The question everybody is asking but nobody has shared the solution to yet

[joesmoe2012]

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.

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[OhShei8e]

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.

[joesmoe2012]

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....

[joesmoe2012]

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.

[r3wt]

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?

[joesmoe2012]

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.

[r3wt]

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

[joesmoe2012]

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.

[joesmoe2012]

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.

Interesting, the first one is probably a good choice.   Last time I checked with HSBC about international banking I believe they wanted you to have 100k plus on their books for that sort of service.  Or maybe it was 50k pounds as I was looking for options when I first moved to Japan from Canada via the UK.   UFJ is quite good.   Give em a ring.

On the whole scalable thing.  If you guys are talking about building an entirely new service to handle this sort of stuff.  Don't do it in Japan, the banking system is still stuck in the stone age IMO.   Well, just look at the issues Gox is having.

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.

[sturle]

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.

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.

[joesmoe2012]

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.

[sturle]

That's a SWIFT from gox to polish bank account denominated in EURO but in japanese yen (so bank will convert upon arrival).

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

[joesmoe2012]

That's a SWIFT from gox to polish bank account denominated in EURO but in japanese yen (so bank will convert upon arrival).

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.

[BitCoinNutJob]

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 ?

[Nagle]

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."

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.

[joesmoe2012]

Okay, so how do we make this happen?

[Tzupy]

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).

[joesmoe2012]

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.

[BitCoinNutJob]

Just performed an MTGox withdrawal to a Japanese local domestic account.  Lets see how long they are taking now for local transfers. 

let us know ty for update

[bkava]

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.