[mesomere]

Isn’t AVAX transferable between blockchains and Binance? If so, this isn’t “stat arb”, it’s just regular arbitrage. When the instruments are fungible, it doesn’t matter whether there’s a statistical relationship; your profit is guaranteed once you complete the trade, regardless of how the prices move later.

The Royal Dutch/Shell case is different because the two stocks were not actually fungible, so the trade would only have been profitable if the two prices eventually converged.

PS I enjoyed the article and it’s clear you’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this space. I just can’t resist chiming in when it comes to well-established terminology.

[dmckinno]

In theory, yes, the tokens should be transferable between the blockchain and the CEX, but this link breaks all the time and for various reasons (see the crypto problems section). Lots of things that “should” happen in regular, efficient markets don’t in crypto.

That said, call it whatever you want it. Most people in crypto call CEX/DEX stat arb to differentiate from true risk-free arbitrage, but I agree that people coming from a traditional trading perspective would call this pure arb.