How to make some quick money with Bitcoin for fun
How to make some quick money with Bitcoin for fun
As I mentioned in my previous blog post, when I try to fully understand a new technology, I like to explore multiple aspects of it. Sometime I’m lucky and I end up making some money while learning (if only college was like that…). In this post I will show you how to easily make some extra money or increase your Bitcoin stash by spending only a few minutes a day and with a few mouse clicks. I promise to spill some of my numbers before the end of this post 😉
One thing that always fascinates me is finding arbitrage opportunity and with Bitcoin there are a few points that are fairly easy to exploit one. The most visible one is the price difference between different Bitcoin exchanges; for instance as I’m writing this blog post, Bitcoin is exchanged on Mt.Gox against the Dollar for $110 more than on BTC-e.
Another arbitrage opportunity, which I experimented in the past few days and that I’ll explain in this post, is taking advantage of the Bitcoin price on Coinbase and what you can sell those bitcoins for on LocalBitcoins. Coinbase is probably the easiest site to purchase bitcoins and LocalBitcoins is a platform that allows users to sell and buy bitcoins between each other with cash or other payment systems. Basically we’ll try running a currency exchange service.
STEP 1 – Join Coinbase and buy some bitcoins
You can start by buying even a small amount like $100 or less, this is just to get the verification process started.
STEP 2 – Join LocalBitcoins and transfer your bitcoins
LocalBitcoins is where we’ll create an ad to sell our bitcoins and to do so you’ll need an account. Once created, visit the wallet page on LocalBitcoins, copy the address, and send your bitcoins from Coinbase to that address (how to send money from Coinbase).STEP 3 – Create a bitcoin trade advertisement
You can do this right away or wait until you have been verified by Coinbase. On LocalBitcoins, click “post a trade” in the menu. The form is pretty self-explanatory, but there are a few suggestions:- Payment method: I did my experiment using cash deposit. It’s very safe and deposits show up instantly on your account
- Premium: the easiest way to set your price automatically based on a Bitcoin exchange is to use this field. For instance if you put 5%, your price will be set at 5% more the current exchange rate on Bitstamp. If you decide to use this I suggest you to stay around 5% premium.
- Price equation: this is what I used to set my price. I experimented with a few formulas and I think the one that performed best was (mtgoxusd+bitstampusd+btceusd)/3*1.02 (2% premium over the average of the exchange rate of Mt.Gox, Bitstamp and BTC-e). Your goal is to sell at least 5% more than the exchange rate on Coinbase, since by doing so you’d have a ~3% net profit (both Coinbase and LocalBitcoins have a 1% transaction fee).
- Min. amount: I’d set this at least $100 to avoid small wasting time transactions. I ended up setting my at $300 but at the beginning you’ll need those $100 transaction to build a positive history.
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