ARBITRAGE - is it still PROFITABLE?

[Janation]

I would use the time for arbitrage trading to actually look for a project to invest for a short-term. Arbitrage is now flocked with bots & you will never be able to do it more quickly than they do. Unless it is a small cap coin which isn't listed on major exchanges, it will be darn hard.

That is the problem though.

I am doing this strategy for a while now and the problem I am facing is that most of my cryptos can't be found listed in other exchanges so the choices are limited to only some of the exchanges. Other problems maybe is that the fees are high so sometimes I need to sell them to other cryptos to get a cheap fee.

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[Vispilio]

Yes there continues to be arbitrage opportunities in crypto markets, as there are everywhere else.

However if you want to engage in discretionary arbitrage trading, you'll have much better chances in lesser known products traded on decentralized or more obscure exchanges which are not dominated by bots...

Most well known exchanges themselves employ many bots and automated algorithms for the most obvious strategies of arbitrage, so you need to bring a more sophisticated approach there compared to the past.

[zeze18]

Yes there continues to be arbitrage opportunities in crypto markets, as there are everywhere else.

However if you want to engage in discretionary arbitrage trading, you'll have much better chances in lesser known products traded on decentralized or more obscure exchanges which are not dominated by bots...

Most well known exchanges themselves employ many bots and automated algorithms for the most obvious strategies of arbitrage, so you need to bring a more sophisticated approach there compared to the past.

Yeah i think manual arbitrage like monitoring every market's price is not worth anymore in this current time because trading bots are getting smarter and they will easily adjust the market price so arbitrage is no more profitable just like in 2017 backwards

[WLtoys V912]

Arbitrage trading is always profitable because there is always difference between exchange rates but I don't usually try this method because it is very risky. The prices are fluctuating very fast and if you are not fast enough you may lose money. You should also invest a rather high amount of money to make profit from a small difference in rates. So, if you lose, you lose rather big!

[Sanitough]

Arbitrage trading is always profitable because there is always difference between exchange rates but I don't usually try this method because it is very risky. The prices are fluctuating very fast and if you are not fast enough you may lose money. You should also invest a rather high amount of money to make profit from a small difference in rates. So, if you lose, you lose rather big!

I don't think you'll ever lose in arbitrage trading, this kind of trading has no risk.

What do you mean about "So, if you lose, you lose rather big!"?

[el kaka22]

Arbitrage is not huge in crypto world like it is in forex world, there are a lot of people who are hired by banks to take advantage of arbitrage between nations and considering there is a big competition even in that it is not easy to do that very well and some people are the ones who lose money and others are the people who win that lost money.

In crypto things are unregulated so you might consider arbitrage as more of a possibility here but the truth is since it is unregulated there are people who do shady stuff to take advantage of that arbitrage before you can. I have seen people who literally dropped the price from a profitable number to a negative just to get rid of others and brought back to profitable and took his profit, lost some money to get rid of rivals to profit in the end.

[asus09]

Arbitrage is faster way how to get much profit in crypto by looking different price of some altcoin from one exchange market with other exchange market, arbitrage usually happen when have new coin listed with other exchange market and become higher or lower price from with before exchange market listed this coin, for arbitrage maybe have problem when sending need long time confirmation.

[buwaytress]

Arbitrage trading is always profitable because there is always difference between exchange rates but I don't usually try this method because it is very risky. The prices are fluctuating very fast and if you are not fast enough you may lose money. You should also invest a rather high amount of money to make profit from a small difference in rates. So, if you lose, you lose rather big!

By definition, if you're able to arbitrage then you're making a profit. The problem is not whether arbitrage is profitable or not, the problem is, are you able to find these arbitrage opportunities, and are you able to take advantage of them?

Unless you have a large series of capital spread out over a lot of different exchanges in countries where the demand is high (hence the arbitrage) and you're able to liquidate bitcoin and fiat pretty quickly, these tiny margins are going to cost you a lot. Amateurs need not apply.

Even with automated scripts they're getting harder and harder to do. Everyone's after the same tiny slivers of pie, you see.

[JessicaVL]

Hello traders! I've been searching around and trying to find best sites which offer arbitrage data and explanations on how to do it.
What do you think, is it still possible to profit from arbitrage or are bots doing it nowadays?
Thank you for helping out in this matter!

In my opinion, Arbitrage is still profitable, and Arbitrage trading platforms are constantly coming out with better and faster middleware, to ensure that. A good example of this is Tap . They are an Arbitrage like trading platform that is using the newest technology, to not only scan hundreds of the top exchanges for you but, their software also picks out the lowest price from those results. Taking out a lot of the risk and, all of the guesswork out it for you.

[salkan3]

Regular arbitrage is not very profitable anymore. It has become saturated.

Triangular arbitrage is much less known and much more profitable comparatively.

With triangular arbitrage, you buy a coin on one exchange, sell it for another coin, and then you sell that coin for the original coin, completing the cycle.

I like to use this this free triangular arbitrage tool (provided by a new exchange called mushino) that lets you track these opportunities across 250 trading pairs. Currently there are some 2% (!) triangular opportunities on some of the lesser known coins. This means that you can make 2% on every 2 trades (not taking into account fees and slippage).

