Why as much as 6% difference on exchanges for the price of BTC

[Anti-Cen]

GDAX has price at $15,401 and YoBIT $16,249

Yes i know GDAX tends to have bigger trade amounts but the gap between the two seems high
so why is that and why can I not just buy on GDAX and then sell on YoBIT and be left over with
a profit.

[1715494423]

1715494423

[1715494423]

1715494423

[1715494423]

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[stompix]

Demand and offer, simple as that
In the past BTC-e used to have lower prices as people there wanted to get rid of coins fast and using it more to cash out than really trading while bitstamp was more bullish.

What you're trying to do is called "arbitrage"
There are already tools for this on the net and lots of people try to do it

http://bitcoin-.com/#arbitrage
https://cryptocoincharts.info/arbitrage

The trick is to get your coins and fiat in time to the exchange and not miss the gap.
Delays might turn your profit to 0 or even worse.

[chiggz]

This way of trading is called Arbitrage trading. It is possible to make profit with this but doesn't always work. Since different exchanges are from different countries, the supply and demand price is based on that country. People usually exchange within their currency. For example the price of Bitcoin is $18000 in India when its $15000 in Bitfinex. If you send BTC from Bitfinex to Koinex (India) You can convert the BTC only to fiat (INR). Now if you try to buy some other coin with the INR you got form the BTC, it will also be higher priced like BTC. So you won't be making any profit sending it back and forth.

Also now a days the BTC withdrawal times and confirmations will make up for any price difference making it harder to arbitrage.

One last way is having a guy in another country and cashing out in one more with higher price and sending the profits by wire transfer or other method. But this also will lead to a lot of complications.

[BrewMaster]

the weird thing here is that Yobit price is "higher" not just different but higher! where it should have been so much lower. the btc-e that stompix said used to be the same, in fact yobit and btc-e share the same deposit methods with nearly the same fees (eg 3% perfectmoney), but btc-e used to be lower.

i was actually watching the price on yobit yesterday and at some point the difference was more than $3000! price fell down to $10,300 more or less but on Yobit it stayed above $13500

the only explanation i can come up with is that there were nobody left there to sell any bitcoin for fiat despite them reporting ridiculous amount of volume (it was about 700BTC!)

[likeBTC]

Because each one of them have their own supply / demand , but they all have always the same rate  but with different movements because of the people that is constantly buying/selling at that moment.

And you can make profit if you buy in the cheapest one and then sell on the expensive one, this is called arbitrage.

[inanilujimi]

this is common
because each different exchage different sellers and buyers offer.
and each exchange will try to match the price with another exchagne.

[GreenBits]

GDAX has price at $15,401 and YoBIT $16,249

Yes i know GDAX tends to have bigger trade amounts but the gap between the two seems high
so why is that and why can I not just buy on GDAX and then sell on YoBIT and be left over with
a profit.

liquidity, and platform features.

gdax is connected to coinbase (apparently folks dont know this, I found out today). so, you get the wonderful functionality of coinbase in regards to fiat (it is a very easy process to convert btc to fiat, or the inverse on coinbase, if you have a bank account attached). Yobit allows you to load fiat (I believe), but is not nearly as quick, user friendly, or trusted (most important) as CB/GDAX.

Hence, a "dollar" hosted on the one platform (CB) has a higher value that one on a less trusted exchange (Yobit).

It reflects in the BTC/ETH/LTC/XRP prices on the platforms.

[sopromat]

It depends on the volume that the platform has, It is not the same trading on GDAX than in a random exchange from another country that no one knows (specially the 3rd world countries, no offense)

GDAX is always pricing bitcoin much more higher than the actual price that is on bittrex or binance, and you can make a huge difference between those exchanges, but the fees are going to eat all the profit that you could make.

