yes but how can you handle arbitrage with the long time needed for a BTC transaction?
This is not the problem, BTC transactions are fast, what's slow as hell is depositing the fiat in different exchanges. If you pay a reasonable fee, your money will be on the exchange in 10 minutes.
If the fee is higher than the arbitrage opportunity, then there is no point doing arbitrage. Time and fee is the most difficult part of this kind of trading strategy.