[sana54210]

Arbitrage trading has always been beneficial if you have the abilities of quick movements. The prices might not differ for a longer time on various exchanges which might give you minimum time to fill profits by simultaneous buying and selling coins on different exchanges which have fraction of differences. You should also never forget fees which you would need for each transaction, for withdrawing funds from a exchange and even deposit fees if applicable.

Alternatively you can also use some other methods to arbitrage like holding specific amount of funds on both the exchanges you would trade and buying on a exchange which offers lower price and at the same time selling those number of coins you bought on the exchange with lower price on another exchange with higher price. In this method, you would not loose excess fees and also might perhaps be beneficial.

[RealMalatesta]

Hello traders! I've been searching around and trying to find best sites which offer arbitrage data and explanations on how to do it.
What do you think, is it still possible to profit from arbitrage or are bots doing it nowadays?
Thank you for helping out in this matter!

In my opinion, Arbitrage is still profitable, and Arbitrage trading platforms are constantly coming out with better and faster middleware, to ensure that. A good example of this is Tap . They are an Arbitrage like trading platform that is using the newest technology, to not only scan hundreds of the top exchanges for you but, their software also picks out the lowest price from those results. Taking out a lot of the risk and, all of the guesswork out it for you.

To me arbitrage trading might not be profitable if you are doing it on your own because you would not be able to catch the huge differences onto several exchanges.

There have been a number of bots introduced which carry the work on our behalf. Arbitrage trading with these bots can be most profitable because a bot can work way lot faster than a human brain because it has been made in such a way. You can never loose any profits from arbitrage if you have set up various orders on the bot itself.

You just need to choose a platform or a bot which is into the market for longer time and also which is been trusted by the community. This is where you would need to use your brain in digging some bots to find a appropriate one for yourself.

[Kaliecious]

of course Arbitrage is still very profitable. with the speed of transactions between markets. also need to pay attention to whether the wallet on the exchange is being maintained or not because I often experience it. already bought a coin at a low price but when you want to send it to other markets it even disables 

[okala]

Many things has changed in cryptocurrencies world and it is difficult now to make money through arbitrage. I tried it I 2017 and I couldn't make it, I tried in 2018 and meddle of 2019 and I did not make it. Using bot might be the best solution for arbitrage trading but bot also do make wrong trading decisions which is always difficult to reverse.

[bitbunnny]

Arbitrage trading is still the most profitable but also the most risky type of trading. But it's not always the same, it depends very much on conditions on the market.
Currently it's not so easy to make money by arbitrage because you really need to be able to act very quickly, make decision very fast and be prepared to react almost instant on slightest movement in the market.
This is not for everyone, only the most skilled and experienced are able to make profit like that so maybe it's better to choose not so demanding type of trading.

[SquallLeonhart]

Arbitrage has always been profitable to those who can do it and fast enough to do it but more importantly global enough to do it. Now I know there are tons of costs involved with arbitrage considering you have to money around all the time and I get that it is not easy. However when you have global accounts as in you have bank accounts in multiple places in the world, it is quite simply the easiest thing you can do but you have to be both fast and also haggle with your bank to drop the costs involved as well.

Banks do not want your money gone to somewhere else, let alone a whole another country so they will definitely not support you by raising the costs, all banks do this together so none of them lose customers. If you can manage to find that small hole to get in, you can make a killing with it.

[LUCKMCFLY]

The arbitration at the moment of the market is something very difficult to carry out, I think that this is already reaching the levels of High Frequency Trading, it is a very closed topic and under which many of us want to know more and more, and although some Exchanges use their bots for it, I think that only bots with artificial intelligence are those that are able to do it and get good results.

But I think that only the human hand does not have the capacity to execute it and if it does it is very likely that it will obtain losses.

[its-a-me-mario]

I can tell you that spreads absolutely still exist today, but you're looking at 0.2-0.6% spreads, not 2% or 3% like there used to be. You have to factor in trading fees and the eventual transfer fees when you decide to pull your crypto off the exchange, so you really need a spread of at least 0.15% or so to be worth your time.. But if you can capitalize on this 20 or 30 times a day, there is money to be made. Slippage will occur if your orders are too big so sometimes you can make a big profit, sometimes you can only make a little because an order larger than say $400 might incur slippage. It changes every second.

I'm the primary engineering lead of Coygo Terminal, we have a tool for real-time arbitrage scanning, trading, slippage detection, transfers, etc. I monitor spreads every day across Coinbase Pro, Kraken, Bittrex, Gemini, Binance, and Poloniex, and there are constant profitable spreads.

Also you can't be trying to buy on one exchange, transfer to another exchange, then sell. Spreads only exist for a few seconds, so you can't be waiting for transfer confirmations. The spread will be closed by the time it arrives. You need to be holding balances on two exchanges and submit accompanying buy and sell orders in parallel.  If you don't understand what I mean, see this blog post, section "Strategy 2: Hold balances on both exchanges and submit accompanying trades" https://www.coygo.app/blog/posts/how-to-profit-from-crypto-arbitrage-trading/

If you don't believe me, see for yourself. Pardon the shameless plug, but you can try Coygo Terminal for free and find plenty of profitable spreads every day

Just as I was typing this comment I spotted a 1% spread on BTC-USDT between Poloniex and Kraken, and a 0.86% spread between Bittrex and Kraken. See the top left table of BTC-USDT spreads

[Benefactor]

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