You don't need $10,000 to learn arbitrage. You need $100–500, two exchange accounts and discipline. Your goal for the first month is not profit — it's completing loops without losses. Profit follows skill; skill follows reps.

Week 0: the setup

  1. Register and fully verify accounts on two major exchanges (verification takes hours — do it before you need it).
  2. Split your capital: half in USDT on each exchange, so you can act in either direction without waiting for transfers.
  3. Open the scanner in preview mode and just watch for a few days: how fast spreads appear and die, which coins repeat, what volumes look real.

Your first loop — supervised

Pick a spread of 1.5%+ on a coin with real volume and an open fast network (Solana or BSC). Work $50 — yes, fifty. Walk the loop consciously: check withdrawal → check deposit → buy → transfer → sell → write down every number. Your first loop will net about a dollar. That dollar teaches you the entire trade.

What $100–500 realistically earns

With small capital, absolute numbers are small: a 1% loop on $300 is $3 minus fees. This is why fee discipline decides everything at this scale — one careless ERC-20 withdrawal erases three loops. Expect $30–100 in a good learning month; treat anything more as a bonus, anything promised above that by others as a red flag. Capital grows, percentages stay — that's the compounding path. Our honest income breakdown covers the math deeper.

Five beginner-ending mistakes

  • Buying before checking the destination's deposit status — see network checks.
  • Trading phantom spreads with no volume behind them.
  • Using ERC-20 for small loops.
  • Chasing a decayed spread «because it was 5% a minute ago».
  • Scaling capital before ten clean loops in a row.

Educational content, not financial advice. Never trade funds you cannot afford to lock temporarily.