"Ill never use this in real life!"

[BittBurger]

That's what I repeatedly told my math teacher as I failed every math class i ever took.

pretty much everyone here is a math guru.  I know.  You have to be, in order to code well ... i assume.

I have always wanted to ask you guys ...

If you had some crazy brilliant math mind, and you logged into Vircurex ... couldn't you write some bot which jumps on each crypto as it goes up, and down, and gains value, and loses value, and just flip , flip , flip sales over and over ... between all three cryptos including bitcoin ... and just be literally raking in $5, $10, $3.50, $0.29, $7.00 ... on a minute by minute basis? 

I am almost sure that if i was a brilliant mathemetician, Vircurex would be making me rich right now.  Some algorhythm which would capture volatility, even small ones, in each crypto, and buy and sell ... and rebuy ....

I know someone out there is doing this ... tell me ... how much money are we talking?  Dont be a paranoid weirdo about it.  Spill the beans.  How much am I missing out on because my parents gave me sh*t for brains in the math department?  So bummed ....

[vpitcher07]

I'm also not very good at math however what you just described is either already happening or is not possible. There's no way someone who is a decent programmer (i can't imagine that algo would be very difficult) hasn't already done this if it's possible.

[Skinnkavaj]

There are many trading bots already, the trick is to keep them profitable after everyone have discovered your secrete tactic.

[Peter R]

This is high-frequency trading (à la Goldman Sachs), and, yes it works.  

What ends up happening, though, is another math genius creates another bot to do a similar thing, and so on, and so on.  Eventually, most of the opportunities (predictable patterns) have been fully exploited, and less-than-super-genius bots no longer earn a profit.  I suppose at this point we would say the market is efficient.

[franky1]

it is do-able code wise but as Peter R explains if other people also have bots that want to have orders at the top of the order list to eat the profit at the spread gap for just a few cents-dollars per flip.. then the trading slows down, spreads move from profitable to such a small gap its not profitable. orderlines fill up with hundreds of small amounts per line, creating walls which people (economics psychology) think that its not worth attempting to eat into that order line, thus moving the price in the opposite direction.

this has already happened multiple times an hour for a couple years. people then move on and say ok instead of putting all their funds into one line, break it up into 20 lumps, thus when putting an order in at a small profit, if it doesn't hit, they just leave it there and just use another one of their 1-19 lumps they have left.

this too has also happened but more noticeable in 2012 with all of them sub 1btc orders on gox.

then came the guys that would put in huge amounts of 1000+ coins a few numbers down from the spread gap to cause false walls. to psych people out from going in a certain direction.

the short story is there are many tactics in play at the moment and with at-least 1000 on the exchanges at anyone time.. there is more then just one person doing a technique another person is trying..

all you need to remember are these 3 rules:
never throw all your funds into one order/gamble
never sell at a loss, if it doesn't fill in the time you want, leave it where it lays and use a bit more spare funds at a different price
ALWAYS include the fee to buy and the fee to sell when looking at the amount of spread you will require to make a profit.