:

[ElectricMucus]

I think that has to do with the emotional buywall placed @mtgox right now, anyway the opportunity is almost over.

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[btc_artist]

watching discussion

[tvbcof]

It would actually be preferable to re-balance using Bitcoin since the fees involved are generally much lower.

I'm sure it has not escaped you that if you want BTC, you need $$$.  Waiting for an opportune time to convert BTC to USD for the purpose of having USD to buy BTC takes more time, skill, and luck than a lot of us have.

In any case, this is an interesting development. Up to now TradeHill and Gox have been fairly efficiently arbitraged with few exceptions. What seems to be happening is that someone has a large Bitcoin position to liquidate but if they were to sell 11,000 BTC on Gox it would cause a rapid drop in price. So they are taking advantage of the friction between the two exchanges to optimize the rate at which their position is sold, so as not to crash the price. This becomes more of a concern when the price is already low because there is less market depth to absorb the sale.

I'll defer to your expertise here.  Your hypothesis sounds more realistic than mine.

Another fun hypothesis is that it is a plot by Tradehill to get some user's to take the plunge and get around to setting up and using a Tradehill account.  That might be a good investment for Tradehill actually.

I am fine with this, it will have the net effect of driving volume to TradeHill, which I would like to see better balanced with Gox. And it will force more people to trade on both exchanges if they want to keep their volume up. It certainly complicates money management a bit, but it is actually safer IMO to be better diversified in this way.

I agree very much, and it was a big factor in my primary use of Tradehill.  Even Kenna has at least paid lip service to this philosophy in the past (which is easy enough to do when you are trailing by an order of magnitude I suppose.)  I would like to see several healthy and trusted exchanges in every major locale (Eurasia, Eastasia, and Oceana for lack of a better delineation.)  Maybe a franchise of highly autonomous exchange outlets could be viable to instill some confidence and provide some level of back-end support, but not until the economy grows by several orders of magnitude.

But back to today, one could still loose all their chips in some domino effect which took down what few viable exchanges exist, but one should at least be somewhat insulated from garden variety coding fuckups or the types of corp/gov exchange harassment which seems endemic and unlikely to subside.

[damnek]

Could this be a stunt of Tradehill to attract more volume?

[tvbcof]

Another fun hypothesis is that it is a plot by Tradehill to get some user's to take the plunge and get around to setting up and using a Tradehill account.  That might be a good investment for Tradehill actually.

It has actually had the opposite effect for me. I have been active on TradeHill, but not on Gox. So, I had to transfer BTC to Gox in order to take advantage of the arbitrage.

On net, it means that I will probably be more active on both exchanges ongoing.

I'm surprised you've not been bored to tears by the dead-times on Tradehill.  But I don't know, or really wish to know, your strategies and I assume you've got something going which can kill boredom.

Anyway, another hypothesis is that this (one-time) 20k is the (purportedly) stolen purportedly allinvain stash as per another thread.  The most interesting pick-up from that (to me) is that Mt Gox seems to be accusing Tradehill of failure to participate appropriately in the task of 'catching bad guys'.  That factor is (again, to me) a fascinating aspect of the Bitcoin economy.

[Flappy]

Could this be a stunt of Tradehill to attract more volume?

Or... this is bait to get people to withdraw cash from Gox, so a manipulator can more easily push the price down.

[trogdorjw73]

Is there a Tradehill equivalent to MtGox Live where you can see the bid/sell walls?

[Flappy]

Is there a Tradehill equivalent to MtGox Live where you can see the bid/sell walls?

http://bitcoincharts.com/markets/thUSD.html

[tvbcof]

Is there a Tradehill equivalent to MtGox Live where you can see the bid/sell walls?

I noticed it days ago and minutes after it went into place here:

  http://bitcoinity.org/markets?currency=USD&exchange=tradehill

and have been watching it switch around and diminish ever since.

[quartz92]

Could this be a stunt of Tradehill to attract more volume?

Or... this is bait to get people to withdraw cash from Gox, so a manipulator can more easily push the price down.

and up

[trogdorjw73]

So it would be relatively easy to transfer BTC between MtGox and Tradehill, but it seems to me that right now the only way to get the lower price at TH would be to send my MtGox cash to Dwolla, then send from Dwolla to TH, and by the time three days have passed and the money is at TH, who knows what the price over there will be relative to MtGox, right? Is there some easier way of moving USD from MtGox into TH?

