CoinDesk recently reached out to me to ask and see if I had any views on the divergent Bitcoin trading volumes between China relative to the rest of the world.  The piece they ran included a few of my comments as well as some from several other traders and exchange operators, “China’s Market Dominance Poses Questions About Global Bitcoin Trading Flows.”

Readers may also be interested in a few other comments I provided them, a few of which are slightly edited (removed some names and numbers):

• I should preface this by saying that the OTC/off-chain liquidity/inventory is something that is not being factored into most of the overall discussion on trade volume.  I know that all the mining farms in China have liquidity partners (usually with the big three exchanges) and I could introduce you to one in particular who might be willing to talk on the record, or at least give you color.  The reason I mention this is because if you can some how dig up the OTC/dark inventory numbers, the aggregate volume might actually be larger in USD than RMB (at least, that would be my guess).
• To answer your first two questions I think it bears mentioning that there really hasn’t been any new VC-backed exchange that has setup in the US in the past 6 months or so (itBit moved its SG operations to NYC).  Perhaps once the legal issues are more defined this can change.
• In addition to having no fees on trades, I think this short comment on reddit describes some of the internal structural differences at the Chinese exchanges for question #3.
• They’re busily trying to answer question #4 with a variety of value-added services like margin trading and issuing of derivative products as well as integrating with API services and even building out support for mining contracts (BTCChina apparently just acquired a mining pool/farm to do just that).
• As far as your last question, I think it would be fair to say that public/open consumer-based exchanges are centered in China, but based on the OTC numbers that I hear throughout each month, USD is still probably bigger.  For instance, BitPay sells around XXXX BTC a day to its liquidity partners. That’s usually more than ______ does (at least this past summer).  Their daily sales are chopped/sliced up and sold to liquidity partners.  Charlie Shrem briefly touched on this a week or so ago.