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The open-source project has a simulation of a male fruit fly brain and eyes, and shows it a standard-issue candlestick graph with historical pricing. The fly can choose to buy, sell, or hold any given currency — although they get shown to the fly in round-robin fashion — and gets rewarded for profitable trading.
A rising portfolio value triggers a dopamine rush as a positive reinforcement signal to 15 cells, while a loss lights up two aversive cells. Trading fees count as losses. The author notes there are no pain or emotional mechanisms at play. Displaying far better judgement than most human traders, the fly cannot use leveraged positions (trading multipliers) or shorts (betting on drops).
The brain has 166,700 neurons and 25.6 million connections. The virtual fly sees the graph as a 320×180 display across its left and right eyes, with an intersecting center portion. The simulated photoreceptor cells get fed the RGB pixel values rather than pricing information. By default, the fly "thinks" and acts every 500 ms, and the market data gets refreshed every 60 seconds, and it can bet up to $10 on any one order, up to 24 times a day.
The author notes that this small project doesn't prove anything other than the connection between the input mechanisms, visual signals, and synapse changes. Naturally, he warns users against assuming that said changes are any indication of actual trading ability, especially in the face of a general rise in crypto prices that "can make any buyer look skilled." You can bet that some fly-brained investor will still infer meaning from the experiment, though.
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Key considerations
- Investor positioning can change fast
- Volatility remains possible near catalysts
- Macro rates and liquidity can dominate flows
Reference reading
- https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/artificial-intelligence/SPONSORED_LINK_URL
- https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/artificial-intelligence/engineer-turns-simulated-fly-brain-into-a-crypto-day-trader-posts-downloadable-sim-to-github-166-700-virtual-neurons-read-candlestick-charts-for-dopamine-hits#main
- https://www.tomshardware.com/membership
- Valve engineers discuss the duality of the Steam Frame and pricing — Valve's newest VR headset pivots SteamOS to Arm
- Engineer turns simulated fly brain into a crypto day trader, posts downloadable sim to GitHub — 166,700 virtual neurons read candlestick charts for dopamine hit
- Skild AI Taps NVIDIA Physical AI to Teach Robots New Tasks From a Single Video
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- Solo dev enables running CUDA on AMD hardware in Windows, getting multiple CUDA libraries running on a gaming Radeon RX 9060 XT GPU in Windows — CUDA-exclusive
Informational only. No financial advice. Do your own research.