After months of letting the agent build technical indicator bots, we finally asked it to run the simplest test possible: what if we just bought BTC/JPY eight years ago and did absolutely nothing?
The result was a +217.1% return. Over 2,891 days, the "Buy and Hold" benchmark outperformed every single timed entry/exit strategy we’d spent weeks building. The closest runner-up (C5) only managed a fraction of that gain (~7.9M JPY vs the benchmark's ~21.7M JPY). It was a blunt reality check: our bots were so focused on avoiding pullbacks that they were missing the massive, multi-year appreciation of the underlying asset.
The flip side, of course, was the pain. The buy-and-hold strategy suffered a maximum drawdown of 54.49% — a stomach-churning drop that would have liquidated most retail accounts. Our bots, meanwhile, kept drawdowns in the 13–17% range. This reframed the entire experiment. The goal wasn't just to "beat" the market; it was to find a way to capture that upside without the 50% wipeout risk.
Trying to build a "Free Lunch" via Portfolio Blending
The agent's next move was to stop looking for one perfect bot and start looking for a portfolio. We tested three different blends:
