// the take
A Bitcoin trading bot and real-time dashboard for Bitstamp, split into a Django/Tornado backend (trader + server) and a Backbone/CoffeeScript single-page frontend. It's for someone who wants to watch their Bitstamp account update live and optionally automate simple price-trigger trades — not for anyone wanting a serious or actively maintained trading system.
The trader/server/webapp split is sensible: Tornado handles WebSocket push via Redis pub/sub while Django owns the data model and admin, so you get a real-time dashboard without hand-rolling auth or CRUD. Trading is off by default (COINTROL_DO_TRADE) and gated behind an explicit settings change, which is a reasonable safety default for something that moves real money. The connection-health indicator (green/amber/red) is a nice touch that most hobby trading bots skip.
The author states outright that it was only ever used by one person for a few months in 2013/14 and lists its own limitations: one trading strategy style, single account, single session, and it trades the entire account balance on every order — that last one is a real way to lose money fast. Stack is dead weight today: Python 3.3, Django 1.7-era docs, CoffeeGrunt/Bower/Brunch for the frontend, none of which you'd want to stand up or secure in 2026. No tests beyond a lone trader/tests.py, no CI, and auth is just Django admin bolted onto a financial app with API keys sitting in a DB field — fine for a weekend project, not something to point at a live exchange account unmodified.
We read the README, the directory tree and a key source file in October 2026. Nobody pays to be listed. How we judge →