In this episode, Shylo (LtSnakePlissken) and Farid talk all about arbitrage. We talk about what it is in relation to both the financial system (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arbitrage) as well as how it relates to crypto, and Elk specifically!

We focus primarily on 'spacial arbitrage' in regards to cryptocurrency. Quoting the Wikipedia article linked above, "in spatial arbitrage, an arbitrageur looks for price differences between separate markets. For example, there may be a bond dealer in Virginia offering a bond at 100-12/23 and a dealer in Washington bidding 100-15/23 for the same bond. For whatever reason, the two dealers have not spotted the difference in the prices, but the arbitrageur does. The arbitrageur immediately buys the bond from the Virginia dealer and sells it to the Washington dealer".

In DeFi, a simple example of this might be that you notice the price of Elk is $2.90 on TraderJoexyz.com and is $3.00 on app.elk.finance. You would buy the token on Trader Joe (but not so much that the price increases drastically so you do not pay more per token) and sell it for $3.00 on Elk's DEx. This way, you would have bought for $0.10 cheaper, and would keep the price even between the DEx's, increasing Elk price when buying on Trader Joe and decreasing the price on Elk's DEx, causing them to "even out" in price.

A more complex example of this would be arbitraging Elk using different chains. So, let's say the price of Elk is $2.80 on AVAX and is $3.30 on Polygon. Before doing anything, you need to make sure that you have enough Elk to sell to make a profit. You can do this by inputting the amount of Elk you will sell on Matic, and "previewing" the amount of Matic you would get. You can then take this Matic and use a tracker such as CoinGecko to see how much that Matic is worth, then, taking a few dollars off for fees, you could see how much AVAX you could purchase with that amount. You would then go to AVAX and preview the amount of ELK you could get with that AVAX on the Elk Dex, or perhaps on Trader Joe. If the amount is to your satisfaction, you could take one of the following two routes (there could also be more):

Route 1:

Sell ELK for MATIC on app.elk.finance -> Send your MATIC to KuCoin Exchange (make the exchange wallet is not down before sending) -> Trade MATIC for USDT on KuCoin -> Trade USDT for AVAX on KuCoin -> Withdraw your AVAX to your MetaMask Wallet on the AVAX C-Chain -> Purchase ELK on either app.elk.finance or traderjoexyz.com after previewing which would get you more for your AVAX -> If the price still differs, use ElkNet to send ELK to the highest price chain and repeat!

Route 2:

Sell ELK for USDC on app.elk.finance-> Go to xpollinate.io (make sure there is exit liquidity for USDC on AVAX) and send your USDC to the Avalanche C-Chain -> Trade your USDC for ELK on Trader Joe -> If the price still differs, send ELK to the highest price chain and repeat!

The route will be different, and you may even have to navigate through many different exchanges or bridges, depending on how available the native chain token for the ELK you are buying is. And of course there are risks! Prices of ELK could change between when you send and finally move it over to the other chain, exchanges can take a very long time to recieve or deposit tokens causing prices to move, bridges may take a long time, someone (maybe even a bot in the future) could beat you to it, and lastly there is human error with all of this copy-pasting.

At the end of the day, this process is necessary for Elk, and it is profitable for you. It serves Elk by keeping the prices even, so you can do a good deed and make some gains! Keep in mind the risk, and always do some test runs before doing the real thing.

Thanks for listening, and give us some feedback at t.me/elk_finance_chat

All About Arbitrage

All Things Crypto- An Elk.Finance PodcastBy ElkFinanceNov 09, 2021