I was recently fired from my SWE job at Coinbase. When I joined, I fully disclosed a side project I'd been building for 5 years, an algorithmic trading platform called NexusTrade. It was on my resume, discussed in interviews, and disclosed in writing before my start date. HR cleared it.
Months later, Coinbase launched their own AI advisory product (Coinbase Advisor). Their compliance team then retroactively declared my solo project a "material competitor" and gave me 30 days to shut it down, sell it, or resign. When I asked for severance instead, since they were effectively forcing me out over something I disclosed on day zero, I was immediately suspended for "conduct concerns" and fired a week later.
On the technical side: NexusTrade is a MERN stack with a Rust backtesting engine. It has an AI agent (ReAct framework) that can build, backtest, and optimize trading strategies through natural language. Supports stocks, ETFs, crypto, and multi-leg options.
I'm mostly interested in hearing from anyone who's navigated a similar IP/compliance situation as a developer with a side project. What did you do? Happy to answer any questions.
Interesting application of AI outside of development. Unfortunately super expensive right now, but has the potential to be a LOT cheaper with dedicated hardware. What do y'all think?
TL;DR: I am a solo founder building an AI trading platform with more faith in myself than I probably should have. So much faith that I'm willing to publicly embarrass myself by sharing everything with the world.
A deep technical document describing how I built a no-code algorithmic trading platform that outperforms the industry standard in terms of performance. If you're interested in performance optimization, system design, or Rust, this is a must-read
As someone who has spent years building algorithmic trading software, this is game-changing. This one platform has ALL of the tools needed to do Wall-Street-grade research and analysis. Have you guys integrated AI into your workflow? Why or why not?
> Vibe trading is a process where you essentially prompt an AI to create profitable trading strategies. AI models act like junior quantitative analysts, and completely automate the work of ideation, financial research, testing, and deployment.
Seems pretty cool. Anybody ever vibe-created a trading strategy? How did it fare in the real world?