Best Automated Crypto Trading Platform Australia Analysis

A multi-award winning broker, Melbourne-based Eightcap boasts an impressive set of credentials, including Best Global Forex MT4 Broker for 2020 at the Global Forex Awards. Competitive trading fees, a wide range of crypto assets to trade and strong automation tools round out the package.

Eightcap gives you the best choice for automating your crypto strategies, offering TradingView, MetaTrader 4 and MetaTrader 5. Each platform allows you to automate finding trading ideas, but we found only MT4 and MT5 allowed you to execute the trades automatically.

In our testing, we found MetaTrader 4 to be a top platform for automating crypto trades, packed with features ideal for testing and optimising your expert advisors (EAs). The built-in 30+ indicators give a solid foundation for developing an automated trading strategy, but you can create your own using MQL4. With this customizability, we think MT4 provides the right tools to backtest and fine-tune your strategies, helping you get the data needed to optimise your strategy before deploying it live.

In our tests, we found MT4’s Strategy Tester invaluable for analysing our EA’s performance. We could simulate trades over historical data, tweak parameters like stop-loss and take-profit levels, and optimise for maximum returns. This backtesting capability gives you confidence in your automated system’s viability before risking real capital.

What stood out was the ability to leverage MT4’s community resources for EA development. With numerous guides and a marketplace with free and paid solutions, you can either build your own custom EA or adopt pre-existing ones tailored to your trading style.

We tried automating our Solana strategy using an EA on MT4, and the process was seamless. To launch the EA, thanks to MetaTrader 4’s intuitive interface, we simply dragged it onto the chart, confirmed its settings, and then became active for live trading.

Eightcap’s crypto range is equally impressive, with 95 cryptocurrencies available for trading, the largest of the forex brokers we’ve tested. We found the broker offered a combination of popular cryptos such as Bitcoin and Ethereum while including more speculative coins like SHIBA INU. This makes it a top broker if you want to explore the crypto markets and take advantage of its volatility through a regulated forex broker vs. a crypto exchange.

Moreover, Eightcap’s multi-asset capabilities extend beyond cryptocurrencies. With 56 currency pairs, 586 shares, 16 indices, and eight commodities on offer, you have a range of markets to leverage your automated strategies.

We used Eightcap’s RAW account during our testing, which offers tight spreads and a commission-based pricing model. Our analyst, Ross Collins, recorded Eightcap’s average spread of 0.20 pips on EUR/USD, which is highly competitive within the industry.

This low-cost structure, coupled with a modest $3.50 commission per lot traded, makes Eightcap an affordable choice if you automate your trades, especially if you trade in high-volume.

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eToro offers a wide range of crypto products in a fantastic trading environment. It’s the most popular copy trading platform available, and for good reason. The broker offers a comprehensive suite of trading tools designed to make day trading accessible to beginners and casual traders, including fully automated copy trading in a game-ified atmosphere.

We think eToro’s CopyTrader platform is an excellent tool for leveraging the expertise of successful traders without having to do the research or executions yourself. It essentially allows you to mirror the trades of seasoned professionals, profiting when they profit and losing when they lose, just like investing in a fund manager.

During our testing, we found the CopyTrader platform to be incredibly user-friendly. The advanced filter tool, which offers 14 different metrics, like performance and volume of trades, made it simple to narrow down our selection from the 30,000,000 available traders.

We especially valued the ability to filter based on the number of copy traders and total assets under management, as these metrics clearly indicate how confident other traders are in a certain copy trader’s abilities.

If you want to focus on crypto markets, we liked that you could refine the search by which assets a copy trader specialises in. By choosing crypto, the tool only provided us with traders with track records in these markets. This made it easier for us to vet the traders manually, as we could check their profiles and analyse their recent performance month-on-month in the crypto markets.

One aspect we specifically liked about eToro’s CopyTrader platform is the transparency it offers. Since eToro is both the broker and the platform provider, all the data is accurate and cannot be manipulated, especially when it comes to open losing positions, which is a common issue with other platforms.

This level of transparency is vital, as it ensures you have a clear picture of a copy trader’s performance and can make informed decisions.

We liked the simplicity of the investment process. eToro allows you to specify the amount you want to invest in each copy trader, either as a fixed figure or a percentage of your account.

Additionally, the built-in stop-loss feature is a valuable asset, as it enables you to automatically pull your money out of a copy trader if you lose a predetermined percentage of your investment, in this case, 25%.

While you don’t have full control over the assets purchased or sold when copy trading, eToro offers a solid choice of 41 cryptocurrency markets, including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, Solana, Dogecoin, and Avalanche, this diverse selection of cryptocurrencies provides ample opportunities to capitalise on market movements.

If you want to diversify your copy traders, you can follow the same process as above but for other markets. eToro also offers other markets, including 2961 stocks, 13 indices, 41 commodities, and 49 currency pairs.

We were pleasantly surprised by eToro’s low trading costs during our tests. The broker offers an average spread of one pip on the EUR/USD pair, which is lower than the industry average. This low-cost structure effectively lowers the barrier to entry for trading, making it more accessible to a wider range of investors.

