Just thought I'd point out the current CNY USD rate , per today according to http://www.bloomberg.com/quote/USDCNY:CUR , to dispel any notion that the chinese exchanges are not running at a +$25 differential to the western exchanges as a result of a not updated exchange rate on bitcoinwisdom and whatever other btc price trackers are being used - yes it's true the CNY has devalued somewhat the past couple days/weeks , but , they are indeed trading at ~$350 USD per current spot rate (2215 / 6.3174 = $350.62) at time of this post. The CNY would have to be devalued by roughly 9% additionally VS USD (a rate of 6.8154) to be considered to be trading at an equivalent price. Since a 9% devaluation overnight of the CNY is highly unlikely to say the least , it's up to the western exchanges to catch up at this point to their $350 (or at least we should have pretty good justification not to dump alongside the chinese exchanges , which are in fact most certainly already trading at a significantly higher rate).
Despite this, the exchanges seem to move in lockstep, which is weird.Agreed - very very strange to have such a huge discrepancy , at almost a double digit % difference , and yet still each $ amount up or down on the huobi and okcoin rate seems to instigate an immediate same $ amount up or down difference elsewhere. Think I'll now bother to get around to go ahead and setup an account with either huobi or okcoin , figure out the most efficient means of changing CNY to USD and getting it back into BTC (btce? another forex exchange? suggestions on best way to change cny to usd?) , and slush as much arbitrage back and forth as my funds will allow for (and frankly I'm baffled as to why everyone isn't doing this already - surely such a discrepancy is far greater than exchange rate fees to convert CNY to USD and move it back into an exchange to buy more BTC at current USD rates per stamp finex coinbase btce). I would have expected the gap to be closed much faster with a loss on the chinese exchanges and gain on the western exchanges by now , resulting in a "true" rate of something like $340 from where we are now after ~$10 down ~$10 up respectively.
That's called an arb and a lot of people are doing it. If there's a large spread between exchanges that means either 1) The difference is the cost of getting the money into higher exchange or 2) temporary anomaly e.g. when arber's funds run out due to fast moving market. It usually take few days to move fiat back, i say wait till next week the gap should close.
Agree. In a rational market the price differences should account for the cost of movement from one exchange to the other plus risk of market movement meanwhile plus something small that motivates the arbitrators to go through the hassle of making the movement