Arbitrage involves moving large amount of volume and transactions. Arbitrage is not effective on bitcoins because there is too much risk with trading bitcoins.

Arbitrage involves moving large amount of volume and transactions. Arbitrage is not effective on bitcoins because there is too much risk with trading bitcoins. To reply to your question. The problem is that the bitcoin market is plagued with deep issues. Arbitrage is hard in such an environment, that's the consequence, not a cause. To make an analogy. Think of a sea, a sea always have fishes. If there are no fishes at all in a sea, the problem is unlikely to be the fishes. Fishes are simple animals living day to day (just like arbitragers). Most likely, the problem is with the sea, maybe it's super polluted and killed all the fishes?