Bitcoin Forum

Browsing through blockfolio, the wide contrast in prices of bitcoin on different exchanges presents a huge opportunity arbitrage traders to make profits.

From Coinbase to bitfinex and Bittrex  bitcoin's value is spread widely. And it seems to all be down to the implosion of tether.

There is no arbitrage opportunity.

Tether has become uncoupled from USD. It is currently sitting around $0.96, but was as low as $0.90 earlier. The difference in prices shown on Blockfolio are likely because the app assumes that Tether is always worth $1, which is currently not the case. If you go on the actual exchanges, compare the ones that trade against USD to those that trade against USDT, and calculate the prices manually, the differences completely disappear.

You can guarantee if there was an arbitrage opportunity, especially one this large, it wouldn't have been sitting open for 12-16 hours. The trading bots would have exploited it and quickly closed any price gap.

Honestly i tried out Arbitraging a few months back but i found out that it's not quite profitable these days for the following Factors

• TRADING BOTS
  Too many trading bots in play have made it quite hard to catch those coin price gaps between different exchanges. The coin price gap will be long gone even before the transaction is confirmed
  
  
• VOLATILE COIN PRICE
  Successful crypto arbitrage requires when the price of a coin is not so volatile but in the case of coins like Bitcoin, the price can change by $50 in matter of minutes. You may end up buying it thinking you have bought low, you try to transfer it to another exchange only for the price to drop there too within minutes before even the transaction is confirmed.
  
  
• SLOW TRANSACTION CONFIRMATION
  This is the case especially for Bitcoin, You have to wait for more than about 20 to 30 minutes of which the price or coin market gap will have be long filled up.
  
  
• WALLET MAINTENANCE
  Some coin market price gaps are just due to the different wallet maintenance schedules in different exchanges. You buy a coin and try to transfer it to another exchange so as to sell high only to realize that the other exchange's wallet is under maintenance and they do not accept a deposit of that coin
  
  
• DECEPTIVE MARKET PRICE ON DIFFERENT EXCHANGES
  This is common with altcoins since some have low trade volumes, for example the sell price you may see in the exchange you want to transfer your coins to and sell may not be reflected well in the order-book. It could just be a small sale volume which was made at a very high price yet in the order-book the next bid order is either at the same price range as the price with which you bought the coin or even slightly lower implying will just make a loss if you dare to transfer the coins and sell them.
  

Those are the few shortcomings that i experienced and i thought i could share with you.[/list]

Well you can really do arbitrage as long as you are quick but always remember that there's fee you needed to pay so somewhat the profits that you are talking will be greatly reduced. It will be exploited soon and we wouldn't see that price gaps as quick as you see them right now. But if you think you can take this opportunity to make money very fast then do it but just be careful as well.

you can sell coins at bitfinex or on USDT markets and hope the price disparity dies down, but that's about it. you can't actually withdraw USD and complete the arbitrage cycle.

so there's really no way to arbitrage. if arbitrage were possible, the gaps would close up quickly. all you can do is trade against the market's collective will to exit bitfinex and tether, and wait for withdrawals to open back up.

every day we can do coin arbitrage. depending on how we see the potential of coins that can send quickly or not. To arbitrate in my opinion there is no particular moment. it's just that we often have to see the movement of coin prices on each exchanger.

Maybe there is a widespread of prices between exchanges but the fact that "Fees and transaction time" are quite a hindrance, your possible profits for that arbitrage would dramatically low down or worst case, you might loss some of your BTC possessions. If the spread are like 1% per BTC then more likely you need to trade bigger volume to get profits from your trade.

Nope, it doesnt work that smoothly mate. If you even start doing such arbitrage trading then also things can be messy in terms of withdrawal fees and trading fees. You have to pay fees for first exchanger, then same happens with the second one too. You cut loose your profits over there only.

I know you may say that, fees are just 0.1% to 1% on these big exchangers but note that the margin between two exchangers could be less than 1-2% itself. In short at the end you wont be having much of it.

