Hey everyone,
I have been a lurker on this site for a while, and a holder for about a year or so. I've done a lot of searching, but haven't come across clear cut answers. I haven't really tried to mess with arbitrage, as I've done ok just holding/buying/selling during upswings and downswings. My question is, how quickly is the process to receive fiat from selling and btc from buying on the popular exchanges? I have been using coinbase, without a CC backup, so it takes a good week or so to receive fiat or btc. Are sites like btc-e and bitstamp quicker (same day)? I understand a lot of the delay is with the banks also. I'm just curious how all the other exchanges are, and if anyone can shed some light. There are plenty of times where I see great arbitrage situations and would love to capitalize on them. Does anyone use coinbase and use the CC verification, and have instant retrieval of fiat or btc? Unfortunately the CC I have doesn't work with their verification process, so I may have to get another, if it does in fact work instantly. Also, do other exchanges have buy/sell limits?
If anyone has experience, here is a situation I've been running through my head quite a bit:
Hypothetical prices: BTC-e: $310 Bitstamp/Coinbase: $320.
Buy 10 btc on BTC-e at $310 (with fees)
transfer btc
Sell 10 btc on Bitstamp/Coinbase at $320 (with fees)
$100 profit - fees.
How long would this arbitrage process take? Minutes? Hours? Days? Would this be something I could do multiple times a day, or multiple times a week?
I realize that this first trade isn't much profit, but I would compound each arbitrage trade on top of each other, compounding earnings at each available opportunity.
Thank you in advance!
Locking in the arbitrage trade is instant.
Multiple times a minute is no problem, until you've spent all your fiat on the lower exchange, then you have to wait:
You need to pipe the fiat back into the other exchange before you can do it again.
All fees need to be accounted for, trade fees and fiat deposit/withdraw fees.
You can't really compound your arbitrage bank, most arbitrage opportunities only have a small volume in the book. Same as short period daytrading.
The only real way to do arbitrage with bitcoin nowadays is with bots, bots that constantly check inter exchange books for arbitrage opportunities and place the orders as soon as they appear. It's an arms race of bot reaction times. Your job would be to just manage the fiat transfer.
Occasionally large arbitrage opportunities will exist for longer lengths of time, like the $300 wall on bitstamp the other day, but more often than not it's much smaller opportunities and they get snapped up by the luckiest/fastest bots.
