You can't compete with HFT firms even if you have this equipment because you need to install your equipment in a colocation, aka a data center that exchanges sending their raw data and your equipment trades there.
In this kind of trading receiving the data nanoseconds late from the other players matters.
This is only true for arb opportunities on exchanges that offer colocation (which leaves almost all crypto exchanges as fair game). But if you can't get colocation, there isn't much point in having the FPGA anyway since the network latency is going to be so much higher than any savings from FPGA vs low level programming.
yes, this would be non-colocated on AWS. wouldn't everyone have the same network latency if they had a node in the same AWS region? and wouldn't that even the playing field, making FPGAs relevant again (you can rent an FPGA there)? i guess the importance of low latency also depends on the update rate of the exchange server.
