Has anyone performed arbitrage successfully?

[OmarBessa]

I'm wondering if anyone has done it successfully–and repeatedly–with varying exchanges and crypto-currencies. I'm debugging my arbitrage code, and the opportunities that I found are poorer and scarcer than in previous months.

Here's some data (GMT -3):

Code:

+----------------+----------------+---------+------------+------------+------+----------+----------+------------+------------+--------------+
|  Date & Time   |     Volume     | Counter | Buy Price  | Sell Price | Base | Sellers  |  Buyers  | Profit (%) | BTC Profit | (500USD/BTC) |
+----------------+----------------+---------+------------+------------+------+----------+----------+------------+------------+--------------+
| 9/5/2014 17:04 | 15.26646137    | BTCD    | 0.01349132 | 0.01356003 | BTC  | Poloniex | Cryptsy  | 0.51%      | 0.00104899 | 0.52449326   |
| 9/5/2014 17:04 | 17271.91256941 | EMC2    | 0.00000059 | 0.00000060 | BTC  | Cryptsy  | Poloniex | 1.73%      | 0.00017575 | 0.08787538   |
| 9/5/2014 17:04 | 25594.36399646 | EXE     | 0.00000277 | 0.00000286 | BTC  | Poloniex | Cryptsy  | 3.33%      | 0.00235600 | 1.17800172   |
| 9/5/2014 17:04 | 969.20114404   | NAUT    | 0.00013979 | 0.00014000 | BTC  | Cryptsy  | Poloniex | 0.15%      | 0.00020067 | 0.10033680   |
| 9/5/2014 17:04 | 200.00000000   | NXT     | 0.00006994 | 0.00006995 | BTC  | Poloniex | Cryptsy  | 0.01%      | 0.00000200 | 0.00100000   |
| 9/5/2014 17:04 | 0.50000001     | WC      | 0.00000074 | 0.00000077 | BTC  | Poloniex | Cryptsy  | 4.05%      | 0.00000002 | 0.00000750   |
| 9/5/2014 17:04 | 0.00013251     | XC      | 0.00131163 | 0.00131558 | BTC  | Cryptsy  | Poloniex | 0.30%      | 0.00000000 | 0.00000026   |
+----------------+----------------+---------+------------+------------+------+----------+----------+------------+------------+--------------+

See?

[1713563046]

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[1713563046]

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[1713563046]

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[Razerglass]

using Quatloo trader its extremely easy, our whole community does it every day

[OmarBessa]

Have you performed arbitrage successfully? Care to share more information? I'm quite skeptic about it.

[Newar]

The more people do arbitrage the less profitable it gets.

[Razerglass]

Have you performed arbitrage successfully? Care to share more information? I'm quite skeptic about it.

yes.... um its very easy...  send BTC to 2 exchanges....   that have the same coin.
bittrex and poliniex for example......


buy coin on bittrex at low price...   if the price is high on poliniex send coin to that wallet and sell it there.

buy low and sell high ... but instead of staring at one market look at them all.

[OmarBessa]

So, you have done it, it seems. Perhaps bittrex has better arbitrage opportunities than most.

The data I posted was obtained by my own arbitrage monitoring bot, it calculates the whole arbitrage operation, including transaction fees. I still remain skeptic to your claims though, since data has shown me that opportunities are few and the margins are small.

Anyways, thanks for your input!

[gmx95]

Haven't done it recently, but I think it is quite common. There are arbitrage bots available since Mt.gox times.

[joesmoe2012]

Historically it was for sure possible. At this point most of the easily accessible spreads are already very saturated.

[OmarBessa]

joesmoe2012, you're right on the spot; from what I've seen so far there was an arbitrage opportunity a couple of days ago (for about 20 USD), involving BTCD and Cryptsy; but it was because Cryptsy had the withdrawals stuck.

[joesmoe2012]

joesmoe2012, you're right on the spot; from what I've seen so far there was an arbitrage opportunity a couple of days ago (for about 20 USD), involving BTCD and Cryptsy; but it was because Cryptsy had the withdrawals stuck.

Sounds about right.

MtGox had consistant 30%+ spreads prior to going under.

[ScreamnShout]

joesmoe2012, you're right on the spot; from what I've seen so far there was an arbitrage opportunity a couple of days ago (for about 20 USD), involving BTCD and Cryptsy; but it was because Cryptsy had the withdrawals stuck.

Sounds about right.

MtGox had consistant 30%+ spreads prior to going under.

I would think that a large, long term arbitrage opportunity is likely a good indicator that you should stay away from the exchange that is the outlier from the rest of the exchanges.

GoxBTC traded at a deep discount after they halted BTC withdrawals but before they shut down trading

[OmarBessa]

joesmoe2012, ScreamnShout, thanks for the info guys. I'm developing trading software, and it sure would be good to raise some alerts when things like this happen. Didn't know that Gox traded at a discount before going down. Thanks again!

[SidJames]

It was manually trading arbitrage successfully that caused me to learn C#.
As stated previously though, now more bots are trying to trade arbitrage the profit has dropped and risk of getting stuck with a de-valuing coin risen. From my experience I would compare trading arbitrage to a race, where the main element (assuming a good algorithm to spot arbitrage) is how big your ping to the exchange is compared to the competition.
This micro-second difference is why investment firms pay millions to be located as close as they can to the exchange.
Is also the reason I removed arbitrage bots from my trading platform.

[OmarBessa]

SidJames, from what I've tested that is not the only problem. Transaction times are not as constant as many people think, not to mention the exchanges' sometimes arbitrary policies on withdrawals; and the difference is many times larger than the ping I've measured.

[SidJames]

I was only talking inter-exchange arbitrage. I agree the problem is even worse with cross-exchange trades.
Personally I see trying to make cross-exchange trades for arbitrage as too risky to consider a 'strategy' and instead consider it a plain gamble.

[OmarBessa]

SidJames, agreed 100%.

[SidJames]

I did come up with a hypothetical way of massively increasing the chances of you succeeding with cross-exchange trades, but required having a massive amount of BTC.
Basically, if you had enough to buy a good amount of ALL coins that have arbitrage pairs on ALL markets, then you could sell at the same time as you placed the initial buy order then simply replenish the coins you sold when they eventually transfer.
As say, would require a large investment and holding a stack of coins that are likely to devalue by more than you make trading arbitrage on them.