There was one arbitrage in particular that Bankman-Fried wanted to take advantage of. On exchanges in Japan, Bitcoin generally traded at higher prices than on U.S. exchanges. If one Bitcoin cost $6,000 in the United States, it would go for the equivalent of $6,600 in yen in Japan. In theory, someone could earn a 10 percent return by buying a Bitcoin on a U.S. exchange, sending it to a Japanese one, selling it, and converting the yen back to dollars. That’s an unheard-of return. At that rate, in a little more than four months, $10,000 would turn into $1 billion. The main obstacles to the Japan
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