Bitcoin Forum

Okay so how does a european or american open an account in japan?

How about opening an account with HSBC USA/EU then asking them about opening a secondary account in Yen...?

Most of the large brokerages/banks will allow you to receive SWIFT payments through an intermediary in japan, but will not be able to forward on domestic transfers...

In addition gox won't allow you to add a memo to the domestic transfer (i.e. like you would normally do when sending a wire to a forex clearing house).

Any insight permitted.

For the sake of bitcoin, let's get these prices equalized.

I think it's complicated. If you as a foreigner for example wants to open a bank account in Germany, you must first find a bank with an English registration form. I know banks that grant accounts to foreigners, so far no problem, but none of them have a English registration form. Plain stupid. In Japan, the situation will be similar. It is possible, but without the help of a local almost impossible. The problem is simply the language. If we would speak Japanese, we could call a bank and would soon find a solution. I'm pretty sure. If you can talk directly with people, you can always find a solution. Perhaps it's best to try it via email.

From what i've read I don't think a foreigner who doesn't have a visa valid for at least 3 months can open a japanese bank account.

Now obviously you could form a corporation (around 500k JPY to form, plus you have to hire someone to be your local representative, which cost 1-10mil JPY a year...as they have to take the risk for you, if you violate japanese banking law somehow, they are the one's who will get fined).

I had a student visa to live in japan, but it expired long ago and I never setup an account there.

Anybody got citibank? give them a call and see if they will let you open a JPY account for use in japan....

I was recommended by others to look into two possibliities....

Here's a quote from another forum...

"Talk to a Union Bank branch in the United States. Union Bank is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group.  They may be able to set you up with an account in Japan which can accept domestic Japan wire transfers. "For more information, call Union Bank's Foreign Exchange Specialists at 1-866-868-4034."


The other person told me to open a USA HSBC account then call their global department and ask for it to be multi-denominated into JPY so that I can receive and send domestic transfers in japan.

thats a short sighted view. The question we should be asking is, how do we make this thing scalable? we already know the system can only support a certain amount of transactions (around 150,000)per second. how do we scale this thing to handle 2 million transactions per second?

Confused....?

We don't need 2 mil a second, we need 1 or 2 large transfers a day coming out of gox to a domestic japanese account. That would equalize the price at gox and the other exchanges so people could start moving their money elsewhere to trade.

I thiknk its best for the community that we pool together our thinking abilities and find an easy way to start arbing the difference between bitstamp/btc-e/campbx and gox so that the prices equalize. This will free up millions of dollars of fiat and thus incrase volume on the other exchanges.

Good for the goose and the gander.

*facepalm*no i mean that bitcoin its self faces serious scalability issues if its every to be adopted even moderately. the system its self can only support a limited amout of transactions per second

That's a discussion for a different place.

This is a thread to discuss how we as a group of fellow bitcoiners can solve the problems of a large group of fellow bitcoiners having alot of money stuck at gox...

Your point is still valid though, I don't mean to dismiss it, but just don't want to discuss it here.

Many people (myself included) have well over 100k tied up in gox. THis is what is bad for the bitcoin economy in general. I beleive HSBC Premier requires 50k of whatever your local currency is to avoid the premier fees.

I've been in the application process with hsbc for over a week and haven't made any headway yet. The international HSBC people told me i neeeded first open a US HSBC account since i'm american and then talk to their international department or something like that.

Nah.  When I opened an account in Germany, the registration form was in German.  The language isn't important as long as you understand it.  Which is why many people choose to use a consultant to open an account in a foreign country.  But many banks, in Germany and elsewhere, don't allow foreigners to open normal domestic accounts.  Took me a while to find one.

Poland, Malta, Cyprus, Slovenia are examples of countries where a foreigner can walk into the bank and open a personal account.

For arbitrage that's all that's necessary.

SWIFT transfer is futile at the moment.  EUR (SEPA) or PLN (domestic) will be much faster.

I wonder if SWIFT to japan works faster though or if its the same regulation.

Fidelity and Schwab both allow SWIFT transfers into their japanese banks, but i'm not sure if thats any faster.

I also think we should set up a japan based arbitrage operation with investment opportunities....

All we need is a few Japanese people with bank accounts right ?

I wrote that. The point here is that Union Bank (US) is wholly owned by the biggest bank in Japan. If you need to do a transaction in Japan from the US, they can probably handle it.

HSBC is headquartered in London.

Okay, so how do we make this happen?

