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What I Learned from Arbitrage Trading Ripple XRP and Failing Miserably.
If you are familiar with the cryptocurrency world then you have probably heard of Ripple’s XRP by now. This centralized coin provides blockchain software for banks and it has been adopted rapidly in Japan and South Korea. Over the past few weeks it has outperformed all major cryptocurrencies and has forced itself into the market cap leaderboards, recently ousting Ethereum as #2.
As I write this article, XRP is currently trading around $1.92 on American exchanges such as Binance and Bittrex. If you look carefully at international markets, however, you will see that Korean exchanges are currently hovering around $2.50 per coin — a 30% increase.
Let the scheming begin.
What’s preventing me from buying XRP on Binance and sending it to Bithumb, one of the leading exchanges in South Korea? With a 30% difference I could make enough to pay the transaction and currency conversion fees and still come out with a profit! So I open an account on Bithumb and begin plotting my path to cryptocurrency domination.
Step 1 — Opening the Account
Bithumb’s software immediately recognizes that I am logging on from an American IP address, so they present me with the English version of their site. Perfect, this…