[appenin]

>Traders looking to do arbitrage probably already have their own bots and scripts to do that.

I doubt this actually happens, at least in any significant scale, in real life. Algorithmic traders already make enough money in less dangerous environments than Bitcoin.

[kasey_junk]

There after any number of algo trading opportunities in bitcoin. In fact, Algo prop shops may be uniquely positioned to trade bitcoin as more established entities can't or won't.

[azianmike]

I don't know, APIs are becoming extremely easy to use nowadays. I've managed to create my own simple arbitrage script in about an afternoon using APIs from btc-e and coinbase. I don't have it live and probably never will (written in Python, can only imagine how badly I'll get burned) but it was a fun project!

[itodd]

It happens. I wrote an arbitrage script that makes a little bit of money every day (only requires me to rebalance the wallets every so often). Only risk is holding whatever is presenting the most lucrative arbitrage opportunity.

[waterlesscloud]

There are any number of bots trading and arbitraging on the bitcoin exchanges. I've helped someone write one myself.