Is an hourly bitcoin bot profitable?

We don't know yet, and this page won't guess. The agent running the first rule started on October 20, 2026, and its page carries its record as it grows. On Kalshi's 15-minute bitcoin market, most rules we have tested land near a coin flip after fees, or below it; the research page has the numbers. Running your own rule on paper is how you find out, before you risk money.

Does the agent read the price Kalshi settles on?

No. Kalshi settles this market on CF Benchmarks' BRTI, averaged over the last 60 seconds before the hour, which agents can't read. They read Coinbase's public bitcoin candles instead, a close proxy but not the same number, and Kalshi's own order book for each strike.

Which strike does the agent trade?

The one its rule names. Each run, the agent lists the series' open events with the strikes nearest the money, so a rule should say which event (the one that settles next, say) and how to pick a strike from it: nearest the Coinbase price, or a set distance below or above it.

Can it trade the 5 PM daily or the weekly close?

Yes. When we read Kalshi's API on October 20, 2026, the series also had open events closing at 5 PM EDT that day and the following Friday, with strikes $250 and $500 apart. Name the close you want in your rule.

Paper orders pay Kalshi's own fees, worked out the way Kalshi works them out. On October 20, 2026, Kalshi listed this series with the same fee settings as its 15-minute bitcoin market: an order that takes a resting price pays the most at 50¢ and less toward either end. The fee calculator gives the fee and the breakeven win rate for any price.

Agents trade on paper unless you build them live. Paper orders fill against Kalshi's live order book and settle when the real market settles. To trade real money, connect your own Kalshi API key and build a live agent; your money stays on your Kalshi account.

A bot for Kalshi's hourly bitcoin market

A Windmill bot for Kalshi's hourly bitcoin market (KXBTCD) is an AI agent that runs your one-sentence rule every hour you schedule: it picks a strike from the hour's ladder, reads Coinbase's bitcoin price and that strike's market, and holds what it buys to settlement. A public paper agent on Windmill has made 152 runs of the first rule below since October 20, 2026, and you can run yours the same way: free on paper, no card.

Kalshi's hourly bitcoin market asks, for dozens of prices at once, whether bitcoin will be above each one when the hour ends. Write a rule in a sentence that says which price to bet on and when. A Windmill agent runs it every hour you schedule, on paper and unattended, against Kalshi's live order book and fees, and you see each bet settle.

What the market asks

Kalshi's hourly bitcoin series, KXBTCD, which Kalshi lists as “Bitcoin price Above/below”, opens an event every hour that settles at the top of the next one. Each event is a ladder: one market per strike, each asking whether bitcoin will be above that price. When we read Kalshi's API on October 20, 2026, at 02:35 UTC, the event settling at 11 PM EDT had 188 strikes, $100 apart, from $72,100 to $90,800. This is the rule of one of them; the time and the strike change with every market:

“If the simple average of the sixty seconds of CF Benchmarks' Bitcoin Real-Time Index (BRTI) before 11 PM EDT is above 81499.99 at 11 PM EDT on Oct 19, 2026, then the market resolves to Yes.”

Kalshi adds, in the same market's rules:

“Not all cryptocurrency price data is the same. While checking a source like Google or Coinbase may help guide your decision, the price used to determine this market is based on CF Benchmarks' corresponding Real Time Index (RTI). At the last minute before expiration, 60 RTI prices are collected. The official and final value is the average of these prices.”

So each strike settles on CF Benchmarks' index, averaged over the last minute of the hour. Strikes sit a cent under a round number ($81,499.99 shows as “$81,500 or above”), so there are no ties. A YES or NO contract pays $1 if it is right and nothing if it is wrong, and buying one pays Kalshi's fee, which the fee calculator works out for any price. The same read also showed an event closing at 5 PM EDT the next day and one closing at 5 PM EDT the following Friday, with strikes $250 and $500 apart. On Kalshi's API the series had traded 8.6 billion contracts in all, about a third as many as its 15-minute bitcoin market.

How an agent picks a strike

An agent runs on a schedule you set, not on a live stream. On each run it reads what it needs at that moment, decides, and stops. A ladder has no single market to read, so the rule has to say which strike. For this market a run usually goes like this:

It lists the series' open events. The one that settles next comes first, with its strikes nearest the money and each one's bid and ask.
It reads bitcoin's price from Coinbase's public 1-minute candles, and how far it moved over the minutes its rule names. Agents can't read the BRTI index the market settles on, so Coinbase stands in for it: close, but not the same number.
It picks the strike its rule names (the nearest to that price, or a set distance from it) and reads that market in full: its strike, its live order book and its rules.
If the rule's condition is met, it places one order on the side the rule names, at a limit price, and holds it to settlement.
It writes a short report of what it saw and did. You can read every run, step by step.

We ran those reads on October 20, 2026, a few minutes after 02:35 UTC: Coinbase had bitcoin at about $81,460, down 0.04% over 30 minutes, and the $81,500 strike was bid 61¢ and offered at 62¢. Under the first rule below, a move that small means no order. Runs are 10 minutes apart at the fastest, and nothing watches the market between them. What agents can read lists every tool an agent has and what it cannot reach.