Better try short term trading.

I'm arbitraging a small amount, basically got in at a 4.5% arbitrage a few hours prior. I don't believe this tether FUD and have seen it before way too many times, so taking a small risk.

There are many ways to go about this. However if you got a Bitmex and Bitfinex account, you just open a short on Bitfinex and open a long on Bitmex and just wait it out. Should take a day or two.

Just remember that Bitfinex the trade is done using BTC and in Bitmex its done using USD. So you would long 6400 contracts and short 1 BTC if the price was (6400-6800 respectivately on Bitmex, Bitfinex)

Although you can do this, you need to calculate the time to confirm the transaction because sometimes, you need longer than you can imagine, so you are not getting profit, but you will get a loss. Sometimes, if we are lucky, we can make a big profit for doing arbitrage trading but in the other time, when the bitcoin network is getting a large transaction, then you will need to wait for a longer time to receive in the other wallet. Be careful when you want to make arbitrage trading.

Normally when you arbitrage you do it at exactly the same time, you got BTC on one exchange and the USD on the other. Nobody arbitrages this way that you described. Basically what you said, the price can change while your BTC is being confirmed and it might turn into a loss.

The people that are wanting to deposit FIAT into Bitfinex are not going to arbitrage it. They will just deposit BTC, sell it and just wire out their USD and send to another exchange.

From what I've read, it's not like that, at least not at Bitfinex. From what I read (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5048381.msg46851773#msg46851773) people trying to withdraw USD from Bitfinex get a nasty surprise - they can't. And it seems that this happens since August.

So we have the low prices in USD in some places, we have the high USD prices in other places, but you cannot withdraw, and there are the high prices in USDT which is not 1:1 with USD.
Not good at all for arbitrage.

If someday is looking good for the arbitrage trading where lot of volatility and price diffecence then it also very risky for to be arbitraging because when you are going to transact from one to another exchange the prices will fall so much so you will lose your money in the form of depositing and transaction fee.

Arbitrage is not that simple, one wrong movements could end up losing money, you can't rely only on the price that you see, but you need to consider the transaction volume, the speed transaction and the transaction fee, and most of the coin that you see is infamous coin, so if you not acting fast then you will miss the chance and end up losing money

Currently iam not interesting to do arbitrage trading for some reason, like high fee transfer, long times comfirmed transaction so the price can be change , and look more complicated and promising small profit. Alot of altcoin was push from the bottom and for the beter i spend more times to analysis it by technical and fundamental.

Yes, between the exchanges there is a difference in the price of various cryptocurrencies, but you need almost a whole day to devote to arbitration or to have large sums for such operations, in order to experience a good profit

Couldn't agree more with you! There is and always will be a difference in prices between exchanges. The price of coins is more likely set up by the User's of the exchange and the difference is not that huge anyway, including the commission/fee on exchanges and so on - it's not that profitable as it seems to be.

There are great arbitrary opportunities these days across all the exchanges. I just used the block folio yesterday and see great many opportunities. I believe that we are going to have different in price as good news has started flowing into the market. In altcoins markets we are seeing vary pricing in cryptopia and bittrex and if you know how to sort things out you will see great opportunities.

I really like arbitration where I can get big profits in a short time. But there are some things that can make you fail in arbitration and make us actually get a loss and one of the things that must be considered is the transaction time for sending tokens between exchanges, because if the transaction takes a long time then there are many possibilities that the price we are going to have changed and someone else has taken it.

This situation is scary. Mt. Gox closed withdrawls as well when they had problems. I hope bitfinex solves this situation fast.

About arbitrage, it's possible when when market volatility is high. It's also possible if you have exchanges in different countries with different currencies, such as USD and some other local currency.

If someone manage to somehow have a South Korean bank account and a USD bank, it may be possible to make nice arbitrage with some altcoins which are more valuable in south korea.

