Bitcoin Forum

I have never discussed this on the global forum. so I don't know how people will understand it. I'm just writing to see what people think.

I have been arbitraging in Korea for 3 years now. There is a special premium on the Korean exchange. It usually moves from -3 to 10% over the global price. If you enter this formula in TradingView, you can see the price premium on the Korean exchange.

'upbit:btckrw/(balance:btcusd.p*fx_idc:usdkrw)*100-100'


The premiums of some altcoins move even more dramatically. I profit from this difference, usually by moving money between the Korean exchanges and Binance when the market timing is in my favor. I then hedge the perpetual market to avoid the risk of price fluctuations. There are more complex techniques. In South Korea, I'm pretty sure I'm in the top 1% of people who utilize this trading technique.


In 2021, I had a 334% return (everyone made a lot of money back then) and 53% return in 2022. This year, I'm already up 59%. So far, I've made a net profit of about $429,000 over three years from this trade.


I'm sure there are plenty of people out there with better returns than that, but the strength of my trading method is not in the returns, but in the stability. I'm free from the risk of price fluctuations. If the price of Bitcoin drops to $1k, I'll still make money. As liquidity and volatility increase, so does the premium differential, which opens up more opportunities. SBF also left Korea around 2018 to hunt for price premiums. (It is now difficult for foreigners to operate on the Korean exchange). The only risk in this trade is that the centralized exchange goes under.

Anyway, what I'm wondering is if these advantages are also attractive to non-Korean global investors. The returns are not bad, but I feel passive and foolish doing this alone in my room.  I've been doing this by myself for three years, and now I want to expand, and I'm always thinking that there are more opportunities if we collaborate globally. In a world where scammers are setting up sites and scamming investors, why can't I create an arbitrage system that makes real trades and generates consistent profits?

Do you guys think I have a good chance? Or is this just an uninteresting story? I've been thinking about this a lot myself, so I'd like to see what the global forum thinks.

Thanks for reading this long post.

I believe this particular sentence holds utmost significance within your entire presentation. Interestingly, in the first segment, you have already provided an answer to the second part of your question.


Keep doing what you are doing, and you will have a great chance of achieving success for yourself. Do not ask other people for money unless you can offer them some kind of assurance that you will be able to pay it back.

That's a good initiative, so do you plan on sharing the technical details with others?

Speaking of today's trading volume with almost no significant price difference between all global exchanges (imo), 50% return is actually a bit strange using arbitrage techniques, I think you will get some resistance when offering collaboration even if you try to get the attention of low class traders.


Personal opinion: too good to be true.

I didn’t think it was possible to arb the kimchi premium due to the capital controls by the country.

So you can sell your Bitcoin at a premium but how will you buy more Bitcoin? You can’t buy it on the same exchange because price is higher. You need to use the other exchanges but it’s difficult getting money out of the country. Hence why there is this premium. So I am surprised this has worked for you while it doesn’t work for others.

Why you spam "enter" each new line? it just makes the post look bad and harder to read.

According to your trading.

1- build enough liquidity on both exchanges so that you dont have to move founds from exchange to exchange each time you make a trade
2- automatic your trading technice by simple arbirage bot. Arbitrage bots are super easy to make, you need 1-3 days in python even if you have zero coding skill. There are also examples of arbitrage bots on github that you can use for your purpose after some changes.

What makes you feels that others will also trust your own development just as you have doubts on other's, the point is that despite all this, there's no certainty elsewhere that gives you the go ahead of having a complete positive outcome at the cause of doing this, you may only got improve through it and you have your right to choose the possible options on artbitrage system you want, if you trust well you can deliver such then why not, through the quality of what you've made others will be attracted with time to use it as well for their own trading experience.


There's no guarantee in everything we all do, we take our time to invest, invent and trade using many options and alternatives that we feels could increase our chances of arriving at the desired destination for making profits, your chances are good inasmuch the efforts given were adequate enough.

Capital controls aren't bans!
You just need to follow the rules, declare everything, and pay your fees and taxes and nobody will bother you.
As long as you have a legit company, and an SK bank account and you can provide them with everything they need, in most cases the proof of income for the amounts you're transferring then you're all set.


It's pretty simple!
You look for the opportunity to arrive, at that point you buy $50 BTC on Coinbase, you send them to Bitthumb, you sell at a 5% premium, you withdraw your money to the SK bank, then to your US bank, and then you try again.
There is actually not a big difference between this and taking advantage of any other high commodity prices, traders do this with full tankers of LNG or oil when the price are better in Europe than in Asia, the same happened with the onions in Philipines.

There are some problems:
- you need a huge capital to make it worthwhile, you can't play with one BTC as the fees will eat all your profit.
- the money flow from inside Korea takes time, a lot of time, so don't think you can do this daily, it's not SEPA.
- sometimes the kImchi premium turns to a discount, you don't want to be caught in one so you might be forced to wait, sometimes even for weeks

Dear findnjm, the post will not be that long if you would follow some simple writing ethics. Well, ignoring that, and coming to your statements, i am so happy for you to make so much profit out of the crypto industry but i never thought one can benefit that much by just doing arbitrage trading, I would love to know why you think the prices of tokens are higher (premium) in Korea in comparison to other countries?

I also love to know how you hedge against your profits so that you could avoid losing, Which technique do you use? And when do you get to know that the market is in your favor and now you can do arbitrage trading? And also tell me why would i trust your all statements blindly, you might be telling lies to get more paying customers so that you could sell them your strategy.

Why did you not share some proof of it? I mean no disrespect but your statements do need proof to convince the global audience here, They do know how newbies came on a daily basis and make posts on to they can not hold. Just like this one.
I hope you would not end up like this one.

It takes just 3 seconds including tapping/clicking:

https://coinmarketcap.com/exchanges/bithumb/
https://coinmarketcap.com/exchanges/coinbase-exchange/

https://learn.bybit.com/trading/what-is-kimchi-premium/

When doubting one's story, shouldn't you research on your own, what help would be his explanations if you doubt him from the start?

Well, that's the difference between rank and experience, you did it in 3 seconds and if i would do it, it could take me some time to figure it out. Well i did not give a thought on checking the price difference because i trust the op on this one, i was skeptical on his profit ratio and why there is a big difference between these prices i thought arbitrage trading has small price differences but your aforementioned one has big difference. Why the korean did not prefer to buy it from Binance then (at lower rate) why would they buy it from there own local exchange (at higher rates) that what i was being asking in the first line and in the second question, i asked the op to share some proof so that people like me and other would quickly go through the price differences and it will definitely build some trust too.

Overall, i am satisfied now with the knowledge of price in fact i was thinking to try the provided code tonight as i was busy too. So thank you for easiness.

Those returns are huge, if you can really make this amount of money in a stable way then you will have a line of investors trying to give you their money so you can invest on their behalf.

However if you want to become a money manager, which seems to be your aspiration based on your post, then you need more than a winning strategy, you need to convince your potential customers that you will not run away with their money, something insanely difficult in a market which is flooded with scammers.

Yeah, that is if you find a line of noob investors who think these benefits make sense at first glance, or the most common investor opinion is getting involved in shitcoin schemes.
Tbh, it's enough to make my mind vibrate to hear 6 digit profits written in a simple way, but does that make investors with the same class interested? I don't think so, they actually have independent ways to generate similar profits.

First of all, I just advise you not to repeat this format of your posting that there is a big space gap between each sentence you type here in the explanations. Now, based on your story, I see that you have trading skills according to your experience there in Korea, right?

and accumulated an income of around 429k$ in 3 years. It means you are a rich person, that amount you got from trading is no joke. If you were able to make money on the Korean exchange, I think you can also do it on the crypto exchange, as long as you remember that the volatility here on Bitcoin or cryptocurrency is more aggressive than on the Korean exchange. And you should be prepared for the risk level that you can face here.

 :D Wow, that's a lot of different opinions, and I really appreciate your comments. As you may have noticed, I'm speaking through a translator, so it's not going to be easy to respond to each and every one of them, but I'm going to say a little bit more because there are a lot of people who are curious about this trading strategy.

i don't actually send any crypto, and this is a very important point. There's a common misconception that you have to transfer when you arbitrage. You don't have to. (I say transfer in the body of the post because I didn't really want to say this, but I changed my mind because you guys are curious.) When I do this trade, I go short on Binance and buy spot on upbit, and then I just wait for the spread between the two to widen. In other words, I don't go in after the spread widens. I do the buy before the spread widens.

But you can't just pick up any crypto and wait for the spread to widen, right? So I pick a crypto that's prone to price distortion. This usually happens with altcoins.  For example, the crypto I'm currently holding is 'flow'. In my experience, there is a good chance that this trade will give me at least a 1% return this week (but there are no guarantees in the world).


