Huge price differences in trading.

[ridertiger]

Bitcoin is 13.5K in kraken, but over 15k in coinbase. If you have access to both, there is a huge opportunity I think. It is13250 in bitstamp, and 14.5K in cex.io
Does anyone know why the huge price difference? And how come nobody is doing arbitraj?

[tibor]

I was having a look on it, and yes the prices have like 5% of difference between the exchanges, i did not try it but maybe it works.
Would be good if somebody can create a bot for it

[bitcoinisbest]

Those are international site for us so no point as transferring the money itself through swift will take time and then fees etc and same process while withdrawing the money etc which is a lengthy process and also in our country bitcoin is still not legalized.

On the other hand I would like to know who trades on such sites that how much time it takes to reflect in wallet the money transferred to your account and how much time does withdrawal takes?

[Thanasis]

Bitcoin is 13.5K in kraken, but over 15k in coinbase. If you have access to both, there is a huge opportunity I think. It is13250 in bitstamp, and 14.5K in cex.io
Does anyone know why the huge price difference? And how come nobody is doing arbitraj?

Yeah there is always price difference between the exchanges so a skillful trader knows where to buy and where to trade,sometimes I did this kind of trades I buy bitcoins with the coinbase exchange and sold that bitcoin in localbitcoins exchange which gives me good profit.
But I don't know why the price difference in between exchanges but it is a good chance to earn if someone can access all trading exchanges.

[bamboylee]

Bitcoin is 13.5K in kraken, but over 15k in coinbase. If you have access to both, there is a huge opportunity I think. It is13250 in bitstamp, and 14.5K in cex.io
Does anyone know why the huge price difference? And how come nobody is doing arbitraj?

This is a huge difference and can be good for arbitrage trading, but the problem is the transfer time that you have to take transferring money and bitcoin back and fort these exchanges. You can do it if you have USDT and Bitcoin in all these exchanges but I doubt many of us have that. Maybe there is very few person who actually have money across these exchanges.

[vv181]

In my opinion, arbitrage in Bitcoin is not going to work, because of the high transaction fee.

[jackiemixon2]

I was having a look on it, and yes the prices have like 5% of difference between the exchanges, i did not try it but maybe it works.
Would be good if somebody can create a bot for it

Yeah but i think it will cost much time for you to do this exchange. If the transaction isn't confirmed so your plan will be stuck.

[dejan_p]

it can be handy/profitable in case you are in the position to invest a decent amount of money (few tens of thousands) into each of those exchanges, pay all the fees and incorporate all the withdrawal fees you will encounter, and then buy/sell/arbitrage your btc/usd. regarding the long transaction times you might be better off to quickly exchange your profits into a faster altcoin, transfer it to another exchange and then switch it back to btc (or something else to your liking)

it would imply some additional fees, but if you're targeting a 10% difference, you should be good

[cynical]

I have done it before and gained a bit from it but it was small amounts traded between poloniex and bittrex.
There is definitely a profit in trading between two exchanges when the difference is big enough and there is a large amount of tokens involved.

[BureauChef]

In my opinion, arbitrage in Bitcoin is not going to work, because of the high transaction fee.

Arbitrage requires huge sum of cash money and bitcoin at the same time. Plus we don't know the transactions times of bitcoin transfer between websites. That's what makes arbitrage very hard in practise.

[Fortify]

I guess these little differences have always been there, they just become more magnified as the bitcoin prices rises. It seems like a genuine area where arbitrage traders could make a lot of money, but bitcoin is so volatile that the correct timing is key and knowing the buyers are on each platform.

[ridertiger]

I mean both coinbase and kraken are in San Fransisco, so there must be a way you could just go to them, buy with cash or something
Kidding aside, if you live in the US, you should be able to do it with USDT.

[jerry0]

Can you get kraken account for us bank account holders or not?  If so, then is there a reason why this wouldn't work then?

[dead_m92]

so you are the dumbest man that i have ever seen in this forum, bitcoin arbitrage is one of the most profitable things that a trader could do right now

You can easily make $1500 or a little bit more just for selling a whole bitcoin and then re-buy it back again

In my opinion, arbitrage in Bitcoin is not going to work, because of the high transaction fee.