The price difference will always be present in every exchange. But in my opinion it is not a rational value because the price difference will be reduced by the cost of withdrawal. For me that arbitration now requires precision and also if it happens then there must be a significant price difference so that we can get profit margins.

Exactly. People don't seem to understand this. There is no arbitrage opportunity.

The differences in prices you can see are entirely artificial because of the fall of Tether. The exchanges that trade BTC against Tether (such as Bitfinex) are/were showing higher prices because 1 USDT is no longer worth 1 USD. The exchanges that trade BTC against USD (such as Gemini) were showing the true price. Any potential arbitrage opportunity disappears when you realize that 1 USDT =/= 1 USD.

There is still one way to carry out Arbitrage execution beautifully by placing fresh funds in several exchanges. When the price of a coin goes down we can buy it then we transfer it to another exchange that has a more expensive price. it's more rational when many exchange bots thwart your plan to do the Arbitrage.

You could earn money by trading with exchanges that have wide spread like trading the same amount of bitcoin could make reasonable profits.
Ex. BTC on Exchange 1 is 6700USD
BTC on Exchange 2 is 7200USD
Selling your BTC in exchange 2 and buying it again on Exchange 1 let's you earn 500USD, that's a merely 7.5% gain. Just be aware of long transaction time , that could be a problem.

right, by netting in many exchanges we can take advantage of price differences, but it must be implemented immediately, of course it will not last long, and prices will return to normal

That's something we can be sure, one mistake will lead you to sudden loses, nowadays arbitrage is really harder to execute decent profits, high demands of risk is always accompanied by one mistake, those delays and bots from  different exchange will affect our opportunities, needs to be done with extra precautions and with variety of knowledge with this system.

Providing an update on my arbitrage and so far nothing has changed the premium is still around 4-4.5%

A few hours ago Bitfinex issued a statement on improved deposits so I will give it another day or two and if the premium doesn't start to shrink I will just close the arbitrage most likely at break-even because I don't want to get stuck holding these positions when there is another $1000 premium like there was 2 days ago when it went to $7800-$6800.

It's not as easy as it may seem for regular traders, especially when it concerns new markets, which applied to South Korea when there was a $5000 difference in price. By the time western traders managed to get everything ready, the premium was gone already. I doubt that we'll ever see such premiums again in South Korea.

In most cases the exchange operators are pretty harsh on those who try to withdraw liquidity from their markets, especially when the price differences are so far apart. It happens frequently where traders deposit whatever crypto asset to exploit the difference in price, but then the exchange in question doesn't let the deposit come through for obvious reasons.

I believe that arbitrage is relevant at any time, in any market, just during the overall growth it is not as profitable as trading

Trading bots actually have spoilt a whole lot of the show for most arbitrage traders, as there are bots now monitoring transactions on every exchange and then acting accordingly still within the exchanges to take advantage of the movement in price across different exchanges.

However, with the one the Op mentioned, there is not even a single possibility of arbitrage trading as what happened with the pump only happened with USDT pairs and not the general market with USD, so there is absolutely no way anyone can even do arbitrage with that. Nonetheless, what happened with USDT is the fact that something shady is going on and people should really be careful holding it.

USDT's market cap has fallen by almost $500 million in the last couple of days, and its price is still slipping down towards $0.96. Meanwhile other stable coins have seen a significant boost - GUSD's volume went from 29 thousand to 2 million in 2 days, and peaked at a price of $1.19. TUSD went from a volume of 12 million to 73 million, and peaked at $1.15.

All because they wouldn't do an independent audit, and I think we all now know why. Time to exit this coin.

About profitable or not, it depends on what we arbitrage. Because sometime every arbitrage activity only happen with big amount of spread in market. But before we do that, we must think a lot about risk to do it. Even bitcoin price on every market have far different, people who know it must be already arbitrage it.

