Bitcoin Forum

Its consistently higher that what the normal currency exchange rate would suggest in Asian countries.

For example if you multiply the USD rate of 1 BTC with the CNY rate, its 1 BTC = CNY 73,600, but exchanges there have it around CNY 75,500.

In other countries in Asia and South America also BTC is more expensive to buy in non-USD currencies than in USD.

Why is this the case?

Less people trading it?

I think it's probably reasonable to assume a 2.5% fluctuation)(or 0m5%) based on exchange fees because there's just less volume and the price isn't in realtime.

If not then maybe too many people are makrrt dumping and not setting limit orders.

You are getting this wrongly. The price of bitcoin differs from one exchange to another, and also fluctuating. The difference is what is confusing you which is as a result of trading volume on individual exchanges.

Across exchanges and P2P sites it consistently tracks the rate on US exchanges and is always 2-3% higher in Asia. Been observing since a long time.

You are comparing three things here:
1. BTC value in USD
2. BTC value in local currency
3. Local currency value in USD

There will always be discrepancies if you do that. Strength or weakness of local currencies against the USD depends on many factors that doesn't necessarily affect BTC.

It's premium and it depends on supply/demand within particular country. For example, when India's central bank announced ban on dealing with cryptos there was huge sell pressure and cryptos were trading at far below their usd price.

In summary: It's safe to assume that less people are interested in bitcoin/crypto in Asia(compared to countries like the US), hence lower exchange liquidity and lower trading volume, which leads to higher price fluctuations due to the lack of liquidity, which could lead to price premiums on Asian exchanges due to the difficulty to arbitrage between Asian and US exchanges.

Concept of law and demand. There are different scale to which bitcoin and cryptocurrency volume in some countries. If the demands can keep up then it will be averaged. Maybe some Asian countries have low demand and the price cant caught with the pace of global and huge market like US and europe.

In our country, the order book also of those buy and sell have a different rate.

It may have something to do with the spread of the exchange, the fluctuations of the local currency's value versus USD, premium on BTC, price adjustments not in real time, less liquidity, manipulation on the exchange, and so forth or a combination of all or some of these factors.

As of this posting, for example, the price of BTC is $10,470 which should only be ₱507,585.60, that's Philippine Peso, at 1$ = ₱48.48. However, if you look at the exchange price in the local coins.ph where people could convert their fiat to BTC, it is at ₱524,170.12.

But I remember doing a few trades with the local exchange coinspro where the spread could narrow down significantly, it was a different scenario, if my memory serves me right. I don't know if it was the delay or lack of liquidity or even manipulation but if, for example, I would place a sell order at $10,500's value in PHP, the price outside may already hit $10,600 but my sell order hasn't been filled yet. The price would then rise at $10,700, for example, and my order gets filled. Also, if I place a buy order at $10,000, for example, and the price outside is already at $9,900, it may happen that my order will not be filled as well. The price would then fall to $9,800, for example, and the order gets filled.

In my opinion these exchange are calculating the price of Bitcoin based on USD value of local currency. Then there is monopoly, in your country there might be less exchange providing local fiat to Bitcoin and Bitcoin to local fiat service. This is why regulation are needed to control such exchanges.

Apart from the fact that there are more demand of cryptocurrency in Asia (most especially Bitcoin) than any other part of the world which obviously will lead to the price of coins in that area been more costly to afford than countries with less demand of bitcoin. Like there was when countries like venezuela and Zimbabwe which aren't located in Asia also recorded a high spike in the prices of bitcoin in their respective regions. The price of bitcoin is just determined by the demand naturally excluding the fact that manipulation are carried out by the exchange providers as some point to favor themselves.

On the other hand, countries not using USD as their fiat currency has a disadvantage as the exchange rate for their local currency could affect what the price of bitcoin is trading at, in a particularly exchange in the country. Example, the official exchange rate of Naira (Nigerian's local currency) per dollars is ~N382 but that's not the case on exchanges like Luno or even Binance. Luno is trading Bitcoin at N470.9 per dollars while Binance is trading at N472.5

Now using the official exchange rate to calculate what the price of bitcoin should be and that of the exchange rate for each exchange, you'll find out it'll be more costly buying on those platforms as,
Luno trades at N4,929,999
Binance trades at N4,946,501 meanwhile (using official exchange rate), the price of bitcoin should be N3,999,158. Calculation was done when bitcoin was trading at $10,469

before jumping into a conclusion you must consider a bunch of things first:

1. depending on where you are getting the bitcoin price from, it can different significantly. for example on a highly liquid centralized exchange like Coinbase price can be $11000 (all numbers are examples to make the point) while on a less liquid CEX it could be $11200 or $10800 and over the counter and P2P trades could be a lot different for example $11800 or $10200.
as a real example you can check localbitcoin price in a country that has no CEX and compare that price with a country that has a CEX and with the price from a CEX.

