Bitcoin Price: Which Countries Have the Biggest Premiums?

gepubliceerd op by Cointele | gepubliceerd op

At the 2017 peak, when the Bitcoin price was trading at around $20,000 in the U.S. spot market, Bitcoin was being traded in South Korea's cryptocurrency exchange market for around 26,000,000 Korean won, equivalent to about $22,000.

Hong Kong's OTC Bitcoin market: 2% to 4%. Following the prohibition of cryptocurrency trading by the People's Bank of China, local banks in China were ordered not to work with local Bitcoin exchanges to prevent individuals and businesses from trading digital assets.

Over time, the government of China also ordered payment processors such as AliPay to stop processing Bitcoin exchange-related transactions, according to report form Chinese blockchain publication 8BTC. But reportedly, individual investors have continued to invest in Bitcoin after the ban.

The premium on Bitcoin emerges when investors exchange USDT that they use to buy or sell Bitcoin for HKD, similar to most peer-to-peer OTC markets.

For spot or brokerage buys, which involve a direct wire transfer or a transaction through a payment processor directly to the exchange, there is a premium of 3.59%. On BitFlyer's brokerage, the price for Bitcoin buys is estimated to be 936,621 Japanese yen, which is equivalent to $8,635 - nearly $300 higher than the global average spot price.

On ChileBit, the Bitcoin price is being traded at around $8,374, with a 0.34% premium and on FoxBit in Brazil, the Bitcoin price is trading at $8,440, with a 1% premium.

Apart from small cryptocurrency exchange markets with relatively low liquidity, strictly regulated products that are often utilized by institutional and accredited investors to invest in the Bitcoin market consistently demonstrate substantially higher premiums.

The Bitcoin Investment Trust which oversees close to $2 billion in assets and enables institutional and accredited investors to invest in Bitcoin through a regulated OTC exchange in the U.S., has a share price of $9.81.

Based on the $9.81 share price of GBTC, each Bitcoin bought through the Bitcoin Investment Trust would be worth more than $10,000.

Based on the current price of Bitcoin at $8,300, GBTC indicates a premium of over 20%. Investors pay higher premiums for products like GBTC and exchange-traded products because they rely on third parties to secure their Bitcoin holdings.

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