I made a chart of FLOW's spread for you guys.

https://kr.tradingview.com/chart/p60QXU2S (https://kr.tradingview.com/chart/p60QXU2S)

Or, if you want to see more detailed movement, try plugging this formula directly into TradingView.

(upbit:flowkrw-binance:flowusdt.p*fx_idc:usdkrw)/(binance:flowusdt.p*fx_idc:usdkrw)*100



I'm holding when the spread on 'FLOW' is 2.5%, and you can see if it goes higher than that in the future. I'll probably exit the position between 3.5% and 6%, depending on the volatility at that time. There are many factors that contribute to this distortion. It could be that the crypto upgrade cut off deposits and withdrawals, it could be that the price has gone up a lot and people are going crazy, or it could be that the price has dropped so much that it's not keeping up with the price overseas. I'm trying to figure this out and do some proper arbitrage.


In January, February, and March, I had fun with aptos.
https://kr.tradingview.com/chart/r0EdVNMl/ (https://kr.tradingview.com/chart/r0EdVNMl/)


KAVA is a classic example of a crypto pranked by Korean whales. No matter what the price is overseas, it sometimes happens that it only makes a price in Korea.
https://kr.tradingview.com/chart/f81jB9R7/ (https://kr.tradingview.com/chart/f81jB9R7/)


Two weeks ago, METAL was doing this.
https://kr.tradingview.com/chart/wqrts0jF/ (https://kr.tradingview.com/chart/wqrts0jF/)


By the way, only Koreans can do this on upbit. Upbit doesn't accept foreigners, but since Korea doesn't have a perfect crypto policy, it's possible for Koreans to use Binance Global, so I can hunt for these arbitrage opportunities. Of course, I don't think this arbitrage will last forever. One day, when the crypto market stabilizes in terms of policy, the loophole will be closed. But before that happens, I've been thinking about whether there's something to grow. I was very curious to see how it was viewed by global traders. I guess the trust issue is the biggest barrier for me to scale it into a business. Thanks for your thoughts.


oh. I have one more question: In my country, it is illegal for an individual who is not registered as an investment company to manage other people's money. I assume it is the same in your country? It seems difficult to create a legal organization and do business with crypto.

Have a good day everyone.


Additions to comments1) It's hard for me to provide evidence of profits. As anyone who has done arbitrage trading based on the distortion of spot prices knows, the short side records a deficit, so this side has a huge deficit, and upbit doesn't have a function to provide cumulative profit data. I can show you how much money I withdrew from upbit to my bank, but I don't need to do that in this post. It's in Korean. haha

Additions to comments2) It is difficult to transfer money from a bank in South Korea to a bank in the U.S. That method is a premium hunting method used in the past. So many people used this method in the past that Korean banks, along with the government, are now strictly controlling it. This control seems to be isolating Korean exchanges and causing price distortions.I only realize profits through the spread between Binance and Upbit and increase the KRW on the exchange. It's similar to how you guys increase your USDT.

Hey OP, too many spaces in your post, I am not sure if you are posting from mobile view or desktop but that looks too unformatted.

Well, coming back to the returns form your methods, they are just fabulous. You should consider it as win-win situation because we are already in the bear trend of the market. Not just the crypto but all the stocks and share markets have fallen badly since pandemic and war, natural calamities etc, you name it. I mean I have seen myself happy with the 15-20% annualized returns so there is no doubt that you have just outperformed your stay in the crypto trading.

Moreover, what amuses me is, all of this is from the altcoins trading and that's super risky asset so far in the trading. Its good that your portfolio was chosen pretty right. I am not sure if your methods are unique or orthodox, but you should stick to them since they are working for you.

You are doing well as long as you make yourself profitable. That would already indicate that you are doing well. Not everyone makes money in the crypto world, so you are lucky to earn consistently on a yearly basis. If you are not yet satisfied with your profit, then you might as well increase your capital. Even if you only make a 50% return yearly, that would already result in a satisfactory profit.