Such a method is at least one step faster than having to send funds right away. I have done it that way and it's effective. I keep some fresh funds in several markets to arbitrage and for daily trading, I need to focus on just one exchange.

One needs to look deeply before concluding there is an arbitrage opportunity because it might seem so but that is not what is practicable when one is involved. For one reason, the price shown on coinmarket or blockfolio is most times not the sell price when you get to the exchange as this price is expected to drop. Also, the price is subject to volatility and another thing is the price quoted could be as a result of technical glitch. The fees to pay and the timing difference is another factor. Putting all of these together means understanding the end of the exercise before delving into such activity.

In general, the situation with the Tether is not the only reason that traffic arbitraging is not so simple.
Such nuances as commissions for deposit and withdraw, fees for placing orders (such also happens) play a big role.
So you need to know all this details very well in order to get positive results in arbitraging.

Isn't that going to cause a lot of transaction fees rather than making profits out of it?
And also the fact that you need an account for each one which have been there for a longer period is a must. For withdrawal purposes too.

That Tether is really something. It had helped whales to shit with us average holders of different coins. Now, they can move freely without even a little fear that their investment will go down.
It should be taken out. Or if that company wants to rob all the investors there then please do it already. Let us go back to the way crypto is before Tether even enter.

Arbitrage is something that has been ongoing for years and we have seen it even in every other market outside cryptocurrency. What is just important is to always look for those big spreads and take advantage of them, even though it can be risky at times, and it makes sense if you are at least doing with some good amount of funds. One way or the other, across board, there would always get to be some little bit of differences in price of markets, but it is still a lot risky considering how volatile the market can be and you really want to be sure you are not making the wrong decision at every single time. Now bots are even popping up daily to help with a lot of that.

supposedly they have. they said a couple days ago that withdrawals are now flowing without interference (though they admitted there was a backlog). and they've brought fiat deposits back online. this suggests they've established new banking relationships. 

the price disparity between exchanges will tell the real story though.......


it's difficult in practice. you need to open a korean bank account in person and establish alien registration. then you are restricted to $50k in remittances per year. and that's if you can even trade on korean exchanges---many only allow koreans.

i think that's why the korean price disparities often persist: because very few people can effectively arbitrage there.

arbitration cannot be that simple. let alone use other platforms as a benchmark. it would be better if you directly access the intended website. because of course the arbitration is not only 1 or 2 people. not to mention the confirmation time for withdrawal

Stop deceiving yourself mate, you cannot see any arbitrage opportunity across those exchanges you are talking about, because not all of them use Tether. What you saw was just a pump of Tether and a lot of people just trying to get out holding Tether as the case may be.

There is absolutely no way you will get anything from using USDT to want to trade a USD pair, so in that case, there is no form of arbitrage anyone can take advantage of. Talking about tether, things are really beginning to get out of hand, and the way things are going, I would not be surprised if we get to see tether out of the market pretty soon.

USDT is losing it, people are getting to bail out from it knowing there is a lot of shady things going on and the earlier they do so the better for them, and in that case, they are moving to more trusted stable coins in which they would not have to keep having sleepless night about a tether that can just implode one day.

So many exchanges are beginning to consider delisting USDT, there is a huge call for auditing with the team doing nothing about that, and there is no element of truth and integrity, to even be able to trust holding USDT, then why would anyone want to take such a chance of losing their funds in the end?

https://www.ccn.com/huobi-lists-four-regulated-stablecoins-vying-for-tethers-crown/

Huobi, for example, are in the process of rapidly listing four other stable coins. They have lost faith in Tether and want it off their exchange as soon as possible it seems. The team will continue to refuse an independent audit I'm sure, because it would simply expose them even more and then Tether really would crash to zero.

It is currently still sitting between $0.96 and $0.97. Marketcap continues to dwindle. Best case scenario for Tether is it recovers to $1.00. Worst case it crashes to zero. The risk:reward ratio is horrendous. Holding Tether right now is an awful financial decision.

