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Re:Bitcoin Falls 20% on PBOC Rumors, Chinese Exchanges Reins... by pepijndevos on Tuesday December 17, 2013 @01:03PM (#6922605)
I've wondered... if the price of a BTC differs from one currency/exchange to the next, what stops you from buying at the cheap and selling at the expensive one?
Re:Bitcoin Falls 20% on PBOC Rumors, Chinese Exchanges Reins... by zch on Tuesday December 17, 2013 @01:12PM (#6922678)
It's called arbitrage. It's possible with bitcoin, but not easy and by no means quick.
Re:Bitcoin Falls 20% on PBOC Rumors, Chinese Exchanges Reins... by aianus on Tuesday December 17, 2013 @02:29PM (#6923289)
I used to do this back in early 2012. I stopped because the spread became lower than the cost of trading + forex fees and because I got nervous when MtGox took 4 weeks to wire me nearly $10,000 that I couldn't really afford to lose.

Counterparty risk is huge in the BTC world unfortunately.

Re:Bitcoin Falls 20% on PBOC Rumors, Chinese Exchanges Reins... by anopows on Tuesday December 17, 2013 @01:22PM (#6922743)
I think fees on the exchanges, different currencies(fee for trading to the corresponding currency) and time(it can take weeks until you can start to trade on a site) are the major obstacles.
Re:Bitcoin Falls 20% on PBOC Rumors, Chinese Exchanges Reins... by groovylick on Tuesday December 17, 2013 @02:31PM (#6923303)
The time to transfer btc from one exchange to another is almost an hour. This makes arbitrage quite risky as the price is quite volatile over that time period.
Re:Bitcoin Falls 20% on PBOC Rumors, Chinese Exchanges Reins... by fembot__ on Wednesday December 18, 2013 @02:18AM (#6926298)
The simplest version of this is to purchase bitcoins on the "cheapest" exchange, and sell them on localbitcoins for MtGox prices. Only problem here is that if you're in the US, it takes 2-5 days to get your coins, so you'd have to have a decent stash/revolving money flow.