2. the spread is also important. in previous case if you paid attention i included 2 prices, one is to buy and another to sell to. that is the spread. sometimes when there isn't that much competition the seller can place a sell offer at a much higher price while at the same time buy at a much lower price and make a profit this way. so when you are comparing prices you have first figure out the type of the place then whether you are looking at buy or sell and how much spread there is.

3. it may not look it but the USD/XYZ exchange rate should be accurate, sometimes if you use the wrong value you'll end up with unrealistic results. and do the conversion yourself instead of using a website like CMC!

with all that said, in China (which you are using in your example) the government shut down all CEXes which were also very shady and were laundering money. anybody who wants to buy bitcoin has to either use offshore exchanges or buy it P2P. in both cases the price is always higher because the profit margin shrinks so they have to charge more to make profit when selling bitcoin to people.

It is business. Here in our place exchanges had been put to regulation and that will be subject for tax collection that will be passed on to the consumers. Aside from that another thing to consider is that bitcoin became a business and investmet to other users. The exchange does not earn in investing rather in selling and buying bitcoin. So, they are always winning and never loss money in this process. They just the one to process your oder (Selling and Buying) and they do not involve in holding btc.

Note that the price of all crypto exchange site cant be the same because each exchange dealings are not the same and the Asian exchange site are expected to have more demand than supply.

This is the case of p2p local exchange site which I believe you referring to cause they particularly offer peer to peer exchange service which the price of BTC on such exchange site is determined by the seller actual price not the price of BTC in the market..
You try should to use exchange like bigone or bibox if youre offers from Asia.

In our country, if you want to buy BTC from some of our local exchanges, the rates depends on what local exchanges you choose. like for example you will use coins.ph:

https://i.ibb.co/w6m910D/119985986-332416311197704-4318650301827410617-n.jpg

The price varies whether you gonna buy BTC or Sell, when you buy from them. you gonna add +4% and when you sell it they deducted 4%.

In some other local exchanges, the price are not this high cause the competition is always the case here.

This is because the price of converting a currency i.e, buying and selling is never equal. When one looks up the conversion rate for a currency to another, they usually get the official mid-market rate, in reality; this is just the mid way point between buying and selling.
So, if you're buying BTC from a exchange and paying them in your local currency, there is a high chance they would sell that to buy and hold a hard currency like the U.S dollar in their reserves, hence the increase of +4% to cover expenses.
Exchanges are businesses and put in measures to ensure they make profits.

This! Conversion rates of currencies, especially weaker ones to hard currencies are usually very ambiguous and one would get different wide values depending on what meter they are looking at. The black market rate can vary by up to +10-30% from the inter bank rate (as it does in my country).

There is no fixed prices for cryptos,it only depends on the demand and supply of exchange where you are going to trade.Probably while fiat conversion there will be high fee so traders will include it to cover the fee while making trade orders that is the simple reason why prices are higher.But no need to worry because you are going to get better price while selling as well.

That happens every single time! Even in my local currency, I have seen this trend and I believe it is because the buyer is willing to pay higher price or bullish about it. Usually in p2p platforms like Localbitcoins or Paxful, a higher buy price usually get more visibility among other buyers, so that can be another reason for keeping such higher price. But it's not only in Asian countries, even in Latin American countries, I have seen similar trend. USD is just a single currency to calculate bitcoin's price, it doesn't necessarily have any control over the decision process of bitcoin price. It's just an identifier!

There are big gaps in buy and sell orders of Bitcoin to fiat and fiat to USDT. When bitcoin is dumped, sell orders don't fall at the same rate as of price of BTC on exchanges.
At the same time, price of USDT tends to go higher and higher.

What does it mean? Together, BTC price to fiat and price of USDT in fiat put traders and investors at loss at start.

If they buy Bitcoin with their fiat, they must accept higher rate than on crypto exchanges.
If they buy USDT with their fiat, they must also accept much higher rate than 1 USDT = 1 USD (convert the rate to fiat)

How to avoid the loss? Buy USDT when rate of USDT / fiat is low and keep it to wait for chances when Bitcoin is dumped to buy bitcoin.

In Exchanges there won't be big difference in the price between countries, but on p2p trading platforms user will get to have a difference in price between traders as well as with exchanges. This is all because of different users having different profit margin.

With exchanges that operate within specific country, there won't be much of price difference. Arbitrage trading is possible between exchanges, and majority of the exchanges located in Asia. That might also be the reason why Asian Countries have higher price always.

never think that its based per country but before i think its differ from company to company  . now i know that this issue also happens to other asian countries . high value prices is not new here and not just on cryptos but this applies to all items  compare to u.s and richer country that they sold all items cheaper  .

 on the crypto wallet that i used , the rates are high but some users said that other local wallets have a cheaper rate but im not familiar to it so i didnt switch out  .

Maybe it's because of the double conversion? You're using USD (naturally) to assess the value of BTC in CNY. Perhaps this leads to this difference? I think Yogee suggested a similar thought. I'd also like to see some proof that there's indeed a consistently visible difference. And if we're talking about local exchanges, their price of Bitcoin can include an additional fee, that accounts for making profit when someone buys or sells there. Then again, you were talking about a different type of exchanges, I believe... So there might be a real tendency due to the local market being somewhat isolated and Bitcoin being very actively used in Asia, but I think there's a bigger chance that this tendency is not real, but arises from some assessment mistakes.

Are you sure that arbitrage exists like after calculating the trading fees etc may not be much and withdrawal time etc needs to be consider? This is where the chances start to get slim though at times it may be possible, but that risk factor still exists if market rises or fall during the same time.

I haven't seen anyone mentioning currency controls. In China, Venezuela, Zimbabwe, and basically all non democratic countries (and a few democratic ones too, developing ones) you have currency controls. You can't just send or receive money to/from these countries easily. That's precisely why BTC is popular there, because BTC isn't in a country, it's in a blockchain. That's also why the price is higher, because there is that demand, but no arbitrage opportunities : if I sell my BTC to someone in China, I will have trouble getting that fiat back to me in Europe. Too much hassle, too much bank fees, everything could even be blocked with no recourse for me.

Often this has to do with liquidity and demand. Now in china the difference is still very small when compared to the international aggregated price, however when you look at other Asian, south american, African the premiums can often be as high as 20% for purchases.

These differences are largely owing to a number of factors with most being linked to liquidity. For instance low liquidity in the that country or maybe just on that particular exchange. Also demand for crypto currencies would also be higher in certain countries that impose heavy capital controls and regulations on cross border transfers Iran for instance. While in some cases price differences could be due to weakness/ high inflation/volatility in the local currencies being used Venezuela here.

 Further all these  premiums are also heavily impacted by bull and bear trends. If i recall the Price of BTC in South Africa had reached nearly 30k USD at the height of the bull run in 2017.

Imagine having paid 30000$ each for a few bitcoins just before the crash in 2017 ! Man that would suck so bad !

I'm sure some bitcoiners with the right relations are living off meeting the demand with supply. Right relations to be able to get the money out of the countries where this is difficult.

First of all it's the Demand  secondly in many Asian countries it's actually not so Supported by the government , in the Case of India , the price of Bitcoins is a little higher on the exchange rate , which is due to :
- Many banks being against Bitcoins
- Harder to own cryptocurrencies because in many cases bank will freeze the account if you are dealing in cryptocurrencies.
-High number of users on the most popular exchange thus most of the time they support instant buying/selling which might change the price a little.
- The charges taken by the particular exchange also increases the price .

Maybe it is just a coincidence when you see those prices. There's no fixed amount of bitcoin in any area in this world. But prices really varies on different exchanges, depending on the traders on that platform, they can set their preferred buy/sell of bitcoin. Plus, the fee of the exchange is added to you when you buy/sell bitcoin on any pairs. Exchanges has different trading fees, you should be aware of that.

It's not always higher.

I've compared aBinance to a Japanese exchange Coincheck and when Binance was trading for 10618 USD Coincheck was at 1119900 Yen which is currently worth 10624.
Prices from the time of writing this post.

It's not a big difference just 6 USD which isn't even 1%.
Small exchanges are more volatile so they react violently to every pump.

Is it accurate to say that you are discussing the cost of US Dollars?.
It doesn't make a difference, Since expanding the cost of USD makes everything costly.
In my nation USD cost is higher than other nations and each stuff in my nation is costly. So it doesn't matter if the price is higher or not you'll cost higher when you buy things

Each nation has local reasons for difference (higher) price in Asian countries. Laws, limited access to good exchanges, limited experience in crypto exchanges. Without knowledge and experience, people often invest from advice (group, community, relatives). And they accept any price to make entries when they get investment advice or command from leaders, influencers, KOLs.

Western nation citizens have better knowledge and experience in crypto investment and they less likely accept any price to do entries.

https://www.bestchange.com/ Bestchange is a good exchange to give difference in entry price. Check their ann thread for details and trading guides: Forget about exchanger search! Use BestChange! (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3309245.0)

Funny, I thought the example you'll be giving based on your opening statement will be a scenario where that of Binance would be more costly than your local exchange. I have tried but seems that's unlikely to be the case as at every point I look at the market in my country, my local exchange always trade above other western exchange and it got me wondering what are they trying to achieve.

