Slippage: The Most Underestimated Profit Killer in Trading
Author: CryptoPunk
Many crypto traders have experienced the same disappointment: strategies that appear stable and profitable in backtests quickly see their returns shrink when actually deployed, sometimes turning from profit into loss. The issue is often not "misjudging the direction," but underestimating trading costs, especially slippage.
In crypto markets where bull and bear phases switch more rapidly, volatility is more intense, and order books are more fragmented, slippage is not a trivial decimal point—it is the real threshold that determines whether a strategy can survive. A deviation of just 2 or 3 basis points can, in high-turnover strategies, completely wipe out the theoretical alpha.
Based on long-term backtests of BTC/USDT and ETH/USDT, this article aims to answer a very practical question: to what extent does slippage erode strategy returns, and which strategies are most likely to be killed by slippage?
1. Introduction: Why Slippage