[ElectricMucus]

So it would be relatively easy to transfer BTC between MtGox and Tradehill, but it seems to me that right now the only way to get the lower price at TH would be to send my MtGox cash to Dwolla, then send from Dwolla to TH, and by the time three days have passed and the money is at TH, who knows what the price over there will be relative to MtGox, right? Is there some easier way of moving USD from MtGox into TH?

I think the only way to really take advantage of it would be to have enough funds on both exchanges to buffer those delays.

[tvbcof]

So it would be relatively easy to transfer BTC between MtGox and Tradehill, but it seems to me that right now the only way to get the lower price at TH would be to send my MtGox cash to Dwolla, then send from Dwolla to TH, and by the time three days have passed and the money is at TH, who knows what the price over there will be relative to MtGox, right? Is there some easier way of moving USD from MtGox into TH?

I think the only way to really take advantage of it would be to have enough funds on both exchanges to buffer those delays.

The down-side is, of course, that you double your chances of losing in the event of an(other) exchange failure.  If you are a good trader and making money hand over fist, it's probably worth the chance.  It would take a lot of winning of nickles and dimes through arbitrage to add up to a sizable capital loss should one of the exchanges go belly-up.

[2112]

And it would be best to do your re-balancing with Bitcoin to avoid costs and delays.

Wouldn't "re-balancing with Bitcoin" in effect nullify the arbitration advantage you are trying to exploit?

[2112]

No. Because there will be times when Gox is above TH, and times when Gox is below TH. You do the transfers when it is profitable for you to do so. If your balances go too far the wrong way then you might have to eat a fee on a Dollar transfer in order not to let one account go illiquid.

If you can not do this it reveals that something is lacking in your money management strategy and you are better off not attempting arbitrage between the exchanges. If it were easy, everyone would do it...

It seems to me like you are describing a sure way to lose.

Arbitraging in general is taking advantage of too-much inter-exchange friction in one asset class (BTC) by exploiting less friction in another asset class (USD). Arbitraging doesn't assume that one can guess in advance the profitable distribution of the portfolio between the exchanges.

I've found your proposal of arbitraging BTC/USD price differentials by doing BTC transfers between the exchanges hilarious joke. But you seem to write in all seriousness. I really don't know what to think about it anymore. Was this supposed to be a multi-level satire?

I made a full quote above in the attempt to discourage ex-post-facto editing.

[netrin]

Aside from tick spikes, I don't remember TradeHill sustaining higher prices than Mt. Gox.

@2112: I don't understand your critique. I just made a small profit via TH buy-->Mtgox sell (thanks Chod). I wish I could repeat, as I'm now illiquid on TH, but happy none the less.

[tvbcof]

Aside from tick spikes, I don't remember TradeHill sustaining higher prices than Mt. Gox.
...

I've seen it happen but it was some time ago IIRC.  And it was not really enough to cover the 1% exchange fees plus whatever fees are associated with transferring a lot of money (if one needed to do that.)  But I think that the best way to arbitrage would probably include some amount of picking off spikes and dips anyway.

From time to time I think that outlier picking off could be effective even in one exchange (specifically Tradehill where the volumes are lower and the outliers are higher), but these opportunities seem to come and go (as people learn from their fat-finger mistakes or whatever.)  I was writing something to play that game, but got interested in other things and keep thinking that others are going to be writing the same thing (but better.)

[2112]

Aside from tick spikes, I don't remember TradeHill sustaining higher prices than Mt. Gox.

@2112: I don't understand your critique. I just made a small profit via TH buy-->Mtgox sell (thanks Chod). I wish I could repeat, as I'm now illiquid on TH, but happy none the less.

But do you understand why a perpetuum mobile cannot keep moving forever?

I'm kinda stumped. This joke here is too much for me to comprehend.

[netrin]

I've just suggested again that TradeHill accept Mt. Gox redeemable codes. Perhaps all y'all arbitragers could do the same.

I've found that codes very useful trading between Bitcoinica and Mt. Gox (usd codes are much faster than btc p2p). Mt. Gox in the morning, Bitcoinica while I sleep, in theory anyway.

@2112 perhaps you are failing to make yourself understood. If I can see a 10% price difference between exchanges, then I'll buy cheap, transfer coins and sell high. Should the cicumstances reverse, I'll do the same. I have no need to re-balance if not profitable. Is it the re-balancing to which you object?

[ElectricMucus]

Well there is always bitcoinica