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Starting and stopping your bot

How to start, stop, and restart your bot — and what happens to your positions.

Start

Go to /me/bot and click "Start." The bot process launches and begins its first tick within a few seconds. You can confirm it's running by watching the "Last tick" timestamp update on the dashboard.

Prerequisites for "Start" to be enabled:

  • Email verified.
  • Kraken API keys saved + validated.
  • At least one pair configured.
  • Active subscription (or trial period not expired).

Stop

"Stop" on /me/bot sends a graceful shutdown to the bot process. Within ~3 seconds:

  • The current tick finishes.
  • If you have --cancel-on-exit set, pending BUY orders on Kraken are cancelled (the operator default for this flag is ON).
  • Active SELL orders are left in place. They're above market and we usually want them to keep working.
  • State is flushed to disk so a future restart resumes from where you stopped.

Typed confirm

Stopping the bot requires you to type the word "stop" into a confirmation field. This guards against accidental clicks. The same pattern applies to "Restart."

Restart

"Restart" stops then starts the bot. Use this after a configuration change that needs to apply at startup — the config-watching tick handles most changes live, but bot-side CLI args (e.g. --disable-dca) only apply at start.

What happens to my positions when I stop?

  • Your Kraken account is untouched — your USD balance and your base-asset positions stay where they are.
  • Pending BUY orders are cancelled (see above).
  • Active SELL orders remain. They'll fill if the market reaches them; if not, they sit there until you restart.
  • State is preserved — restarting picks up exactly where you stopped.

What if I want to liquidate everything?

Stopping the bot doesn't liquidate. To fully exit:

  1. Stop the bot.
  2. Sign in to Kraken directly and close any positions you want to exit.
  3. Once your positions match what you want, you can either restart the bot or leave it stopped indefinitely.

We deliberately don't auto-liquidate on stop because forced market sells at unfavorable prices can be far worse than just waiting out the cycle.