Trading software

Understanding the World of Arbitrage Trading

What would you do to get your hands on a system that could guarantee the success of a trade? The supposed system would be able to show you the exact profit margin you’ll make from a trade. This kind of power is one what most traders would kill to have.

Arbitrage trading is the closest you’ll get to this theoretical system. Traders typically buy tether, exchange them for other coins and make arbitrage trades by trying to complete them faster than the competition. The high success rate of arbitrage trading is why several traders have populated the system, and the profits are minimized.

Anyone looking to succeed in arbitrage trading today has to have a big amount of risk and an efficient high-frequency trading (HFT) system.

What is Arbitrage Trading

Arbitrage trading is a system that involves the instantaneous purchase and sale of a financial instrument. The typical way traders make an arbitrage trade is to buy an asset on one exchange and sell it on another exchange once a price variation is spotted.  

For instance, if you see that the price of Bitcoin is $19,000 on one exchange and $20,000 on another, you can make a quick trade. By buying one Bitcoin on the exchange with the $19,00 price and selling on the exchange with the $20,000 price tag, you make a quick profit of $1000.

However, two challenges present themselves this way. First, you have to find the exchanges with these price differences. Second, you have to trade with the speed of light to ensure that the price doesn’t change before selling.

Types of Arbitrage Trading

  • Exchange Arbitrage Trading

Exchange arbitrage is the most common type of arbitrage trading. This occurs when a trader purchases a digital currency in one exchange and sells it in another one.

The top digital currencies have fast-changing prices across exchanges. Suppose you visit two crypto exchanges simultaneously and compare the prices for the same cryptocurrency. In that case, you’ll discover that they’re never the same.

That’s the opportunity arbitrage traders leverage by capitalizing on the price difference to make a profit. This makes the cryptocurrency market more efficient since the price of the same assets remains in a tight range after getting exploited by arbitrage traders.

To understand exchange arbitrage better, you might notice a price difference if you visit one crypto exchange and simultaneously check out another. An arbitrage trader would facilitate trade by purchasing the cryptocurrency for a lower price and selling on the exchange where the selling price is higher.

The challenge for traders like these is that the price of crypto is highly volatile, and super-fast systems are needed to facilitate the trade. Nevertheless, it is highly beneficial since it ensures that the price disparity between exchanges isn’t too high.

  • Funding Rate Arbitrage

This type of arbitrage is quite popular among traders familiar with crypto derivatives like perpetual futures trading. Funding rate arbitrage is performed when a trader wants to benefit from a funding rate in the crypto derivatives market.

The trader buys an asset and then hedges the risk by taking the opposite trade to gain a percentage from the funding rate.

  • Triangular arbitrage

This is the third most common form of arbitrage trading. It is more complicated than exchange arbitrage because there’s a different cryptocurrency added to the equation.

Triangular arbitrage can be facilitated when a trader exploits a price difference between three different cryptocurrencies and exchanges all three simultaneously. To simplify this, it’s like using Bitcoin to buy Litecoin, then using Litecoin to purchase Dogecoin, and finally buying Bitcoin with Dogecoin.

This enables a trader to make a profit when the triangle is completed.

Conclusion

Arbitrage trading is a form of trading where your chance of success is guaranteed to a large extent. It involves simultaneously buying and selling a crypto asset to make a quick profit. Arbitrage trading, like exchange arbitrage, is facilitated with high-frequency trading (HFT) systems to ensure the price difference can quickly get exploited.

Funding rate arbitrage is most commonly performed by traders with crypto derivatives experience. Triangular arbitrage is facilitated by simultaneously completing a triangular trade between three cryptocurrencies.

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