In our experience with IC Markets, the platform shines when it comes to low-fee trading and its integration with ZuluTrade for social crypto trading. Their top-tier customer service and the flexibility of cTrader, MetaTrader 5, and ZuluTrade offer traders a smooth journey. IC Markets clearly leads the pack for anyone in Australia exploring advanced social trading.

IC Markets is one of the few brokers offering ZuluTrade, a social trading platform that integrates MetaTrader 4 and MetaTrader 5 to help automate your crypto trades.

In our tests, we found its social trading features to be decent, with an active community and an easy-to-manage social trading feed similar to Twitter. The advanced search tool allows you to find traders based on your criteria, such as markets traded, profitable trades, and the number of copiers following the trader. This feature enables you to curate a list of traders we want to discuss current market themes and read what they have to say about the markets.

Similar to eToro, you can filter traders based on various parameters, including markets traded, profitable trades, and the number of copiers following them. This feature can be valuable for beginners, as it allows you to follow and learn from experienced traders who have demonstrated success in their trading strategies.

ZuluTrade also uses hashtags, enabling you to find and join conversations related to specific topics or assets, such as #Bitcoin. While this feature provides a consolidated view of discussions, it’s important to exercise due diligence and carefully evaluate the comments and analysis provided, as they come from a broader community.

One of the standout features we appreciated was the ability to copy trades from traders with solid performance records automatically. This feature lets you leverage their strategies and mirror their trades immediately without waiting for them to comment on the markets. If you are a beginner, we think this is an excellent way to gain exposure to successful trading strategies while minimising the risk of making costly mistakes.

We were impressed with ZuluTrade’s risk management feature, ZuluGuard. This feature monitors various aspects of the trader you’re copying, including their performance and trade frequency. Plus, we like that ZuluGuard is automatically activated every time you copy a new Leader, which is useful if you forget to add it.

This feature can be particularly useful for protecting your capital if the trader you’re following is underperforming or generating excessive trades. ZuluGuard can provide an additional layer of risk management, helping you mitigate potential losses.

The account we used to test IC Markets was their RAW account, a commission-based account offering tighter spreads. In our tests, we found the spreads to be low, averaging 0.02 pips on the EUR/USD pair, the lowest we’ve seen.

IC Markets also demonstrated excellent spreads across other major currency pairs, averaging 0.16 pips, which is among the lowest we’ve tested. Consistently low spreads across multiple instruments are a huge plus if you trade the major pairs, as they minimise the cost of entry for your positions, increasing your profit margins.

Capitalise.ai is a hassle-free way to automate your trade analysis and execution without writing any code. FXCM offers Capitalise.ai as a standalone platform or integrated with its own Trading Station for creating your own trading robots.

When it comes to coding your own automated strategy, we understand the challenges of either learning a programming language or hiring a professional developer, both of which can be time-consuming and costly.

While testing FXCM, we discovered a feature that caught our attention – access to Capitalise.ai, a code-free platform that leverages AI to turn your manual trading strategy into an automated one. This is an innovative solution if you want to automate your strategies without the hassle of coding.

Capitalise.ai is a platform that allows you to describe your trading strategy to its AI, and it will generate an entry and exit strategy based on your requirements. You can then use your FXCM Trading Station platform to automate these strategies directly from Capitalise.ai. This integration streamlines the entire process, making it accessible even if you lack programming skills.

To put Capitalise.ai to the test, we gained free access through our FXCM account. As first-time users, we were pleasantly surprised by the interactive step-by-step guide, significantly reducing the platform’s learning curve. This thoughtful onboarding process ensured we could hit the ground running without feeling overwhelmed.

Setting up your strategy on Capitalise.ai is a straightforward process. You simply describe your entry and exit points, and the platform configures the rest. This user-friendly approach allows you to focus on your strategy rather than getting bogged down on how to code the strategy.

What stood out for us is the ability to forward-test your strategy using the simulate feature. This allows you to run your strategy in real-time with market data, giving you a clear picture of its performance in a live environment. Unlike backtesting with historical data, which can sometimes be manipulated, this simulation provides a more accurate representation of your strategy’s performance without risking your funds.

Once satisfied with the simulated results, you can effortlessly transition your strategy to live trading by flicking a switch. The process is simple – you need to activate it with your FXCM Trading Station account by providing the necessary credentials, and FXCM with Capitalise.ai will set up the automation for you.

From then on, your strategy will be to trade with your live account funds through the FXCM Trading Station platform. The beauty of Capitalise.ai is that you can continuously work on and update your strategy through its platform, and the changes will instantly reflect on the Trading Station side.

While FXCM’s cryptocurrency coverage is not the widest, it covers seven markets, including the most liquid cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Litecoin. We think this selection should cater to the needs of most cryptocurrency traders, especially if you trade major digital assets.

We tested FXCM’s standard account with Capitalise.ai, which is commission-free, and you only pay the spreads to open your trades. In our tests, we found the broker competitive, offering an average spread of 1.3 pips on the EUR/USD pair.

While this is slightly higher than the industry average of 1.24 pips, the difference is relatively minor and may be offset by the advantages offered by Capitalise.ai and FXCM’s other trading features.