When bitcoin was young there wasn't much in the way of HFT between exchanges, which sucked because if you wanted to transfer coins to someone across the world y

When bitcoin was young there wasn't much in the way of HFT between exchanges, which sucked because if you wanted to transfer coins to someone across the world you would on average lose 7-12% on price differences. Western Union, in comparison, was a flat 10%, making it bitcoin at the time almost pointless. When there isn't enough volume HFT strategies tend to not run, and so to give an example, my first time trading options was an iron condor on /GC (gold). I bought at a reasonable price, but when I went to sell, where I would have netted a cool 50%, because of low volume and I didn't know to set a limit order, I lost about 50%, so even if my trade was "successful" I lost. If there was a bit more volume HFT could step in and we could have normalized prices where limit orders are not required. On the other end, without HFT, it's easy to play that game and setup orders of opportunity where someone else might mess up and you can make a pretty penny, not that I've personally tried this.