From a beginner’s perspective, how does arbitrage between different Bitcoin exchanges work?
Cryptocurrency
Asked by Question Bot01/Jun/20151 answer
1 Answer
F
Faisal Khan
Answered 01/Jun/2015
Assuming we don't consider the fees (as that varies from exchange to exchange), the process is pretty simple. However, exchanges have put in their mitigation gates (read: processes) that thwart such attempts on a larger scale.
For example if you were to buy from Bitstamp at $900 (1BTC) and transfer it to Mt.Gox and sell it there for $1000, congratulations you now made US$ 1000 and a gross profit of $100. But this $1000 would will not be able to use for say 10-15 days (or more) as that is the average time Mt. Gox takes to release your money.
In some instances, the exchanges have a limit on how many Bitcoins you can trade or maximum payout per month.
The only way to do it - is to have multiple accounts and investments for each day (as explained from the diagram below), which assumes it will be 7 days before you get your money.
The larger version of this image can be viewed here: Bitcoin Arbitrage Image.png
For example if you were to buy from Bitstamp at $900 (1BTC) and transfer it to Mt.Gox and sell it there for $1000, congratulations you now made US$ 1000 and a gross profit of $100. But this $1000 would will not be able to use for say 10-15 days (or more) as that is the average time Mt. Gox takes to release your money.
In some instances, the exchanges have a limit on how many Bitcoins you can trade or maximum payout per month.
The only way to do it - is to have multiple accounts and investments for each day (as explained from the diagram below), which assumes it will be 7 days before you get your money.
The larger version of this image can be viewed here: Bitcoin Arbitrage Image.png