If the annual return is more than 50% then it is definitely a good return. because at present 15% of one's profit itself is not able to change one's financial condition because the value of money is constantly depreciating. so to change the financial situation in keeping with the devaluation of money must earn more profit otherwise it will not be possible. However, an annual profit of more than 50% is considered a good return in my opinion. So it can be a good potential income for you

As long as your capital is large, a 50% annual return is acceptable to me. If you only have a tiny amount of money, it's not worth it. Let's assume you put $100 in and make $50 profit in a year; you're profitable, but it's never enough because it took several months to earn that profit, which is why it depends on your capital. However, we have different thoughts and perspectives on this, because for some, $100 is a large sum, while for others, it is a small amount of money.

I would have to ask how you even managed to secure a sure 50% return, following recent expenditures and price hike. If you are still single and can hold such, you should be able to get it up to at least 60%, by cutting down on serious cost investments that have better alternatives.

If you are married I would have to applaud your religious efforts in maintaining a good financial portfolio and hope you share with us someday your wisdom on how you made it happen.

Well, converting 100 dollar into 150 dollar is harder than converting 100K into 150k in crypto trading so small the capital the harder to reach better results cause fee will eat the profits.

Overall 59% is great achievement which is not possible for everyone and you did it consistently for 3 years but it's not going to last Lang forever so make as much as you can when there is an opportunity for arbitrage in Korean exchange.

first of all, are u doing arbitrage trading or just pure trading on one exchange following price from global exchange. Since most arbit trade is hard nowadays because the fee and block confirmation taking long before it can get confirmation especially bitcoin.

and if you have annualized return above 50% is totally great most of bank can only give you 5%-7% in one year so 50% is totally better don't be greed 50% is more than enough in my opinion

An annual return of 50% is good enough for you to experience losses. However, depending on the capital you use, the greater the capital you use, 50% will be a pretty good profit. for example when you use $ 10k capital and you will get $ 5k in a year. But if your capital is small it will not mean anything.
Actually crypto trading for the year can have more than 100% profit if you trade consistently and always get profits. you need to increase those profits gradually.

How about in forex? Getting 5-10% monthly is already hard and its not really that bad on having that 50% income or growth on a year which i could say that it is really that something considerable.Most likely people

would really be that too conservative when it comes to risk management which i would say that it would really be that considered to be good. Take that general rules which profit is profit. As long you would be green
then it would be considered to be good but as much as possible then it would be ideal that you should really be that trying out to upgrade your risk factor so that you could possibly
be able to gain more in annual basis which it is really it is really that better than earning up money through sitting idle with your money on a bank.

I remember that at some point in the year 2017, specifically in the fourth quarter, arbitrage was very profitable. The price difference between the price in most platforms and in Korea was more than 30%, and thus safety from the risks of volatility even if the withdrawal was delayed, but at the present time, arbitrage is unlikely to be profitable Because the price differences are not more than 3%.

Most platforms now ask to wait until the first confirmation, and you will not be able to withdraw until after 3 confirmations, which means an average of 30 minutes before the completion of the withdrawal process and 40 minutes of the success of the entire process with the withdrawal fees, in these 40 minutes the change of 3% may have reached the stage of withdrawal Therefore, you may not make a profit.

yeah I mean the OP is really good at this point can earn 50% per year its about ~4% per month. I mean greed is part of human but those are good. anyway why you discussed about forex ? the op only mention crypto  I mean forex stock or crypto is considered as a high-risk investment so growing more than 5% is totally good even tho some people outhere can made more than that

In this current depression? If I do make above 50% annualized return, am successful and a millionaire. No jokes. I know half a full white collar boys whom I hung out with who don't make this. Let alone myself trading crypto or stocks with such a return in one year?

If I find myself in this position with such a realization, i know that my effort in learning and being consistent no matter how much I played, paid off. A wise business person would increase the investment capital by 20% , cut expenditures, become more focused and decisive and watch the margin returns double up within a 5year duration.
Infact, I at this stage would just tour the Asian continent with my hubby for a whole year, knowing am a prospective billionaire in the making.

@findnjm I think you are doing extraordinarily good with the returns of 50% which sounds like too good to be true.
One thing that I have learnt from my experience is that never believe anything that is too good to be true.
I never thought arbitraging can give such a huge return because I have tried it myself few years back and the returns were very very minimal.
So if you are making such huge returns then it's probably good for you. Keep making money share your trades if you want us to believe you.

it's already good since many are instead lossing in their annualized return.
I think if you can have some consistent return at that rate you could simply just increase your investment or make some compounding to your investment in general then
you will consistently make good profits but honestly keeping the consistencies across your career of trading and investing is the most difficult thing ever.
you just don't know how much your annualized return will be, but i'm sure everyone has their own strategies that gonna make them profit if they're serious.