Initially you would think in order to win back the customers already patronizing foreign exchange that of the local exchange would be less costly and very user friendly to use but that's not the case. Which is probably why Binance and the other top exchanges are more popular than our local exchange even in the country.

The only time, I have witnessed what you tried highlighting was through peer2peer exchange. But when I encounter such offers it gives me a second thought of potential scam attempts.

What I was trying to say is there can be small differences but as long as it's 1% or less it's the same as no difference.

It won't allow you to profit from arbitrage, it won't really be worth it to send your coins there to exchange to a foreign currency and back to your bank.

Many EU and US exchanges have larger price differences within the same fiat currency like USD or EUR.

It's obvious because the Asian country is the most lower value currency compared to the dollar since bitcoin is based on the dollar.

The value of a country's currency was determined by their economic condition, economic growth, foreign trade, and high inflation which is commonly indicator of the currency value.

Therfore, bitcoin in other country like Asian is different from the US if you are there. So now, you can figure out which bitcoin price of each countries are totally different.

I guess it is because compared to the USA bitcoin is not used in some Asian countries a lot making the price a bit higher than the countries that are already exposed to bitcoin technology.

And maybe because the government does not really support this kind of technology yet just my opinion here in my country, they do not really hate what it is just not really support this yet so companies that want to bring this technology to the country would tend to pay high tax one thing is because it is maybe a poor country. So the tax was just high that the company needed to put the market price of bitcoin higher when converting.

So that the company is going to make its profit and at the same time it would be controlled in the country's fiat currency value.

Well, this is completely irrelevant answer among those replies above. Government and the price does not have a correlation.
The main reason is, bitcoin value was based on USD and we have USDT that back by USD value, it should be 1:1 rate. Now, --let us compared Asian country national currency to the USD. For example, the country Philippines where I am live tat part of Asian. The current value as of now is 1 USD= 48.48 Peso. 1 USD is a tiny amount for them but for us, you can buy 1 kilo of rice that enough for you to eat in a day. That is the rellevance the value of bitcoin into Asian countries.

and to add the fact that a lot of local exchanges are taking advantage of their clients. because if you want to convert it to your own local fiat, you need to use their platform. so whatever they are offering as the buy/sell rate of btc, you have no choice but use them. though they are offering no fees, but their rate is higher when you are buying, and much lower when you are selling.
 as youve mentioned also, the conversion rate of your local fiat vs dollar affects this price.

I'am from a asian country and the value is the same here in USD. Maybe, the price is set to high amount because thw custodial wallet abuse it because it has no standard law currently. What you should do is buy, low cheap Bitcoin from other alternatives then resell it there. So its some of arbitrage trading, and you gain profit from it, instead of treating it as a bad luck.

It definitely is the wallets, in my country there is a monopoly in this and the government does not have a clear stance whether cryptocurrency in general is a bad thing. Maybe if there is an introduced competition they can atleast do something to keep their customer base steady.

Price is determined by the market in which it trades: by means of supply and demand. The price may vary from one exchange to another one.

I don't think it's high in my country because they are the same thing which is on the actual price of the coin BTC/USD.

The transaction fee on my country is too high because of the centralized wallet we are using they can easily make some changes with this. Also, they have a large amount of transaction and does not have a fair on buy and selling of the coin.


They are just dominating the use of the cryptocurrency. Also sometimes they don't have enough supporting with the use of it.

I have also noticed this. In Localbitcoins India, if you want to sell Bitcoin, then there are several buyers out there who would pay prices which are very close to the market rates. On the other hand, if you want to purchase coins, you may be forced to pay a markup of up to 5% (I am considering only those traders with good reputation). The same thing can be noticed in other peer-to-peer exchanges as well, such as Localcryptos.

Its surely based on the economic status of the country and sometimes those rates are lowered so that people that render that service can gain profit. Its not easy for them to handle that business since most of their income will come from Cryptocurrency.

It all depends from volumes & demand. If there less sellers for china pairs then they can set higher prices

The most important reason behind this price difference is the stringent regulations in some of the countries. For example, Bangladesh has one of the highest price difference because crypto is banned there. India was almost like that for a while with their banking ban. China, the same, Burma the same. So it creates a lot of ground for the old middlemen to come in and charge an extra premium to exchange the local currency with some digital e-currency that can then be traded for any crypto.

Besides this, even large exchanges operating out of Asian countries have to tackle regulatory issues which just makes transferring fiat out of those countries a living hell.

Why they do it? protectionism. That is a topic for another thread though.

I don't know the case with other countries, because I have only traded for INR. Although it is possible to sell Bitcoins to the international traders, I haven't done that. There are too many issues. They will send the money either to my credit card, or by Western Union. There will be all sort of enquiries from the tax department. But all that said, I don't think that the situation is any different in the other Asian countries.