How it works
The same coin costs different amounts on different exchanges because each venue has its own order book. The scheme sounds simple: buy where it is cheaper, move the coin to where it is dearer, sell.
All the difficulty lives between those steps. Transfers take time, cost money and are not available on every network. While the coin travels, the price moves. Real arbitrage therefore means either keeping balances on both exchanges in advance, or working with coins whose transfers are fast and cheap.
Setting up the scanner
The filters set:
- Capital — the amount used to express profit in dollars.
- Trading fee — your real exchange fee. It is deducted twice, on the buy and on the sell.
- Minimum 24h volume — the main quality filter. A coin turning over a couple of thousand dollars will show any spread you like, but you will not be able to sell into it.
- Spread bounds — the lower one cuts noise, the upper one removes obviously unreal rows. A 40% spread almost always means suspended withdrawals, a dead market or a stale quote.
The results
For each coin the table shows where it is cheaper and where dearer, the spread before and after fees, what that is worth in dollars on your capital, and the daily trading volume. The "net" column is the one to read: the spread minus both fees.
Volume is the second most important column. It tells you whether you can realistically enter and exit at your size without moving the price. A route on a coin turning over hundreds of thousands of dollars is far more dependable than the same number on one turning over a couple of thousand.
What to check before trading
- Are deposits and withdrawals open? The most common cause of a "permanent" spread is a suspended withdrawal on one of the venues. Check before buying, not after.
- Do the networks match? A coin may exist on several chains and exchanges do not always support the same one. Sending over an unsupported network usually means losing the funds.
- Network fee. A flat cost per transfer that can swallow the whole profit on small size.
- Book depth. The price you see belongs to the best order; your size may exceed it.
Why so many routes do not work
Large spot spreads almost always have a reason, and usually an unpleasant one: the coin is being delisted, withdrawals are frozen, one market is empty, or the quote is stale. If a gap survives for hours with nobody closing it, that is because closing it is physically impossible.
Workable routes look modest: fractions of a percent, or one to two percent on liquid coins, lasting minutes. Traders capture them through speed and by already holding balances on both venues.
The no-transfer method
Experienced arbitrageurs rarely shuttle coins back and forth. Instead they keep both the coin and a stablecoin on each exchange. When a route appears they buy on one venue and sell on the other simultaneously out of existing balances. Their inventory tilts, but the profit is locked instantly and rebalancing happens later, unhurried.