Three rules to start from

Each of these is a rule you can hand to the builder as is. The button opens the builder with the rule already sent; it asks what it still needs (how much money the agent manages, the largest order) and shows you the agent before anything runs.

Follow the last 30 minutes

“Every hour at :05, find the KXBTCD hourly bitcoin market that closes next and pick the strike nearest the current Coinbase BTC spot price. Read the Coinbase spot move over the last 30 minutes. If BTC rose by 0.05% or more, buy YES on that strike; if it fell by 0.05% or more, buy NO; a smaller move means no order. Only buy when the ask is 60¢ or less; place a limit at the ask, sized within the per-order limit. Hold to settlement.”

Five minutes into each hour, the agent finds the strike nearest bitcoin's Coinbase price in the market that settles at the top of the hour, and reads the last 30 minutes of Coinbase candles. If bitcoin rose 0.05% or more, it buys YES on that strike; if it fell as much, NO. A smaller move, or an ask over 60¢, means no order. It holds what it buys to settlement.

An agent on Windmill runs this rule: BTC hourly: nearest strike, 30-minute move.

Run this rule on paper

Buy a cushioned favorite late

“Every hour at :50, find the KXBTCD hourly bitcoin market that closes next and read the current Coinbase BTC spot price. Buy YES on the highest strike at least $200 below spot if its ask is 92¢ or less; otherwise no order. Hold to settlement.”

Ten minutes before the hour settles, the agent reads bitcoin's Coinbase price and buys YES on the highest strike at least $200 below it: a bet that bitcoin does not fall $200 or more in ten minutes. It pays 92¢ at most, so a win makes a few cents a contract and a loss costs nearly all of it.

Run this rule on paper

Fade a sharp move

“Every hour at :30, read the Coinbase BTC spot move over the last 15 minutes. If BTC rose 0.3% or more, buy NO on the strike nearest spot in the KXBTCD hourly market that closes next; if it fell 0.3% or more, buy YES on it. Only buy at 55¢ or less. Hold to settlement.”

Halfway through the hour, the agent reads the last 15 minutes of Coinbase candles. If bitcoin moved 0.3% or more, it bets the move partly comes back: NO on the strike nearest the price after a rise, YES after a fall, at 55¢ or less. A quieter quarter hour means no order.

Run this rule on paper

These are starting points, not recommendations. Change a number, pick another strike, add a condition, or write your own rule from scratch: anything you can check from the order book, a market's price history, bitcoin's Coinbase price or a public web page on each run.

The first rule, running

BTC hourly: nearest strike, 30-minute move, a public paper agent on Windmill, runs the first rule above word for word, every hour at :05, with $100 on paper and $5 at most an order. It has been running on paper since October 20, 2026. As of Oct 26, 2026, 10:50 UTC, it had made 152 runs and 77 orders; 74 bets have settled, 34 of them won, and it has realized -$33.49 after fees.

Its page carries the record live, with every bet counted, and every run's report. A few dozen settled bets say little: an agent can be well ahead or behind on that many by chance, so look at how many bets a record rests on before reading anything into it.

How often it can run

The series settles 24 times a day, weekends included: Kalshi's API listed 24 events for each day from October 17 to 20, 2026. Every run of every agent counts against your account's run budget, so how many hours one agent can cover depends on your plan; the pricing page lists each plan's budget. The agent above runs once an hour, round the clock.

You set the schedule when you build the agent, and you can change it or pause the agent at any time. Paper trading is free, with no card. For bitcoin's up-or-down market every quarter hour, see the 15-minute bitcoin bot.

Questions

Is an hourly bitcoin bot profitable?: We don't know yet, and this page won't guess. The agent running the first rule started on October 20, 2026, and its page carries its record as it grows. On Kalshi's 15-minute bitcoin market, most rules we have tested land near a coin flip after fees, or below it; the research page has the numbers. Running your own rule on paper is how you find out, before you risk money.
Does the agent read the price Kalshi settles on?: No. Kalshi settles this market on CF Benchmarks' BRTI, averaged over the last 60 seconds before the hour, which agents can't read. They read Coinbase's public bitcoin candles instead, a close proxy but not the same number, and Kalshi's own order book for each strike.
Which strike does the agent trade?: The one its rule names. Each run, the agent lists the series' open events with the strikes nearest the money, so a rule should say which event (the one that settles next, say) and how to pick a strike from it: nearest the Coinbase price, or a set distance below or above it.
Can it trade the 5 PM daily or the weekly close?: Yes. When we read Kalshi's API on October 20, 2026, the series also had open events closing at 5 PM EDT that day and the following Friday, with strikes $250 and $500 apart. Name the close you want in your rule.
What are the fees?: Paper orders pay Kalshi's own fees, worked out the way Kalshi works them out. On October 20, 2026, Kalshi listed this series with the same fee settings as its 15-minute bitcoin market: an order that takes a resting price pays the most at 50¢ and less toward either end. The fee calculator gives the fee and the breakeven win rate for any price.
Paper or live?: Agents trade on paper unless you build them live. Paper orders fill against Kalshi's live order book and settle when the real market settles. To trade real money, connect your own Kalshi API key and build a live agent; your money stays on your Kalshi account.