Obviously that it is risky, but if you do not take risks, you are not going to earn a penny.

But with the blockchain saturated, there isn't many things that you can do, you need to pay $20 for fees, wait more than two hours to get it confirmed, it is all a hassle

[jerry0]

So have you done this?  And if so are those exchanges with those prices possible?


So basically what you need are


Access to all these bitcoin exchanges
A lot of capital

[Zentor]

Yes, speculators are taking their margin. But Bitcoin pool is overloaded so trade carefully because of long transfering

[xIIImaL]

Bitcoin is 13.5K in kraken, but over 15k in coinbase. If you have access to both, there is a huge opportunity I think. It is13250 in bitstamp, and 14.5K in cex.io
Does anyone know why the huge price difference? And how come nobody is doing arbitraj?

This seems happens usual of price change in various exchanges. That is why many traders goes to the preev price chart you are buying or selling anything in the forum.
I am really not that why fees difference this much big recent days actaully from one exchange to another one.
When they have difference also that would be a small fund not like how we are seeing now. You just select the trading which is preferred to you.

[uslfd]

Right, but coinbase is charging us so much for each transaction and taking fiat money out of it...
I think any "easy" arbitrage like that won't work - the difference is there because it's impossible to trade away.

[crabby]

so you are the dumbest man that i have ever seen in this forum, bitcoin arbitrage is one of the most profitable things that a trader could do right now

You can easily make $1500 or a little bit more just for selling a whole bitcoin and then re-buy it back again

In my opinion, arbitrage in Bitcoin is not going to work, because of the high transaction fee.

Obviously that it is risky, but if you do not take risks, you are not going to earn a penny.

But with the blockchain saturated, there isn't many things that you can do, you need to pay $20 for fees, wait more than two hours to get it confirmed, it is all a hassle

Wow, this is simply not true. I don't know where you got your information from, but bitcoin arbitrage is not very profitable. The reason is because there is a massive market of arbitrage bots which are all trying to compete. This reduces any profits that would be made since they essentially collectively share the profits. The reason there is a difference between the prices at different exchanges is because of the fees and time it would take to transfer your coins in order to do arbitrage. It's not simply because people are lazy. There are thousands of people who have software that automates the process, so if they saw an opportunity they would take it. This means that the price difference between these exchanges is less than the cost to perform arbitrage.

I've created my own arbitrage software in the past and know very well that the market is competitive and the profits are small. Sure, there is a chance that you could get lucky with just the right swing of bitcoin prices to successfully make a lot of money in arbitrage, but you can't rely on luck when writing software. I also don't prefer to rely on luck while trading either, since relying on luck means you will probably be wrong just as much as you are right. Everything needs to be mathematically proven in order to even attempt the arbitrage.

[jerry0]

Well lets put it this way.  Kraken does accept bank wire transfers right?  So if thats the case, why can't you send say 20k there.  Yes it will take some time to get there.  Now you are currently funded there.   Let say wire fee is 50 dollars.  Now if its 13500 on kraken and 15000 on coinbase or whenever you notice a big spread, you buy btc on kraken.  When you do this, you get your btc immediately right?  What are the fees for it?  Say you want to buy 1 btc for 13500.  Im guessing fees are less than 1 percent so lets just make it total 13600 total.


Now you send the btc immediately to coinbase.  I mean can't you just pay a higher fee to have the btc get there faster?  I mean even paying 50 dollars is worth it right?  Now after you pay that amount and it gets to coinbase, lets just say the price is 14700.  Now you sell the btc.  Let say you get back 14600 or so.  So here don't you profit around 14600-13600 = 1000 dollars minus say 50 dollar wire = 950 profit?  Now let say you want to wire the money back to your bank account connected to coinbase.  I think its free?  Lets just say it cost 50 dollars.  Well if you do that, there is still a 900 dollar profit right?  Now you then buy btc with the 6500 usd you have there and do the same.  Then you sell it on coinbase and to your bank account.  You then wire the money again from your bank account to kraken and then repeat?  But you basically are waiting when the price is big difference etc.