Flashbacks 1

My path in arbitrage started from trading crypto between 2 most popular exchanges in Russia: Garantex and Binance.

I would wake up in the morning and check the rates for different cryptocurrencies on both platforms.
Bitcoin today is 3,013,000 rubles on Garantex and 3.023 mil on Binance. That’s a 0.3% difference, but after adding all the trading fees that’s only 0.1% profit. Lame!
USDT, let's see. 78.1 rubles on one and 78.9 on another, which equals to 1% profitability or spread. Time to get it rolling!

Call the cash delivery guy and tell him to quickly pull the money out of an ATM and head straight for the office of Garantex, laying in the heart of Moscow's business district.

The window for arbitrage in those times was only around 30 minutes, meaning after that time the rates would even out and you would have to wait for the same opportunity. You have to repeat the process asap. Half an hour was enough for one to three turns. And with each time, the spread would decrease, as the priced evened out. So, first turn you would make 0.9%, second - 0.6% and last 0.3.

You withdraw cash from an ATM, throw it all into your bag and run to the elevator in the next-door building. Enter the office of Moscow-based exchange and get in front of a young sympathetic female cashier, behind the armored glass, taking rubber bands off your briquettes of cash and deftly shoving bills into the money counter machine.
Five minutes later, you are transferring your recently bought crypto assets to Binance through blockchain. Access the P2P section, find your buyer and run back to the ATM at the same time as your are selling your crypto to them. And then you start again. At the end of the day your balance adds another 4% to its total. Good run, pick sneakers instead of loafers next morning!

Pun: a major problem of that time was the queue in front of an ATM