trading and allows users to connect their exchange accounts, track their portfolios, and even research digital assets.

Opening an account on Cryptowatch is a rather straightforward process and, in order to do so, users will need to:

• Head to Cryptowat.ch and Create a New Account.

• Once the account has been activated, participants will be able to access the terminal and make use of all its functionalities.
• Users can interface their preferred exchanges with Cryptowatch and begin tracking their portfolio performance and actually start trading directly from the terminal.

• Go to the chart for a market they want to trade, like BTC-USD on Kraken for instance.
• Connecting accounts with Cryptowatch allows users to view the performance of their assets in the ‘Portfolio’ section of the terminal.
• The method for connecting each exchange with Cryptowatch is slightly different, but each one uses the API Keys standard. In fact, exchanges such as FTX, Binance, HTX and Kraken will generate a set of keys through which users can connect their accounts with the terminal. All existing holdings in the connected account will appear on the platform, as displayed in the image below.
• To protect funds and data, users should Set Up Their Multi-Factor Authorisation (MFA) for good measure. To do this, users should Click on ‘Set Up MFA’. This is actually a required step before accessing API Keys.

• Users can then browse through all the exchanges available for terminal interfacing and generate API Keys for their preferred ones.

Let us now discuss how to execute trades on Cryptowatch and make use of its functionalities.

How To Trade On Cryptowatch

A major benefit to trading on the Cryptowatch platform as opposed to the interface of an exchange's site is the ability to submit trades and do technical analysis at the same time.

To place an order on Cryptowatch, users will need to:

• Expand the trading panel located on the far right side of the window.
• Enter the details of their order into the form and Click ‘Review & Buy/Sell’.

As displayed in the image above, users can:

• Select their preferred ‘Action’, either ‘Buy’ or ‘Sell’.
• Select their order ‘Type’. This can vary from exchange to exchange.
• Utilise ‘Leverage’, if they'd like to do so. On this note, it is important to point out that not all exchanges support leverage on Cryptowatch.
• Select the amount of ‘Funds’ they want to invest in the trade.
• Select their desired ‘Quantity’, which determines the volume of the asset being traded.
• Select ‘Price’, which determines the specific price for the order. With certain order types, such as limit, stop loss and take profit, users are able to input a specific price in this input field.
• Review ‘Total’. This is a calculation of the Total order, with Quantity x Price giving the Total value of the order.

• Execute 'Conditional Close', which creates an opposing order for closing a position at the same time that the order for opening the position is created. The conditional close order's direction is always opposite the primary order.
• Select 'Fee Currency'. This is available on Kraken markets. The fee currency selector lets users choose which currency they prefer to pay exchange's fees with. Options are limited to the base and quote currency of the current market.
• Click Reset, if they wish to clear fields in the trading form.
• Review & Buy/Sell to execute order.

In addition, users can submit orders quickly by clicking on any price level in the depth chart and order book, as shown in the image below.

Users can also click on other orders in the order book to create an order at that specific price.

Moreover, traders can change the price of an open order by clicking its dot on the price chart's y-axis and dragging up or down.

To do this, traders should:

• Find the open order on the chart's y-axis.
• Click and Drag the order up or down the axis. This will update Price in the trading form.
• Click ‘Replace Buy/Sell’. Cryptowatch will cancel the previous order and replace it with the revised version.

Tracking Market Prices And Applying TA Tools

Meaningful moves can originate on a number of top exchanges and, on Cryptowatch’s ‘Markets’ Tab, traders can access real-time viewings of market movements across many different exchanges.

Users can also filter the list by exchanges, assets, and quotes as well as sort on any of the columns, as shown below.

Cryptowatch offers a variety of popular technical overlays and indicators, and each can be enabled or disabled on any price chart via the Analysis menu.

Traders can add an analysis tool to their chart by clicking on it in the analysis tool list. When they do so, the selected tool is added to the left-hand side of the menu under the ‘Selected’ section. Users can add multiple indicators, such as RSI, MACD or Volume indicators, to their charts simply by clicking on the ‘+’ Sign next to the indicator in the Analysis menu.

Each individual analysis tool is labelled by type and categorised. To filter the overlays and indicators, users should click the filter icon found in the top left corner of the panel. Technical Analysis tools can also be sorted further by relevance or alphabetically, A-Z and Z-A, for simplicity.

Pasting Tweets On Charts

Cryptowatch allows users to take their favourite Tweets and paste them directly on their charts for reference. To paste Tweets on Cryptowatch charts, users should:

• Copy the URL of the individual Tweet they want to paste.

• Go to their Cryptowatch charts.
• Use paste hotkeys, CTRL + V on Windows and Command + V on Mac, to paste the Tweet.

• The Tweet will then automatically paste to the correct time on the Chart’s x-axis.

Conclusion

Cryptowatch is a Kraken-powered, browser-based crypto charting platform and multi-exchange trading terminal, providing traders with charts, order books, market data, and the possibility to trade on several digital asset exchanges.

The terminal offers two separate account types, Basic and Upgraded. Basic accounts are free to use and provide users with market charts customised in accordance with their personal preferences. Upgraded accounts, instead, give users access to integrated trading platforms and also allow them to receive volume updates as well as price alerts on a 24/7 basis.

Ultimately, Cryptowatch acts as an all-in-one control centre for crypto trading and allows users to connect their exchange accounts, track their portfolios, and even research digital assets. Users can do both technical and fundamental analysis on the Cryptowatch terminal, they can easily execute trade orders, monitor their assets and even paste their favourite Tweets on their charts for further reference.

While there are many other crypto trading terminals out there, Cryptowatch possesses the toolset required to carry on developing its use cases and potentially even become the go-to solution for charting, cross-exchange trading and asset management in the vibrant world of blockchain investing.