Topic: BTC $100 difference between the exchanges (Read 4341 times)

This
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That's all..  We must keep % in mind.. and understand how fiat is an ancient and innefficient model.

he used "quick" and "Mt.Gox" in one sentence

I highly doubt that.

That's a problem local to Mt. Gox.  Legit exchanges where you can get money out don't have that problem.

Anyone making $$$ trading the difference on the exchanges? 


I know it can be done... even if it requires some kind of Japanese connection for quick withdrawals via Mt Gox

Why would btcchina have the most accurate price, huh?

Use the btcchina price and convert it to whatever currency. Its the most accurate price

No benefit for bitcoin at all.

The price differences come down to ease of moving fiat.

BTC-e charges 2% for OK-pay deposits, and OK-pay also charges 2%. So $375 on BTC-e * 1,04 = $390 on Bitstamp. Because it costs you $390 to get $375 of value into BTC-e.

Same for Mt.Gox, withdrawal difficulty is hard.

In China, there is premium because of high demand, and it costs $$ to move BTC from the Western world to China. Eventually China will lead though.

How does that change anything? For trading purposes it is exactly the same as bitcoin.

That's actually an excellent idea.

It looks like there is someone that can do arbitrage well for China to Japan (MtGox), resulting in their exchange rates to be close.

Such is not as refined between the other exchanges. The higher the overhead, the larger the price difference.

There is a lot of money to be made here, so chances are this will be resolved in the future.

priority for withdrawls?


BittBurger, once upon a 'before your time' there was bitinstant and aurumexchange to trade between exchanges. They shutdown

Thank you. I've always thought that it was the other way around and it had no sense to me.

Short answer, the global bitcoin market as a whole is still very small and immature. Market forces that would correct this kind of thing haven't kicked in enough yet to close this spread.

To get a sense of how small bitcoin still is with the 4 billion USD market cap seen as late, remember that Twitter recently had an IPO followed by trading on the open market where its market cap went up by several tens of billions all on the opening day!

The situation MtGox has themselves in is itself a good illustration of how immature the bitcoin space is, other asset classes don't have major exchanges that can't find a decent banking partner. Blame some of this on MtGox, blame some of this on the fact that they've got themselves involved in a strange new thing called bitcoin.

But, with there being other exchanges, it all goes beyond that: in a more mature market, it shouldn't matter that MtGox is only able to do 10 wire transfers per day and that their SEPA withdrawals are slow too. They have decent Yen withdrawal, folks who don't want a long wait should be bringing their bitcoin elsewhere to sell.

Arbitragers in Japan with access to this should be wiring their funds to Bitstamp and BTC-e, buying bitcoin, selling on Gox and getting Yen back fast. A well enough resourced person could even borrow bitcoin to sell on Gox at the same time as their buy on Bitstamp so that bitcoin network transfer times don't become a factor. Unlike China, I don't think Japan has a capital control situation that makes this too hard for wealthy and resourced Japanese folks to pull off.

But there is another factor at play, any arbitrager has to look at the depth of the order books to see what really can be done, prices at the top of the order books can't be the only indicator.

In a more mature market, some of the forces I've mentioned will close these gaps between exchanges. In time they probably will.

But that's the thing about market forces, they don't act as fast as they are sometimes idealized to. We're all very spoiled by how very fast bitcoin transfers are.

Let's put this basic fact about the pace of market forces in perspective. Labour markets are perhaps one of the best examples of those that are incredibly slow. Try cutting wages in absolute terms in a deflationary environment -- as an employer you'll have a riot on your hands even if your cuts are well below the deflation rate (higher wages in real terms). Try convincing a friend to leave all their social ties behind and move for employment opportunities to another region in the same country. Try retraining for a new career.

Correct, the inability to get ca$h out of the exchange in a timely and reliable manner creates a surplus of ca$h already in the exchange.  The fastest way to withdraw value from the exchange is to convert the ca$h into BTCTC, withdraw the BTCTC, and sell them elsewhere.  This outflow of BTCTC creates a BTCTC shortage.  The ca$h surplus and BTCTC shortage naturally results in an increase in exchange rate as expressed in the form of $/BTC (or a decrease in exchange rate as expressed in the form of BTC/$).

Moving USD crap between exchanges is at best a 'pain in the time consuming ass'

It seems possible to rotate cash and coins between exchanges for profit, and incidentally equalise prices, but the price difference suggests that most speculators are bullish and they don't want to risk having too much cash frozen in the banking system in a bull market.

To combat delays, they could have extra cash on hand to buy more coins at a cheaper exchange, but why wait if the price is going up? Hence they are all-in and have no spare cash. 2) They're sceptical of MtGox so they don't send coins there either. Therefore MtGox's prices are higher due to a BTC shortage, not a ca$h shortage.

1. Just as DannyHamilton mentioned, the title "Hero Member" does not guarantee the post quality at all. Indeed, it is not uncommon to see bitcointalk account trading. Never judge the post quality or user reliability based on the title solely.

2. Mtgox WAS the biggest US exchange, and is losing its market share rapidly.

3. The bitcoin price is a lot higher at mtgox. But, if you try to sell your bitcoin at mtgox, you need to wait for weeks (if not months, hopefully) for your fiat withdrawal even after verification. The support there is very bad as well.

4. Mtgox's price has always been a lot higher than its competitors, why didn't someone try to earn easy money to "buy low sell high", and bring the prices to the same level?? Well, the answer is simply that it is not feasible due to the extremely long withdrawal delay at mtgox.

I hope my post is helpful to you

Fail……
it is ONLY difficult for US to move fiat around the world… you can bet your life that some of the exchange operators have a 'deal' that allows them to cross trade, at the same time as limiting the ability of their clients to withdraw funds.
After all if everyone could do it, then the price would soon even out.