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Comment by rhapsodic | Hacker News Reader

> I don't understand why news like this doesn't have that huge of an impact of bitcoin's price.. Bitcoin seems to be hovering around 11k~ as I'm writing this. It's been at the same price it seems for the past couple of days...

Personally, I would like to understand what it really means to say "the current price of BTC is ___." It's not like stocks where you can see actual bid/ask and daily volume numbers. And since transaction costs and times make arbitrage impractical, the price is not even the same across exchanges.

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> It's not like stocks where you can see actual bid/ask and daily volume numbers.

Actually, it's exactly like that.

> And since transaction costs and times make arbitrage impractical, the price is not even the same across exchanges.

Arbitrage across crypto-currencies is happening constantly. As with stocks, bonds, futures, etc. the average person is unable to take advantage. Effective arbitrage requires large sums of money and the ability to execute quickly. Quick execution often means having a preferential agreement with one or more exchanges. This is true in or out of crypto. Price differences reflect friction and risk.

> Arbitrage across crypto-currencies is happening constantly.

Then why doesn't it have the effect of equalizing prices across exchanges, as it does with traditional currencies across traditional currency exchanges?

I'm not arguing, I'm just asking. If I don't know what I'm talking about, I'm happy to be enlightened.

Because the big players are much bigger in crypto arbitrage than the big players in traditional currency arbitrage, relatively. This combined with the unregulated nature makes abusing your position much easier in crypto.

> It's not like stocks where you can see actual bid/ask and daily volume numbers.

Yes it is. Cryptocurrency exchanges have orderbooks like regular exchanges do.

>Yes it is. Cryptocurrency exchanges have orderbooks like regular exchanges do.

Can you show me a current bid on bitcoin? IOW, where someone has obligated themselves to purchase N BTC at a price of $P, if someone is willing to sell that many at that price? Is that information posted publicly as it is with stocks?

https://api.gdax.com/products/BTC-USD/candles?granularity=60

Thanks. Is there a page that explains how to read that data?

https://docs.gdax.com/#get-historic-rates

There are more APIs there, publically accessible, small rate limit, have fun.

GDAX == Coinbase API. Trading on Coinbase makes, AFAIK, a market buy/sell through GDAX.

Yes.

Yes, and yes.

Here is an example with GDAX:

https://www.gdax.com/trade/BTC-USD

Here is an example of an API supporting public access through Gemini:

https://docs.gemini.com/rest-api/

Here is another (clunkier) one from Kraken:

https://www.kraken.com/charts

Usually there’s a UI accessible with an account and an API that allows faster, direct access to the feed.

>And since transaction costs and times make arbitrage impractical

This can be mitigated. Exchanging to a less congested coin can be done quickly for fast, low-cost transfers. Keeping a buffer at each exchange will lower overall rate of return but also reduce the frequency of transfers required.

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