What is arbitrage in bitcoin buying and Selling

“The Bitcoin price is 110,000 but you are selling at 130,000, that’s not 10%”

This is a question we sometimes get. There are a few factors in play here. First of all, the price for a Bitcoin in the US is different of the price for a Bitcoin in Hong Kong. That’s called arbitrage. It’s a difference in price for the same “good”. How it happens to be for Bitcoin, Andreas M. Antonopoulos has a great explanation about that:

 

So you cannot compare a US based value for a BTC with the price on the ATM (Hong Kong value for a BTC + our rate). Because it’s hard to move the fiat currency from one place to the other.

Second, there even can be arbitrage between Hong Kong based exchanges. For instance on 2 January 2018 12:52pm the price for a BTC on Gatecoin was 120,498 and on ANXpro was 101,500. Both are HK based exchanges. (how to buy BTC in HK).
That’s already a 18%! difference, within Hong Kong. If you watched the video, you will know that it won’t be easy to make (continuous) advantage of for instance that 18%, because of the (operational) costs and (bank account) risks involved in arbitrage trading. If it would have been easy, there won’t have been an arbitrage in the first place.

We as HK Bitcoin ATM prefer to have a continuous supply of our BTC to sell so we can serve you well, and not be constantly “out service”. If you think we are still “too expensive”, you can alway try other ways to acquire your BTC.

The ATM serves a purpose, it serves convenience, if you want to day trade, the convenience we deliver doesn’t match your requirements, then we advise you to do that on an exchange.

This also applies to the case if you just bought BTC and you look at your wallet. Your wallet might show an indication of the “worth” of your BTC’s in USD/HKD. But that is just an indication and be sure where the conversion rate, that the app uses, comes from.

For more on our price calculation: HK Bitcoin ATM FAQ