[rebuilder]

I built a simple BTC arbitrage bot some years ago in Python. I'm basically illiterate when it comes to programming, so it was a bit of a slog. It was possible to use it profitably for a time, netting maybe between 10 and 200 USD a day, due to arbitrage opportunities between a certain small exchange that no longer exists and Bitstamp.

My bot basically only traded on two exchanges, and only triggered trades. For any real profit you had to tie down quite a bit of money and risk having them on the exchanges. But the biggest issue I faced was execution. The connection to the API for both exchanges was unreliable. Arbitrage involves executing a trade on both exchanges, and much too often, one trade would fail to execute and instead of arb the bot would effectively take a position in BTC or USD. I concluded it was beyond my abilities and willingness to learn to try to mitigate the risks that came with. Frankly I wasn't sure the problem could be worked around reasonably.

A fun exercise, for sure!