Bitcoin Forum

BTCe is always a bit lower on price than the others. Bitstamp has generally been lower than Bitfinex. So where is the arbitrage?

Arbitrage is generally not really possible due to "delays". Even when Gox had a "huge difference" people didn't make money from that.

Delays are irrelevant. You keep fiat on the exchange with the lower price and coins in the higher exchange. When the price difference is sufficient, you perform the buy and sell trades at the same time. Afterwards you deposit and withdraw where needed to settle the balances. If you're waiting for coins to transfer before making the second leg of an arbitrage trade, then you're doing it wrong.

Anyway, if the price on btc-e is consistently lower, then apparently depositing fiat is slow, unreliable or expensive.

You clearly have never tried to make money from arbitrage.

Many people choose to pay a premium to buy their coins from other exchanges to mitigate risks from an unregulated exchange that has anonymous operators and because transferring funds into btc-e can be difficult and risky. Unless you wire transfer a very large sum of money you will not be able to profit substantially off the arbitrage spread and doing this poses a risk that many want to avoid.

Go ahead and do the math and calculate the roundtrip time it takes to wire cash to btc-e - purchase btc - withdraw btc and deposit in coinbase - cash out btc and wait more time for cash to ach to your account and repeat. Add up the risks from volatility and all the fees in the process and you will soon realize that profiting from this is dangerous.

Exactly - when the USD prices on Gox BTC started to go up I knew that it was "time to remove all BTC from Gox" but plenty of suckers thinking that they would get rich from arbitrage stayed on until the collapse (and are now just hoping to get anything back from that failed exchange).

Start arbitraging and you may find out why

 ???

BTC-e is murder to get money on so USD is worth more.  Also have to factor is various risks with pulling the arb.

There are also differences in fees and deposit methods that make the expense of using one exchange different than another. When all those expenses are factored in, the price may look more typical.

Just try making money from arb and you'll soon realise that unless you have some "special contacts" then it is basically impossible.

(the only person that I know of that made a lot from arb is a Chinese guy who had Japanese contacts and that fucked up when Mt. Gox went under)

I hear ya. I had a little luck early on with arbitrage. But very quickly it became more work than BTC.

It's very simple, just like all these other comments have touched on, the ability to get cash in and out of BTC-e is too difficult. Therefore the arbitrage has a premium for those that want to try.

That's OK though because btc-e is set up as a trading system rather then an atm exchange. They are really only holding dollars and fiat as a buffer for you to trade in and out of.

They are still providing a good service as long as they stay honest and don't pack up and run.

I always thought it to be pretty easy though i never did because of so much hassle and seeing how less i could use ,a good idea that i didn't do it :-\ :)

You thought it to be easy.

But you didn't do it because of so much hassle.

I'm confused.  Did you think it was easy?  Or did you think it was too much hassle?

???

Depositing EUR to BTC-e used to be a pain in the ass over a year ago (not sure if its any quicker nowadays), certainly couldn't rely on it for arbitrage. Found it a lot easier arbing alts between a few different exchanges, then converting them to btc :)