[downandout]

It is and it isn't. Getting to the point where you were the one bot fast enough to get into the right position to snag that liquidation involves writing the bot itself, writing the smart contract, understanding the lending protocol and how their liquidations work, understanding how oracle transactions work, working out the math such that every input and output is precisely correct to 18 decimal places, having your server in the right rack in the right datacenter to beat the others, and on and on, are not easy tasks.

But yes, once you do all of that...it actually is a money printing machine that will never end as long as markets have volatility. It's a bit like living in the movie Ready Player One...once you are clever enough to run the gauntlet, riches are yours.

[MomoXenosaga]

Lol that's like saying anyone could be a moviestar if they had the looks and talents of a moviestar.

[downandout]

Yes, but it’s a meritocracy. I don’t control whether or not I look like Brad Pitt. I do control whether or not I am educated enough in this space to carry out a strategy like this.

If you can show that you have the knowledge to do it, getting the money to do it is absurdly easy these days. Crypto VCs are far different and much more accessible than traditional Silicon Valley VCs that only talk to connected startup bros from Stanford or MIT. They’ll all listen to what you have to say if you know what you’re doing. They also move with lightning speed relative to their SV counterparts, and they seem genuinely interested in helping those they invest in. My experiences with them have been off-the-charts amazing, compared to 100% disappointment I have had with SV VCs/angels.

[ge96]

> precisely correct to 18 decimal places

Yeah this is tough. Even just dealing with CBP (8 decimals) I was losing fractions of cents here and there, not sure how they get it right, sometimes seems like randomly round to come out even (cases like emptying ballance).

[wildmanx]

> But yes, once you do all of that...it actually is a money printing machine that will never end as long as markets have volatility.

And despite this being inherent in the DeFi world, people still believe that such systems are better than fiat money?

[downandout]

They are in the sense that they level the playing field. People wouldn't give me millions of dollars to do arbitrage in real life, but I can borrow $200 million from a smart contract without issues if I find a profitable opportunity with it. That is game changing.

That said, there are still challenges. Last week, for 6 hours, there was $1 billion up for grabs [1]. Nobody noticed it except for one person, who only took $13.5 million. But bots are coming that will spot these things instantly....I have one under development that would have caught it.

[1] https://twitter.com/0xngmi/status/1524891992429318144?s=20&t...

[quanto]

On a tangent, what distinguishes a successful bot from a poor bot? For many of the arbs, the logic is simple to imitate. I understand there is some infrastructure engineering (having servers close to some node) involved, but besides that, it seems a level field in terms of money and tech.