Intersango arbitrage opportunities (free money)

[genjix]

I'm surprised nobody is taking advantage of all this free money out there to be made between exchanges.

We placed a priority on developing on API to enable bots to do trading for this very reason.

There are no fees and we have good support. Intersango accepts USD, EUR and GBP.

There's basically easy money to be made from the gaps in prices between exchanges and even inside exchanges.

Here's some Python code to find the USD <-> whatever exchange rate using Google:

Code:

def query_fiat_rate(conn, currency):
    conn.request("GET", "/search?q=1usd+to+"+currency)
    response = conn.getresponse()
    html = response.read()
    match = re.search('<b>1 U[.]S[.] dollar = ([0-9.]*) [A-Za-z .]*</b>', html)
    if match is not None:
        return decimal.Decimal(match.group(1))
    raise FiatRateNotFound(currency)

import httplib
conn = httplib.HTTPConnection("www.google.com")
print query_fiat_rate(conn, 'EUR')

Documentation for other exchanges APIs can be found on their websites. Intersango API

[Steve]

Is there really that much to be made?  Even if you waive all the fees and commissions for people providing this liquidity, I'm not sure the volume is there to make very much "free money."  Perhaps if the exchanges (particularly the smaller ones) got together and funded the development of a simple to use arbitrage utility then people would start doing it.  Ideally, it would be almost as simple as: go deposit X amount in the exchanges you want to arbitrage, configure the utility with the OAuth keys for each of your arbitrage accounts, and run the utility.  The exchanges should make it easy to move fiat funds between exchanges (exchanges could settle such transfers directly and enable the arbitrage client to use the API to initiate fiat transfers).  The arbitrage client would place orders and rebalance fiat funds between accounts at multiple exchanges.  From an end user perspective, you would just be putting up funds to earn a little extra from these arbitrage opportunities.

There's probably little incentive for mtgox to implement this, but if all the other exchanges got together and did it, they would in effect be pooling all of their volume and could become a formidable competitor to mtgox.  Alternatively, the exchanges could simply integrate their quoting and matching engines such that no matter which exchange you prefer to use, you're always looking at the combined order book of all exchanges and orders could be matched and later settled across the exchanges.  You would eliminate the arbitrage opportunities, but the users would see the savings in the form of tighter spreads and higher liquidity.

[ThiagoCMC]

I prefer a Intersango v2 being open sourced...  ;-(

[runeks]

Please explain how this works when you need to pay a fee to exchange (for example) USD to EUR. Or does Intersango provide EUR to USD exchange as well, and vice-versa?

I mean, let's say I can buy 10 BTC for 50 USD, and then sell the 10 BTC for 40 EUR. Then I would still need to exchange those 40 EUR to (at the current exchange rate) 54.5 USD, to cash in. And I can't really find any good places that will exchange EUR to USD, and vice-versa, at low fees.

[im3w1l]

For currency conversions, please prefer

http://www.google.com/ig/calculator?hl=en&q=1GBP=?USD

its proper json.

[runeks]

I was referring to the actual purchase of currency. I know how to get the exchange rate, but the actual exchange rate isn't what Google tells me, it's what Google tels me minus the exchange fees. If I want to take advantage of, for example the EUR/BTC to USD/BTC ratio being less or more than the actual EUR to USD exchange rate, I need some place where I can sell or purchase Euros and Dollars.