Introduce support for the FIX protocol

[jplusk]

I'd like to discuss introducing the FIX protocol as a wrapper on top of Xchange. The wrapper could improve compatibility with readily available trading software packages that support FIX. Any thoughts?

[timmolter]

Sounds interesting. Tell me more... :)

[jheusser]

@jplusk do you mean to provide a FIX adapter to enable FIX enabled applications to talk to the various XChange implementations? Or rather to implement FIX as a "transport" protocol for enabled exchanges, as opposed to REST/rescu?

Would be interesting to provide the latter, e.g. Hitbtc, Atlas ATS, and Coinsetter all have FIX APIs. More to come probably.

[jplusk]

@jheusser I actually had your first interpretation in mind :) But, you make a valid point that in the future more exchanges could likely adopt the FIX standard. However, this project currently has the capability of realizing this great benefit to users who would like to plug-n-play the order and feed handlers made available here into their existing trading systems.

[timmolter]

@jplusk What "available trading software packages that support FIX." are you referring to?

[jheusser]

@jplusk yeah that makes sense, that component would act as a "bridge" between FIX based trading systems and REST based Bitcoin APIs. I'm sure that would be popular, it does seem like a separate library though which is just using XChange as dependency?

[timmolter]

@jheusser That's exactly what I was thinking too.

it does seem like a separate library though which is just using XChange as dependency

[jplusk]

@jheusser yes that is correct. @timmolter here's an overview of commercial vendors that support FIX connectivity. You'll find that most banks/brokerage houses typically offer trading platforms to its customers, but smaller independent vendors are present too. Alternatively, an open-source example that I found is AlgoTrader, which has a similar feature set to @timolson's Coin Trader project. By using QuickFIX/J as its FIX engine AlgoTrader also allows you to connect to a multitude of financial exchanges and provides features such as rule-based trading strategies, complex event processing, portfolio/risk management, delta hedging and backtesting. It is for this reason that I am interested in seeing this bridge between FIX/REST-based APIs being realized ideally with the aid of XChange. Any thoughts?

[timmolter]

The "bridge" you mention is a great idea and would be beneficial. It's a clear and separate layer from XChange though. I wouldn't want to add something like that into XChange itself.

[cristianlucaci]

Hi @jplusk , Any news regarding a possible FIX layer over XChange? Thanks.

[jplusk]

No unfortunately I don't have an update on a possible FIX layer.