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alanbyrne | 12 years ago

Firstly, that's very cool. Well done!

Secondly, I know hardly anything about bitcoins - but here all I see is an arbitrage opportunity. Buy bitcoins from BTC-e and sell them on MTGox, which seems to be consistently around 150 (I assume USD) different.

Am I missing something here?

discuss

order

jcfrei|12 years ago

withdrawing USD from mtgox and transferring them to btc-e takes roughly two hours, depending on which payment processor you choose. okpay is usually pretty fast, but you loose about 50$ on commission. furthermore unless you are verified on mtgox, you've got a withdrawal limit of 1000$ per day. add to that the time interval during which your money is locked up either in the blockchain or the payment processor and you end up with substantial risk between the trades.

EDIT: This only worked until the end of may - I've just noticed that OKPAY withdrawal is no longer an option: https://www.mtgox.com/pdf/20130528_okpay_statement.pdf

saosebastiao|12 years ago

The fact that there is a gap that large between exchanges is indicative of a huge liquidity problem in the exchanges. Big enough that I wouldn't go near it...even with my arbitrage-loving mitts.

throwaway0094|12 years ago

It is impossible to withdraw USD from MtGox.

jawr|12 years ago

Excuse my ignorance, but can you elaborate?

warfangle|12 years ago

Selling on MtGox, from what I understand, takes days (if not weeks). Buying is more straightforward.