I too would like to see a price difference (on average) not larger than 2 $ between MtGox and Bitstamp.
So I wish you good luck with establishing an arbitrage scheme. But I suspect this has already been going
on by JPY, on a scale small enough so the difference stays above 8% (ensuring a nice profit).

thanks for the update. I think it will clear first thing tomorrow morning.

Make sure you spell your name right in japanese, what fucked up my transfer initially.

let us know ty for update

Good luck to everyone arbitraging BTC --> MtGox JPY --> JPY --> USD --> Bitstamp USD --> BTC !

If you are successful and report it here it will likely decrease arbitrage opportunity since it would change market confidence. It's possible that psychological effect would have as great an effect in reducing gap as increasing bitcoin supply in JPY market. Thus I don't expect to hear many positive results other than people who do an experiment for fun. Nevertheless I will be happy to be wrong!

Interestingly it might be possible to distinguish the supply and market perception effects.

Arbitrage should bring the Mtgox JPY price to parity with Bitstamp USD given USD/JPY exchange rate.  Then the change in the gap with MtGox USD / Bitstamp USD between now and when JPY exchange parity is achieved will show the psychological shift since a reasonable hypothesis is that most people who are causing the gap on MtGox USD / Bitstamp USD (by buying at premium as opposed to waiting) do not have the possibility to exit via MtGox JPY --> JPY --> currency exchange --> USD.

You will pay a few percent at each step.

at large sums that is negotiable....

There's more to this than psychology. Many of the businesses and people that use Mtgox actually need the fiat. The fiat needs to actually move.

Thank you, joesmoe2012, for starting this thread. This is arguably the most important thread on bitcointalk right now.

here you go, the steps involved...

http://www.healyconsultants.com/company-incorporation/japan-company-set-up.htm


http://www.healyconsultants.com/fees.html  costs about 10k in consulting fees... would be nice if there was a japanese speaking member who could do this instead

BTC --> MtGox JPY = 2.5% + your trading fee, let's say that's 0.3% = 2.8%

Mtgox JPY -> JPY = 0 I think (or some flat fee, which is negligible if you're doing large enough chunks at a time)

JPY --> USD = .1% or less unless your bank gouges you, plus another flat wire fee

USD --> Bitstamp USD = 0.2% (again for high-volume account)

total = approx 3.1% to 3.4%

That leaves a solid 6 percent profit on the table. If anyone who has a Japanese bank account would like to team up to make this happen, let me know. I have bots which can do the trades efficiently and high volume  mtgox and bitstamp accounts (= lowest fee tiers). I also have access to enough capital to make it worth while. Only thing I don't have is a Japanese bank account in the hands of someone I trust. Or do it yourself, I will applaud you and help in any way I can. I agree with joesmoe2012, this needs to be done for the good of the whole system.

You could e.g. send JPY to Bitstamp if Bitstamp's bank offer a better JPY to USD exchange rate than yours.  And it is pretty good, IMO.  Less than 1% loss there.  Exchange fees (0.5% or less x 2) and SWIFT transfer fee (fixed sum) are going to be the main expenses.  Not much for a large enough sum.  8000 USD or more, and you should be able to get away with less than 2% in fees.  The BTC/JPY rate may be up to 2.5% worse than BTC/USD, but usually the difference is smaller.  Sometimes the BTC/JPY rate is even better than BTC/USD, but probably not at high volume.

haha....

http://www.quora.com/Business-in-Japan/Which-is-the-best-Bank-to-open-a-corporate-account-%E6%B3%95%E4%BA%BA%E5%8F%A3%E5%BA%A7-in-Japan

"There is no good bank to open a corporate account at in Japan.  As far as I can tell based on my experience, they pretty much all suck.  They have lousy service (amazing in a country where all the other service industries are so good) and staggeringly high fees.  It's pretty much an oligopoly.  If you have even a single Japanese employee, you'll have to deal with a Japanese bank for tax deposits and such.

...

Bear in mind that this is a country where everyone gets screwed by the banks.  Japanese banks are so bad, you'll long for Bank of America.  $6 to deposit a single check!  ATM fees that are higher after 5pm (in Japan, machines get paid overtime, apparently)!  Virtually everything has to be done in person!"

One of the reasons that I (and probably others considering this) hesitate to go through all this is that this arb is a temporary arms race. There are a couple of reasons it could and probably will dissolve soon: (1) somebody else wins the race, or (2) mtgox solves their withdrawal issues. So who wants to take the time and money to set up a new account just to the opportunity dry up before you can even use it? That's why it's better to partner with somebody who already has an account.

That person will become a money transmitter immediately and after successful transfer of some couple of millions out of nowhere I bet he will have some serious paper work to attend to.

not exactly, it depends.

the company needs to be set up in a way where the owner(s) of the company capitalize the company with the funds used for trading, and the profits are distributed as a dividend to shareholder. when there is no more funds, the company is dissolved and the trading funds are sent back to investors.

Re: money transmitter: no.

Re: doing it all cleanly as prophetx describes, yes.

set up google docs excel sheet that looks at market depth of bistamp, btce and mtgox, and finds the equilibrium point this equals your profit opportunity, minus fees

assuming you want to proceed this is no diff then setting up an investment fund...

set up LLC in Cali, (b/c u can use VC LP boilerplate) take in limited partners who are accredited investors... let's call it Bitcoin Arbitrage Partners, LLC... (BAP)... set up governance and contractual agreements when the fund is liquidated, how LPs are paid out, etc. Investment should be 50% cash 50% btc (well at least 25% btc so you dont need to wait on network transfer)

set up a company (BAP JP) in JP that is owned by BAP, set up corp bank account for BAP JP

set up another company in the eurozone (BAP Euro) for btce

Now transfer money to Bitstamp, fund BAP Euro, and then transfer money to BTCE.

transfer btc to mtgox

start buying on bitstamp and btce, while selling on gox (since you have btc on goc u dont need to wait for network transfer)... i'm sure there are people on here that have the trading and coding exp who can run the trading op's...

Q. Do you keep independent ask/bid tables for different currencies?

"A. No, ask/bid tables for different currencies are not independent. All currencies are relative to whichever currency has the highest volume, which is based on said currencies current market price in bitcoin. Every trade is in one pool and in fact, not are not separate currency markets. This allows users the added benefit of trading in "the greater market" -in currencies they understand- while not limiting them to smaller currency markets."

https://support.mtgox.com/entries/20800336-Multi-Currency-Trading

I have been waiting more than a month for PLN and I gave up.  Are there any news about PLN wire transfers from MtGox?

 A few percent? Don't think so. Japanese domestic withdraw is 200 Yen. You can send the Yen directly to BitStamp as they convert all incoming wires into USD at a very good rate.

I don't see any basis for this. If your'e just sending money from your account at one exchange to your account at another, you are not a money transmitter. A money transmitter is someone who as a business transfers money to/from a third party.

In this case there is no third party, at all time the money remains in your accounts.

Interesting on the HSBC premier thing, I was under the impression that US HSBC Premier Account Holders coupld potentially receive JPY payments via HSBC in Japan. In fact I just opened an HSBC Premier Account specifically for this reason.

Bakada - Any news back form citibank yet? What did they say when you asked about receiving JPY payments to your non-japanese citi account.

Thanks for reminding me!  This explains the simple relationship between gap between MtGox USD/ Bitstamp USD and  MtGox JPY (in $equiv) / Bitstamp USD.

It also explains the 2.5% that qxzn referred to in his calculation of the costs of
BTC --> MtGox JPY.   (2.5% + 0.3%)

2.5% is the MtGox currency exchange fee for transactions that are coming from another currency is that right?

Question:
If all transactions are in one pool and I will pay 2.5% for a transaction with a seller in any other currency, what happens if I buy bitcoins from a seller using my currency, but which is not from the dominant currency. For example if I am based in GBP and I buy 1 BTC for 60GBP  from another user will this incur a 2.5% currency exchange free from the dominant currency? I.e. does seller actually list in USD (dominant currency) and thereby pay 2.5% and then I buy in GBP and pay 2.5% to do so?

How does one see when the 2.5% is charged to a transaction?

As a UK user is it stupid for me to keep GBP on MtGox? Is it better to just eat the currency exchange fee on entry and exit as is done at Bitstamp?

Many people have difficulties grasping this..

The difference is rarely 2.5%.  Here is a current picture of the best bid and best ask in various currencies (just a small selection), and their ratio to the best bid and ask in USD:

As you'll see from this very few of the currencies have a 2.5% (0.975 or 1.025) ratio to USD.  Some currencies here has a ratio of 0.9773 on the bid side.  This is due to a bid in another currency (not displayed here) which is a 0.23% above the best USD bid.  It shows up at 0.9773 ratio to USD on all other currencies, including USD.  If someone sell in one of those currencies, it will be a mixed currency trade against that currency, not USD, which means the trade will happen at a price better than 2.5% below best USD bid.  Best ask are close to 1 for all currencies due to an ask in one currency (possibly GBP here, haven't checked) which is far below the best ask in USD.  This will show up fairly close to the best ask in USD as well.  The round numbers (129.99000 AUD, 11704.00000 JPY) indicates that the ask was placed in this currency.  If it is converted from a different currency, it is unlikely to be this round.  As you see you will usually trade against an order in the same currency.  Mixed currency trades are actually not very common.  Mixed currency against USD is even less common, since many use this as a metric of how the price should be, and bid or ask a little bit better in their own currency to pick up such trades.

There is no fee for anyone.  If someone buy the GBP ask at 75 using another currency, e.g. JPY, she will pay whatever her bid is in JPY.  The buyer gets her BTC at what she bid in JPY, and the seller will receive 75 GBP for each BTC she bought.  MtGox will do the currency conversion internally (at 2.5% comission).  This happens behind the scenes.

yes i understand this is the first penguins in the water issue; however this has been on going for the better part of this year, and one may conclude that there is no corporation willing to do this at this point in time.

but hey if you spend 100 hours and 10K to set this up and make say 100k in profit, it was time well spent...

Just to be clear, you tried to withdraw polish zloty from mtgox to a polish bank account, and it wasn't processed after a month?

Approx a month, i can't check the exact date atm as my iphone is dead (no 2fa). At least 3 weeks less than 5 weeks.

I tested one polish withdraw for 500 zlota and it went through next day. So then i tried larger ones and they are all still pending.

What does support have to say about it?

"We are broke."  ;D

(No, I truly hope this isn't the case, but it's a real possibility imo)

It might also be that they have only limited funds on their Polish bank accound and thus need to make a SWIFT transfer from their Japanese account to replenish the funds. And if they can only send 10 SWIFT payments a day...

this has been covered on other threads,the issue is not with funds, the issue is with their bank in poland from what i recall

How many would you like to buy, how close to Gox price are you willing to pay, and how will you get your payment to the seller?

btcchina price is 522 cny (102 $)

You can come to China to buy Exchange

I may have missed it, but how exactly is this grand plan supposed to work? Funds are stuck at gox. You cannot withdraw USD. You want to withdraw Yen. To sell coins for Yen, you need to find somebody to buy them, paying Yen. Who would that be?

Hes not using USD nor is he from the US, and you can just wire the Yen SWIFT from your Japanese bank account directly to Bitstamp where it will be converted at nearly spot market rate into USD for trading into bitcoins at a 20% profit.

Then transfer bitcoins to gox, sell, and repeat.

Really simple actually.

Yes, you have missed it.  JPY is a convertible currency.  Any other convertible currency, e.g. EUR or USD, will do.

Right, so you need to sell BTC for Yen at gox. How would that work with the current market depth?

Very easy.  MtGox has one orderbook.  (With some currency conversion quirks which can be confusing when you try to understand them, but there is really no need since it is transparent to the users.)  All BTC offered in all currencies are available in all other currencies as well.  The JPY order book is just as deep as the other order books.

Has anyone addressed the obvious question of it arbitrage opportunities have existed for 2 months, why hasn't someone taken full advantage of it?  They haven't because the spread still exists between exchanges, and is growing larger and larger.   

all good by me, if i can get my sepa transfers from mtgox later this week, i'm happy to make 20% :p

You wouldn't waste the opportunity on 10% when 20% is in sight, would you?  Arbitrage bots have a trigger point.  The difference between Bitstamp and MtGox was exactly 8% or below for days, and it seems a higher difference triggered a bot to trade on both exchanges.  The panicing hoardes probably exceeded the financial capacity of this bot, and it ran out of funds, which made the max 8% difference end abruptly.  Expect it's trigger point to be raised when it is funded again.  I'm sure the bot could make profit on 5% or 3% as well, but it would run out of funds faster then and miss better opportunities later.

There is an idiot born every minute, and all of them seems to be busy giving their money to arbitrageurs now.  The amount of money given away is so high, not many people have the capital needed to hold the spread stable.  As more people get into the game, the difference will go down and become more variable with highs during weekends (no new money getting in or out of exchanges, but BTC may move).

The higher the gap the more you make on Arb.   There are some very fishy high sized BTC sell orders popping up @ BTC-e to keep the price down.... they are completely out of context for BTC-e from what i've seen over many months trading.