Yes, that is how profit making opportunities do present themselves. I believe that arbitrage traders has taken the advantage of this in other to be able to makes money from the market. Trading is a game and sometimes it come with different opportunities and knowing how to spot them is what give us advantage over others. However, I don't really know the real reason for this wide spread difference in bitcoin prices across exchange platform and think many of us that did not know how arbitrary market work will not take advantage of this.

I agree with this. It is nearly impossible to do arbitraging due the reasons mentioned above. I would like add another reason. Different trading fees and different deposit/withdrawal fees also make it difficult to do arbitraging.
There could be rare opportunities if you choose a centralized exchange and a DEX as there is less room for bots to identify arbitrage opportunities in DEXs.  

Sometimes it is worth to do if we have better capital,the profits can't be made if we arbitrage with few thousands of USD maybe it will be profitable if we trade few bitcoins but not always.For example coinbase is one of the place we can buy bitcoins at good price and go to some exchange with much lesser transaction speed and fast withdrawal approvals.

 True to that but because of too much market volatility nowadays there can be alot of opportunities if you really dig dip. I found them in shitcoins. It's almost everyday that you also see bottom fishing method quite successful.

Believe me, You won't be able to benefit from it. This is mainly due to the fact thst there are fees like withdrawal fee and trading fee which will suck up your intended profits. From my experience, arbitrage opportunities works better with altcoins and at volatile seasons. Btw, the volatility with TetherUSD  appears to be over.

Wasn't this like last time when btc prices were pretty big between coinbase and exchanges like binance and bittrex?  Thus it all has to do with tether usd value?

I do not like giving such advice, because the cryptocurrency market is a high-risk market, but I often manage to earn on a price difference between Friday till Monday. There are many currencies whose price falls on Friday and are growing on Monday. I can not explain it, but for several months I have noticed such regularity. Find your coins;)

Blockfolio have been known to have glitches,  there was a time I see some of my holding value in millions only to check coinmarketcap and see that nothing has changed! Arbitrage opportunity do come but most time it is time consuming and failed to deliver!

Well, even if you are going to be finding your chance when it comes to the market, you still need to be very careful considering how volatile the market is. However, what happened with Tether recently as far as I am concerned, did not bring about any room for arbitrage since everything we saw was tether losing its value and people getting to want to opt out at all cost.

For what it is worth though, arbitraging is still something a whole lot of people do every day as long as they find a huge spread for certain pairs between exchanges, so it is always a good day for arbitraging as long as you get something to lay your hands on and you know what you are doing.

This is actually something a lot of people should be considering, knowing that tether one way or the other is already a mess and it is just a countdown right now for its end.

From this news you shared, it practically showed that a lot of exchanges, both old and new are really not fancying the idea of Tether usage anymore and if anything is not shady with tether, I wonder why the team will refuse auditing in the first place. And as far as something is shady, you really do not want to end up being a part of it.

Exactly. There is no reason to refuse an external audit unless they have something to hide. The fact that Bitfinex and Tether claimed they were separate entities, while actually being run by the same people and owned by the same shell company is shady enough. The only reason to refuse anyone looking at their finances is if their finances are a mess.

I suspect they currently do not have enough assets to cover all their debts, but are hoping that this will all blow over and they can continue to operate to recuperate their losses. It's incredibly risky to be involved in either Tether or Bitfinex right now.

We can really get a profit because of arbitrage since every exchanges has different rates. I guess there is nothing wrong taking advantage of price differentiation but we need to be more wise while doing it because at some scenarios arbitrage will costs you more a lot than you think. If you are trading at edge of arbitrage you should always consider the transaction fees and the costs should be calculated to be more precise at your profit.

All I know is there are different prices of Bitcoin in different exchanges but it will not range to more than a dollar. So it would be difficult to have an arbitrage trading strategy. Though that could be possible yet I doubt there are many who do something like what you say.