Huge price differences in trading.

[EcoChavCrypto]

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

It is not the problem of the fees, the real problem is that most of the guys who are having 1 or 2 bitcoins, or even more, are not going to risk their balances in order to make a quick arbitrage.
The only ones who are doing it, are those who have less than 0.10 or 0.05 on their balances, and they are not afraid of losing their money.

Why do you think that you have to afford expensive fees and comissions that came from the air?

If you could have more than one bitcoin on ur balance and you start doing arbitrage, you would earn a lot, but if you have less, then the fees are going to eat all your profits

[bitcub]

I do not have an account in Kraken or Bitstamp but only in Polo and Bittrex.  Yes all of them has a huge price difference ,and its so tempting to do arbitrage.

 I am not sure if btc deposits is disabled from kraken. But I guess the price of withdrawal and the number of hours to transfer the btc makes the traders refrain from arbitrage to prevent trade loss.

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?

[richardsNY]

I am not sure if btc deposits is disabled from kraken. But I guess the price of withdrawal and the number of hours to transfer the btc makes the traders refrain from arbitrage to prevent trade loss.

Deposits are just fine. The only problem Kraken has been suffering from, is that this exchange has problems keeping its platform properly accessible. People looking to exploit these price differences should have funds at both of the exchanges at the same time in order to act. If you still have to deposit fiat to buy Bitcoin at Kraken, you'll likely lose out on that opportunity once your fiat deposit finally posts. People generally think taking advantage of price differences between exchanges is an easy thing to do, but once they have tried it themselves, they will see that easy money doesn't exist. There is quite a risk involved, and this is something people quite often overlook.

[Bukx]

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?

I dont think nobody doing arbitrage trading looking from the big amount different price between exchanger.
But you just dont know because you dont know all of trader in the world and whta they are doing.
But now, problem if we do arbitrage in bitcoin, we will face problem when we try to send it. Long confirmation is needed.
The differences of price i think because amount of buy and sell in each exchange is not really the same.

[dave111223]

Some people exclusively make money on that, it's an other way than trading, that's why some people have dozens of screens at the same time to see the prices on different exchanges and quickly switch

[GalaxyWorld]

I also know that there are big differences between trading sessions. Because each trading site has a different trading system, there is a big difference between the trading sessions. I have also made a profit when exchanging business pages.

[entrepmind23]

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?

They have different trading volumes that's why they differ in prices. Each exchange has its own buyers and sellers so it would depend on the traders in that exchange how much they are willing to buy or sell for the coins. I believe there are traders doing arbitrage trading if they already have an account and funds for both exchanges because if there is none then it would be hard since they would send funds and due to network congestion, it may take some time for the funds to arrive that will make the arbitrage meaningless since the opportunity may be taken already by other arbitrage traders. There are traders who use bot in arbitrage because it is faster than manually doing it.

[Briian007]

This happen because more investors in one exchange and push the price higher or lower then other exchange. This is normal because this price is not last too long and will back to the same with other exchange. 

[vv181]

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.

Agree, there are so many variables to consider before we can make a profitable arbitrage trading(like transaction fees, transaction time, exchange fees, etc.). And although if we do an in-depth analysis, there are always a better people to do it as you said there are so many arbitrage bots that compete that can do a calculation in real time. Meanwhile, we do the calculation on our own, and it takes a lot of time.

[Maestro75]

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?

You are right with your observation and I am sure the whales have been making a killing with that. Buying from the low exchanges and offloading them at the exchanges with high prices. It used to baffle me what could be causing that huge price difference.