I thought you were a successful Arber tbh or you just want gox dead?  because you know if gox dies instantly so does a ton of crypto investment.  If the spread is equal many can move out of gox.

Im happy to move out of gox & take my business elsewhere when the price is closer, although im not sure any other trading platform is safer.  I'm not happy if gox instantly dies & governments steals several mil of crypto community investment.  I will look into what you've said in other thread.

So how do you explain the identical trades in opposite direction on MtGox and Bitstamp at exactly 8% price difference for days?
Does writing two arbitrage bots operating in several currencies count as a fraction of knowledge? ;)  Their problem is that they keep running out of fiat on one side, which takes time to move.  Time means the market isn't entirely liquid.  This won't change until all exchanges work as banks as well, with the possibility to borrow fiat and BTC.  There is a fine balance to maximize the profit without running out of funds.  (Which they do all the time – moving funds fast enough is impossible when it has to happen through banks and the markets are open 24/7.)  Arbitrage opportunities can exist in other markets as well, for a relatively long time, when the market isn't entirely liquid.  E.g between stocks in the same company on different exchanges operating in different currencies when currency rates fluctuate.

Nope.  Those arb opportunities, in traditional markets, only occur for a fraction of a second.  There are no long arb opportunities unless there is something broken with the market or with liquidity.  In the case of Gox you are looking at both.  As for your example of currency rate fluctuation, arb opportunity is taken advantage of near instantly.  Just because your arb bots are running out of cash due to your low cash flow, doesn't mean that there isn't someone with millions of dollars of liquidity who could take advantage of the arb opportunity before depleting funds.  Unless there was no way they could effectively move out their holdings, which I discuss in this thread: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=277455.msg2972810#msg2972810.  The reality is that Gox can't support large outflows of cash, this is proven by the existing spread.  No large player can take advantage of the arb opportunity, otherwise the spread would be 0%.  Therefore, this arb opportunity will exist and spread larger and larger as users on Gox realize that they can't actually cash out large sums.  

When bitstamp overtake as market leader the spread is reduced, look @ a small scale example of vircurex - you cant withdraw USD from here yet price matches bitstamp

Is it possible to withdraw JPY from Gox to a local Japanese bank account which is not in my name? I have a cousin with a Japanese bank account but I have a feeling the name thing may be an issue.

Bitcoin exchanges are not traditional markets.  Traditional markets for currency exchange is banks, and only open during the banks opening hours.  There are plenty long arbitrage possibilities in Bitcoin.  Between exchanges, and even local to multi-currency exchanges.  You do not have to go far from the banks to find arbitrage opportunities which are more risky to exploit.  E.g. my stock example.

I would like to point to this (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=179586.msg2973549#msg2973549) here as well.  Do you really believe Bitcoin exchanges are even remotely close to banks in terms of liquidity?

This is funny, because here (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=179586.msg2966335#msg2966335) you claim it is about lack of trust, not low liquidity.  You even moved the Coinlab rectangle two weeks to the right because the facts didn't fit your theory.

Now, here you have a point.  Due to one of the easiest arbitrage exchanges for buying right now are operating in obvious violation of the law, I don't want to risk much money there.  Neither does anyone else, which you can easily see from the depth of their order book.  Keeping millions of dollars there (unless you mean Zimbabwe dollars) is completely out of the question.  And they don't allow me credit, like the markets you are comparing with do.  This of course limits my own arbitrage possibilities.

Eh?  No.  You are ignoring a large number of facts here.  How much experience do you have with real life arbitrage trading?  Any at all?  Read a little about it on the internet, perhaps?  Not quite understanding all the basics?

Taking out a 0.1% arbitrage possibility in the Bitcoin markets will make you lose money.  Come back when you can explain why.  People have no problems cashing out six figures of USD or EUR from MtGox, and JPY withdrawal has never been limited.  I guess most of them will be careful of placing a six digit amount of USD on an exchange operating on borrowed time to take out a limited amount of arbitrage.

No, the account has to be in your own name.  Your cousin could open a MtGox account, and you can transfer BTC to him for him to sell and withdraw.

Most EUR exchanges, e.g. bitcoin.de and Bitcurex, are somewhere between MtGox and Bitstamp now.  Back up after being on Bitstamp level for a while.  Could be due to the difficulties many have when trying to deposit money at Bitstamp after the flagging of their account.

i have a theory that this actually stabilizing the market until the next run up, sounds perverse ... just when you thought you were out...


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=242H7F8DKHA