What is crypto arbitrage and is it effective? – Trade-mate.io
Cryptocurrency arbitrage allows you to earn on the difference in the value of assets. This type of trading came from traditional financial markets and has become widely used by crypto traders.
There are two main types of crypto arbitrage:
- Inter-exchange
- Intra-exchange
The first and most common way is to buy cryptocurrency on one exchange at a lower price and sell it on another at a higher price. There are many factors to consider in this approach: spread, fees, transaction speed, price movement speed, trend direction and so on.
The second method is more complex, but less risky, because all transactions are made on the same exchange, and the work goes faster. A popular scheme is so called intra-exchange triangle, based on the difference in the rates of several cryptocurrencies. Two or more cryptocurrencies are involved in the trade. For example, first Bitcoin is bought, then BTC is exchanged for XLM, which is sold for dollars.
The method is quite difficult for beginners and requires a certain set of skills. It is necessary to carry out complex calculations and take fees into account: both trading and cryptocurrency deposit and withdrawal fees. It is profitable to engage in inter-exchange arbitrage only when the trader has a sufficiently large deposit, since the total fee can be up to 200 or more dollars. This increases the risks significantly.
When conducting inter-exchange arbitrage with cryptocurrencies such as BTC or ETH, the rate can change significantly due to fairly slow transactions, which, under high load on the network, can hang for several hours.
Arbitrage can be effective due to high volatility and rapid changes in the exchange rate of cryptocurrencies. But for the same reason it can lead to losses as the price can quickly level off or become lower at the time of sale.
It is more appropriate to use intra-exchange arbitrage. Trade-mate.io service, which allows you to manage assets in a single window, will help you a lot. Currently, three major exchanges can be connected: Binance, Bitmex and Poloniex. If you decide to use inter-exchange arbitrage, you can track prices and quickly sell on two exchanges at once. For example, open long on Binance and short on Bitmex without withdrawing funds to save time.
Published at Wed, 20 Nov 2019 14:42:03 +0000
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