Bitcoin Forum

Curious if there's enough spread for profit after fees to sell on Mt.Gox and buy on TradeHill. Prices at this instant are: Mt.Gox: $15.44 and TradeHill: $15.22

Trader Steve

isn't the problem the time to go between?  I guess if you keep coins/cash in each it's fine

made an app to watch for this. net fees the pnl is actually pretty darn tiny in general when the opportunities do pop up. and yeah you gotta have inventory of both btc and dollars in both and be constantly moving em around. was small enough profit to not be worth my time.

There are clearly people already doing that, which is what locks the markets together.

You can't do this in a big way, because the markets are so thin near the current price.  Right now, selling 100 BTC on Tradehill would knock the price down to $14.

If you could buy BTC on one exchange, transfer them to the other, and then sell them all within the span of a few seconds, then there would certainly be a good opportunity.

You can't, though, so I don't really see it being feasible.  At least in the terms of an arbitrage bot.

Add in the risk of the sites being hacked/going down, your trades not executing immediately and someone else swooping in before you and you only execute half your trade, etc...  For a few cents profit.

Think again: You don't need to sell the exact same coins you bought at the other exchange. You can just deposit a few BTC/$ in each exchange, and as soon as you see an arbitrage opportunity, instantly sell/buy at both exchanges. If you sum up your total account balance, it will be larger than before.

Of course, there's some risk due to lag that might gox you.

Prices on Tradehill are sticky, slow to react, and low volume compared to Mt Gox.  Mt Gox prices could be $0.5 or $1 more, but sometimes by the time you go to buy the coins on Tradehill
(it would only be like 1 to 5 coins) and Mt. Gox would have fallen to Tradehill prices.

Those are just the last prices, you really need to look at the bid/ask. Tradehill often has really wide spread. The ask will be higher and the bid lower. You could put in your own bid/ask and wait, but there is no guarentee that by the time someone bites (if they do) that the arbitrage opportunity will still be there.

I goxed myself earlier on this - had some coins in Tradehill when it was down, went to sell them but they're a good amount below Mt.Gox and it didn't appear to be moving up. I figured what the hell, I'll give the ol' Gox another shot and transferred the coins over. 9 confirmations later, they're still not showing up, and Mt.Gox has a notice about reimporting the block chain. They're still not done with it. Right now it's almost where it was at Tradehill this morning.

I done goxed myself. :(

But if you hold BTC, you make and lose money as bitcoins rise and fall in value. I guess the arbitrage might help to augment your gains and soften your losses, but in the end you're still investing in BTC.

Someone made a real-time arbitrage opportunity monitor here:

http://nyse-group.de/bitcoin-arbitrage

nice.  they should add the Virowox exchange, some decent arb opportunities there.  I've seen bitcoins sell for like $2 over mtgox current prices. Volume is very low.   As far as I know its the only exchange that allows paypal, neteller and moneybookers deposits.  fees suck though and you have to go USD->SLL->BTC

I tried the TH==> Mt Gox shuffle once... and got hosed   :(

I had to use Virwox when I started on bitcoins and was waiting a week for funds to get to Dwolla and Mt.Gox.
All I can say is... Don't! There are like 20 layers of fees, and the maximum you can deposit is very low (like $80 per several days). I tried creating Secondlife account so I could buy more $L but there are limits there too. It was a headache jumping through those loops.
A really better choice is.... CampBX! Feel free to use my referral link below :)
The current volume is low, but will probably pick up soon. And there's good opportunity there: last trade was at$14.00!

was anyone able to get in on the mtgox 14, tradehill 14 to b7 with 1100+ @13?

that day I found out how long dwolla deposits take, >= forever.
then to find out b7's dwolla transfers were broken.



...goxed.