
Zimbabwean Bitcoin Price Soars to $12,400 - ca98am79
http://www.tokenschedule.com/news/zimbabwean-bitcoin-price/
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Plough_Jogger
Important caveats for anyone interested in this as an arbitrage opportunity:

1\. This exchange is highly illiquid, and has extremely low trading volumes.

2\. Other cryptocurrencies are similarly inflated on the exchange.

3\. Cash withdrawals are only allowed from the exchange to Zimbabwean banks.
These accounts cannot easily be held by non-citizens.

3\. Due to a cash crisis, Zimbabwean banks currently have strict USD
withdrawal limits of around $50 / day.

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6nf
Yea no kidding on the low trading volume. Only 118 BTC in the last 30 days.
The Aussie exchange BTC Markets is more than a thousand times that.

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madamelic
> As the Bitcoin price reaches ever higher, many prospective investors become
> wary of the higher price, making it more difficult for entry-level investors
> to join the market.

I am quite surprised a seemingly crypto-centric news site doesn't know you can
buy fractions of a coin.

Or maybe I misunderstood what this sentence meant.

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dingo_bat
Think of it like when you want to buy a company's stock. If the price has
recently increased by a lot, many people avoid it because they think it is
overpriced. They don't want to risk buying it at this price. It has nothing to
do with being able to buy fractions of a coin.

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6nf
Why would they specify 'entry level' investors then? That argument would
surely apply to all investors, not just the entry level ones.

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xbmcuser
Because people that already hold bitcoin will still be willing to buy. If you
bought bitcoin at $1000 you might still be willing to buy at $8k as that would
still price your avg bitcoin price at $4500 and won't be making a loss until
bitcoin drops below $4500. Entry level doesnt mean your wealth but you being a
first time buyer or entering into the bitcoin market at current prices. Which
means when the price goes down you are going to make a loss.

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schoen
It's not formally economically rational to be affected by history this way.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunk_cost](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunk_cost)

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Grue3
>As the country’s economy grows more unstable, Bitcoin is emerging as the
solution to its problems.

Deflation of the primary currency is not a good thing for economy either.

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hasenj
I don't understand. Why does the exchange price vary across countries? The
whole thing is online.

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thisisit
Lot of reasons - liquidity, risks etc.

But mainly because of something called _counter party risk_. The caveats of
selling a bitcoin on Golix exchange has been stated here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15627972](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15627972)

So the inflated price is in lieu for the risks someone is taking to withdraw
from the exchange.

At $50 a day, it will take more than 8 months to even cash out a single
bitcoin. By the time someone realises the mistake, the price might have jumped
to 15k USD.

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Btcpx
12400 still very low compared to where it will be in a year. This is a
bargain.

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Btcpx
Zimbabwe just ahead of its time. Soon all exchanges will be ay 12400. Where
Zimbabwe leads, the world follows.

