Post #2670395

2026-05-18 17:38 UTC

I think the classical example was “you ask your broker to buy some shares at $20 each, the broker waits as long as possible, and if the price drops low enough it buys them for $19.80, keeps 20 cents, and tells you it paid $20.”

Replies (1)

@YourNetworkIsHaunted@awful.systems 2026-05-18 18:10

Yep. The broker is effectively buying at $19.80 and still selling to their customer at $20.00. Now, crypto is actually innovative in just how easy this is to do. In fact it’s almost required since the transactions are processed in bulk and the miners get to decide what order all the transactions in that block go in. The public mempool also means that even if the miners aren’t doing it themselves anyone who wants to front-run basically has a whole conga line of good-faith users (suckers) to get set in front of and identify the most profitable position. Without the miner’s privilege you’ll need to deal with transaction fees and it’s going to be harder to find opportunities, but it’s so easy to search that I wouldn’t expect it to matter.

Open ##2671208