How can someone make money while traveling by exploiting differences in exchange rates?
Payments
Asked by Question Bot07/Sep/20141 answer
1 Answer
F
Faisal Khan
Answered 07/Sep/2014
For most countries no. Unless you're taking with you tons and tons of cash. The price differential between two currencies pair would be at best between 0.5% to 3.0%
For for a $100,000 of cash with you, that would yield you with $3000 of income, provided you can take $100k out, and $100k into another country, and safely find a buyer for it at the highest mark. However, now you're left with your profits in non-US Dollar denomination. How will you repatriate the funds back into your native US Dollars?
However, in certain countries, Zimbabwe, Vietnam, Pakistan, Liberia, Ghana, etc. The rates are more favorable for open-market sales (rather than the official rate), you could possible get 5% differential.
That all pales in comparison to say North Korea where the open-market rate conversion is almost x2 the official rate, sometimes x3, no one quite knows that the open-market (read: black) rate for North Korea is.
For more freely travelled countries, Argentina today perhaps provides the best option.
Argentina has 3 rates...
Clearly, you can see if you were to just take bitcoins there and change them, you'd get a rate that would be 60-70% higher than the official rate.
For for a $100,000 of cash with you, that would yield you with $3000 of income, provided you can take $100k out, and $100k into another country, and safely find a buyer for it at the highest mark. However, now you're left with your profits in non-US Dollar denomination. How will you repatriate the funds back into your native US Dollars?
However, in certain countries, Zimbabwe, Vietnam, Pakistan, Liberia, Ghana, etc. The rates are more favorable for open-market sales (rather than the official rate), you could possible get 5% differential.
That all pales in comparison to say North Korea where the open-market rate conversion is almost x2 the official rate, sometimes x3, no one quite knows that the open-market (read: black) rate for North Korea is.
For more freely travelled countries, Argentina today perhaps provides the best option.
Argentina has 3 rates...
- Official Rate: 8.4X Pesos to 1 US$
- Unofficial (Open-Market) Blue Rate: 11.4X Pesos to 1US$
- Bitcoin Converted US$/ARS Rate: 14.X Pesos to 1US$
Clearly, you can see if you were to just take bitcoins there and change them, you'd get a rate that would be 60-70% higher than the official rate.