An International Trade Story

In early 21018 an interesting opportunity appeared. The trading value between USDT and Bitcoin on two exchanges started to develop a rather large disparity. These two exchanges; Coinbase (US Based) and OK Coin (South Korea based). At the peak of the disparity there was more than a $1,000 per coin difference in the price. 

I wish I could say this was a story of easy success, but it is quite the opposite. In a rush to take advantage of this disparity I worked with a contact to relocate to South Korea. Though we were able to quickly relocate them, we immediately ran into a slough of roadblocks. The first of these a limitation on the amount of currency that could be sent back to the Unnited States. The second problem was even bigger. The gap began to swing. Once we had someone in place, the bitcoin prices swung wildly. It could have been because other people noticed and tried to take advantage of the same hole. Suffice it to say one day South Korea was up $1,000, and the next day it was down $500. As you can imagine that was a receipe for disaster.  

In the end we were only able to make about $5-6k on this gap before it closed. It provided a number of lessons for myself and those involved on what it takes to setup interational operations, especially those that involve digital and fiat currency transfers.  We learned many of the issues that exist in the somewhat “Wild West” trading rules around cryptocurrency, and the problems that exist with timing.