Bitcoin Forum

I have been looking to invest and cannot understand the disparity. As of now, bitstamp is selling in the range of 606-608 while coinbase is at 609 and reaching 610. Can you share what is the reason for this? And which is more trusted site?

I wouldn't use coinbase. Read too much bad stuff about them in past months.
Thats this, and about price disparity, thats nothing :) 1-2$ diffirence its like same price.
Its because people bought more on one exchange so price went up coz all coins sold for 608 was bought so there was only more expensive coins left.
Its market, people buy and sell for whatever price they want, diffirence is from that.

the price difference on each exchanger was reasonable. you can take the opportunity of the price difference. usually called arbitrage.
both sites are reliable.

The price difference is good for business, you should take advantage of it and buy where it is low and sell where it is high. That is how people make money. Don't see the price difference as a negative thing.

coinbase can service online wallet bitstamp no
coinbase based USA bitstamp england
same support paypal payment

Well in terms of buy and sell, both services provide bitcoin/US dollar exchange services, but they differ in their style. Coinbase users buy and sell bitcoins directly from the company. They publish their bid and ask prices on their service and users can go to the “buy/sell” page to enter their orders. In the case of Bitstamp the company acts as an exchange where users buy and sell between themselves at the best prices offered on the system.

Pick a site where the margin is the least and buy there

Disparity?

You understand that the difference between $604 and $610 is less than 1%, right?

The reason they are not exactly equal to each other probably has a lot to do with fees paid for making an exchange, as well as time and costs associated with getting USD into and out of each of the exchanges.

By the way, are you comparing to the price that Coinbase sells their bitcoins to you, or are you talking about the current exchange rate on Coinbase's open market exchange GDAX?

Coinbase will charge a bit more than the current exchange rate so that they can make a profit.  Effectively, they'll buy the bitcoins at current market price from GDAX and then sell them to you for just a bit more.

While trading In fiat market, forex market or even in altcoin market price are solely depends upon volume. So while coinbase have higher rate bitstamp dont just because of traders activity.

Kindly see how market moves.

The trust worthy of an exchange has nothing to do with this. Price of bitcoin in an exchange is decided by either buyer or seller. Based on the last trade, the price of one exchange is determined. Moreover, up to  $10 difference are negligible for a commodity which is currently being traded around $600.

You can check directly from the coindesk dot com /price and check both coindesk BPI and Bitsamp price so you can see the charts.

Coindesk allows you to compare also with all other exchanges there but the difference between them is almost few dollars maximum.

All exchange sites have price differences caused by the activity of a trader, I thought it was very reasonable and you can take advantage of the price difference.

Most of the exchangers have their own trading platform so all buy and sell orders are created in single platform which is not linked with another platform by any means. If you look at yobit and btc-e like trading platform you will see large gap between the bitcoin price which is caused by different factors like payment processors they accept, trading limitation, number of traders etc. Some traders also find price difference advantageous and do arbitrage trading for constant profit due to price difference in two platform.

different price with coinbase and bitstamp is common dont worry about that you can take advantage with this situation with arbitrage trading, example buy cheap in coinbase and sell high in bitstamp  :)

They're two different Exchanges.


It's called arbitrage. Watch out, one exchange might just be a little behind the other. If you buy at one, while you're waiting for the bitcoin to arrive, the price could even out.