Topic: Wall Observer BTC/USD - Bitcoin price movement tracking & discussion - page 28674. (Read 26709919 times)

Theory and practice are the same in theory, but different in practice.
Do it yourself if you think there is money there.

I notice a strange pattern:  Every Saturday about 0500 GMT post volumes and trade volumes diminish substatially.  Most perplexing.

For myself it's about $103

Doubtful the guy would not notice someone arbing his coins away

Who knows, perhaps there is only one arbitrage algorithm working between China and the West, with the exchange rate "6.10" hard-coded, and the owner did not notice that it has changed. 

inb4 ccmf, too the moon, and pure  :o

pump coming soon?

Thanks for your help 

The official exchange rate 

  was 6.06 from Jan/03, 2014 until Feb/14
  climbed gradually to 6.14 through Feb/28
  stayed at 6.12--6.14 until Mar/14
  climbed gradually to the current 6.22 through Mar/20
  has been around 6.20--6.22 since then.

Apparently arbitragers have their own "exchange rate" that has been more or less fixed at ~6.10 since Jan/15.
Until Mar/14 that was not far from the official rate.  It is also possibe that bitcoinwisdom was slow to update
the exchange rate in their scripts. 

3 weeks ago prices on Huobi(shown as USD)  and Bitstamp were equal on bitcoinwisdom. Do you think they´re using a different ratio now, or did i miss something in your explanation?

Don't comment on what that troll igorr wrote, just look at his previous posts, he tries to post this stupid graph all over the forum.

What is the break-even on mined coins right now?  About USD 1200?

This is a plot of the ratio (Huobi price)/(Bitstamp price) daily at ~19:30 UTC, when Huobi volume is usually minimum:


   


The bitcoinwisdom (and other?) charts apparently use the official currency exchange rate 6.21 CNY/USD to compute the equivalent USD price.  However, as the plot shows, the actual ratio maintained by arbitrage is around 6.10 CNY at Huobi = 1 USD at Bitstamp.  It may have to do with Bitstamp trading or withdrawal fees, or other factors.

Who are you calling a beach?

There should be at least a theoretical possibility for doin arbitrage between the exchanges which would remove almost all of the difference after a few days autmatically.

Being very skeptical, I have done my own diligence on the news from Caixin, from which come to several conclusions.  I also make some estimates of interesting statistics, but I do not detail all the reasoning, or provide useful confidence intervals:

A regulation to the effect of a prohibition on banks providing RMB funding for bitcoin trading accounts was announced in December, but was not issued as a directive to correspondent banks.  Now the circular directive has been issued.  It affects all banks and transmitters regulated by PBoC.  

This leaves Chinese bitcoin users in a situation similar to that in the U.S., where bank funding is generally difficult at best, but somewhat more challenging still.  A SWIFT wire is generally the only way to do it, and most people are not sufficiently interested to do that.  Coinbase is the one notable exception.  Also, SWIFT is not available in China.  Localbitcoins.com remains a good option, both in the U.S. and in China.  Vendors may sell bitcoin as well, both in person and online, but I know of no such vendors personally.  One can buy QQ coins at any 7-11 in China, or via a mobile phone.  QQ coins can be exchanged for bitcoin, indirectly.  This is similar to the way in which Linden dollars can be purchased at Virwox, and used to buy bitcoin:  QQ coins can be used to buy virtual items, which can be sold for bitcoin.  A similar mechanism is supported by BTCChina directly.  This method should not be impacted by the PBoC directive.

Some estimates on China:

I estimate that there are no more than 24,000 exchange account holders at Chinese exchanges.  The proportion of these which are non-PRC residents is likely to be high, because zero trading fees make many simple automated trading strategies profitable.

The number of full nodes geolocated in China is estimated at 2.07% of the total worldwide.  If users are similarly distributed, and there are roughly 1.2 million users globally, roughly 1 in 10 being regular or frequent users, then there are roughly 24,000 bitcoin users in China, roughly 2,400 being regular or frequent users. The similar distribution assumption is unlikely to be accurate.

Fiatleak has roughly 20% of all BTC transactions denominated in onshore RMB as I write.  This is not a long sample.  Fiatleak information is of questionable provenance and/or significance.

China's largest roles in the BTC economy, in my opinion:

1) Start-up hotbed.  This will have lasting impact.

2) Mining equipment and hosting supplier.  This is a source of BTC and of FX for Chinese tech.

3) Highest exchange volume (due to no-fee operation).

More people selling in China than elsewhere where more coins are probably being bought up?  Just a guess.

Haven't you ever heard of the expression that "you do not bring sand to the beach?"    

quite amazing what people come up with...... that seems to make very little sense if you carry it to its logical end point... 

My girlfriend is with me, this would have been complicated.

Does anyone has a explanation why we did have a 15-25$ spread between the western and the asian exchanges in the last 2-3 weeks?
Haven´t we been mostly equal before?