

Turbulence at Mt. Gox Creates Arbitrage Opportunities For Bitcoin Traders - cgi_man
http://www.thegenesisblock.com/turbulence-at-mt-gox-creates-arbitrage-opportunities-for-bitcoin-traders/

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clarkm
They're not actually arbitrage opportunities because there's no liquidity. All
these exchange hang-ups are why the spreads look so unbalanced, and it's not
like traders aren't racing incessantly to correct it.

Unless you have fiat in all the exchanges, bank accounts in multiple
countries, and large amounts of cash on hand, you don't really have a chance
here. Like most amateur arbitrageurs, you'll just going to end up in the red
after all the delays and fees.

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CrunchyJams
Sort of. Arb means risk free and cost free gains, so this could still count.
Lower liquidity could be considered a risk, but some people would take the
gains and not care about immediately cashing out, esp since you could trade
back to BTC once prices normalize and cash out on the alternate exchange
before the withdrawal hiatus is even over.

The bigger issue is the funding costs across exchanges, but the fact that it
goes down between events signals that arb-neutral differential is lower than
during the event-driven spikes he points out.

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shtylman
No it doesn't. If you can't actually get your money into/out of the exchanges
then you can't execute on the arb. Just because you see crossed books doesn't
mean you can actually make money on it.

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noname123
Can someone make an ETF for Bitcoins please? This would help liquidity a lot
IMO and also help the competition of the exchanges to get rid of the above-
the-market withdrawal fees.

I'm thinking not even a real ETF as in having real market participants that
can redeem shares. Even if someone can incorporate a small corporation, have a
initial offering of a million shares at 10 dollars. That's a $100 million
dollar worth of BTC that one can trade in the over the counter market. I don't
mind paying the 0.5% administration fee whatever.

Reddit thread where people discuss this idea:
[http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/19hxuv/bitcoin_etf/](http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/19hxuv/bitcoin_etf/)

EDIT: Apparently, there are already shell companies listed on OTC for sale so
that one can simply take over their tickers instead of filing all of the
paper-work.

[http://www.mergernetwork.com/index/public-shell-companies-
fo...](http://www.mergernetwork.com/index/public-shell-companies-for-sale/;)
Can someone buy one and then maybe put another 100K worth of Bitcoins as
assets? Or raise funds via Kickstarter?

~~~
contingencies
Check out [http://kraken.com/](http://kraken.com/) which is currently in beta.

(Disclaimer: Owned by my employer... but 2+ years development, it should bring
something new to the area.)

~~~
maaku
What does margin trading have to do with an ETF?

~~~
contingencies
Trading feature:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margin_trading](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margin_trading)

Thing to be traded: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exchange-
traded_fund](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exchange-traded_fund)

Place to trade with said feature on arbitrary things:
[http://kraken.com/](http://kraken.com/)