Yes, it's not that easy to get consistent returns and maybe it takes a very long process,
finding the right strategy also requires a process,
the most important thing is keep learning and do your best.

FYI, Your capital is too huge to complain for that kind of return. Someone might be enjoying greater than 1000% return but most of them has low capital that makes  easier to enter to much more risky trades. 59% for just doing a safe arbitrage trading is not bad because there’s only a minimal risk involved compared when you are on real time trading of assets.

You are doing good since your profit is consistent since your capital is high compared to average traders that trading crypto. Don't look on the percentage but rather on the amount because that's the most important thing on trading.

If your annualized return is constantly above 50%, it can be considered a remarkable performance in trading or business. Such high returns show that your investment strategy has been successful in generating specific profits. However, it's important to evaluate your performance by placing your targets in context with the market and your investment goals. I think it will be better to share your techniques with others for their benefit. Additionally, compare your returns to relevant benchmarks, diversify your investment, and take a risk assessment for the future. When assessing investment success, long-term consistency should also be taken into account.

If you are already up in profit this year with 59% on your investment and you are able to still make your steady trade despite the volatility of the market or fluctuation, why thinking of expounding to bring in more people. This is my area of doubt because most traders who profit don't have need to get more people to share from their profit except they are only interested to sell some signal to them or ask to raise money from them.

But the risk of Crypto investment is higher than Forex. Profits above 50% or losses below -70% for the crypto market are common, but let's see how the volatility in Forex, it is quite small and unlike in crypto.

For risk, of course, all investments have risks. Earning approximately 4% per month in crypto and that is stable is also extraordinary.
But there will be opportunities to earn more when the market is bullish and be wary of the bear market because it will take all the profits earned.

How much profit is earned must be balanced with good management so that profits can remain safe.

You better continue it to get even bigger profits this year. In the following years, the profit may be even greater, especially if there is an increase in the market or many potential coins can increase.

And there is no need to sell signals to others because our focus will be reduced and we may miss the opportunity to trade. In addition, it is difficult to arrange everything according to what we want. So it's better to focus on finding more profits from trading.

But if you still want to continue what's on your mind, it's up to you. We can only advise you and then it is your choice.

Yeah because it was hard to read his post lol. But moving on, indeed he have a trading skill because if he doesn't, I don't think he have something to brag here. An income of $429k for 3 years seems a life changing amount already for the most of us poor but he said it was only a 50% return of his investment which might show that he was a rich person.

The Korean exchange he was talking about there is Upbit which was also dealing with cryptos, so there is no need for us to warn him about the hazards of cryptos because he already know it. Cryptos might look riskier than other tradable assets but cryptos are only more rewarding. Maybe if he trade on a different market his, gains are going to be lower than 50%.

There is a reason money managers exist, it is true you can use your own capital and trade the markets this way and obtain high profits with your trading strategy, however by getting clients and trade on their behalf then even if the fee you charge is on the low side you can increase your profits significantly with no increase on the risks you are taking.

So it make sense the OP wants to do something like this, unfortunately it is difficult that people are going to believe in him, as the profits are very high and the OP does not seem to have any previous experience doing something like this.

That is, you are not satisfied with the profit received for 3 years, which is almost half a million dollars, and you decided to create a team to get even more profit together? For me, it becomes like an impending fraud on your part, since I do not believe in your altruism.

How does making that amount of money as you claim passive and foolish in doing it from within the domain of your room where you’ve got comfort and no problems? I thinks it an issue at all and you could always create time for recreation and enjoyment of a days work.

Can the above in OP still count as trading?
Taking advantage of the price difference between exchanges.

It’s interesting the concerns you’ve got in trying to globalize your strategy to this but, how soon before some one gets scammed?
Don’t you think over leveraging this would bring about discovery and in time, correction of the exploited loophole and eventually the lose of peoples asset in a global scale as well.

Getting 50% annual returns on arbitrage trading is really good and I would call it unbelievable. I wish OP can guide us in more details on how he gain such good returns on arbitrage trading and which platforms he uses.

Getting this much return from simple cryptocurrencies trading is difficult and getting the results through arbitrage trading is even more difficult.

Strange he is getting such good returns and still asking us if he is doing good 😊