[Anti-Cen]

This way of trading is called Arbitrage trading. It is possible to make profit with this but doesn't always work. Since different exchanges are from different countries, the supply and demand price is based on that country. People usually exchange within their currency. For example the price of Bitcoin is $18000 in India when its $15000 in Bitfinex. If you send BTC from Bitfinex to Koinex (India) You can convert the BTC only to fiat (INR). Now if you try to buy some other coin with the INR you got form the BTC, it will also be higher priced like BTC. So you won't be making any profit sending it back and forth.

Also now a days the BTC withdrawal times and confirmations will make up for any price difference making it harder to arbitrage.

One last way is having a guy in another country and cashing out in one more with higher price and sending the profits by wire transfer or other method. But this also will lead to a lot of complications.

Both exchanges to cross trade i looked at use USD or it looked like that to me on the surface of it so I thought
you would just send USD$ direct so they could not skim off the top to one exchange and then use say the ETH network to
shift your Buy/Low/Sell/High coins over to the other exchange and sell back into USD  

I suspect what you say is right because Coinbase held GBP for me but to get the money back in my bank it
was sent via SEPA and that uses Euro so it needed converting at both ends and that cost comes out my pocket.

Thanks guys, some very good answers here

[Anti-Cen]

this is common
because each different exchage different sellers and buyers offer.
and each exchange will try to match the price with another exchagne.

Yes Bid/Ask and both exchanges had a small spread down to about the last cent so orders were flying
out the window as they became matched and both were priced in USD and yet at times they were out of
sync by $500 or more per BTC so yes they matched the buyer/seller to get paid in fees but they are miles
out on matching exchanges.

Prices on GDAX are being driven by computer programs using a type HTF
because you would see something like this for BTC

14.26100000 $15,4321
13.28100000 $15,4321
11.22100000 $15,4321
10.20100000 $15,4321
 4.20100000  $15,4321
OK no one buying big amount at this price so try again
14.26100000 $15,4319
13.28100000 $15,4319
11.22100000 $15,4319
10.20100000 $15,4319
 4.20100000  $15,4319

The other exchange did not seem to be doing any of that

[Captimiz]

Some exchanges like localbitcoins allow you to convert physical cash into bitcoins. This offers the person converting the money peace of mind as its very unlikely that physical cash being converted to bitcoins can ever be traced back. But, some other exchanges require identity confirmation and as such. Some people prefer anonymity and the peace of mind that comes with it and are willing to pay a little bit extra for that. Having said that, the difference between many of the competitive online only exchanges aren't that big.

[Anti-Cen]

Some exchanges like localbitcoins allow you to convert physical cash into bitcoins. This offers the person converting the money peace of mind as its very unlikely that physical cash being converted to bitcoins can ever be traced back. But, some other exchanges require identity confirmation and as such. Some people prefer anonymity and the peace of mind that comes with it and are willing to pay a little bit extra for that. Having said that, the difference between many of the competitive online only exchanges aren't that big.

Yes we have one of these in the UK where small seller sell direct to buyers
bitbargain.co.uk/buy
if selling you have to pay them a registration fee of about $90 and it seems to only have
a about ten sellers but i thought it was a manual type system were they set the price in the
morning as off they go to work.

My evil mind had the plan of front running them and buying from them if the live price
shoot up before they noticed it but alas it was not to be, prices are linked to live prices
and go up or down during the day.

Longer term we should be buying or selling back to cash using what we call miners today
instead of brokers even if we have to have a 3rd party a bit like ShapeShift to deal with USD/GBP
payments and then these miners could offer a useful service instead of earning money from a
pointless race not that we would need 200,000 of them

"the difference between many of the competitive online only exchanges aren't that big"

I've seen over $700 difference on a single BTC today between two exchanges but i grant you that one being GDAX is
ten times bigger than the other one.

[Kalatas]

Bitcoin have 6% differences because of some people lack of knowledge and lack of openess for the bitcoin.  Simple like your sharing the best currency and future investment of money but they dont accept it as privilege. They are wasting time for giving them the knowledge.