(Bloomberg) It was after Arthur Hayes got laid off from Citigroup Inc. in 2013 that he stumbled across one of the simplest ways to make money he’d ever seen. He was living in Hong Kong and saw the price of bitcoin across the China border was much higher. He hopped on a bus, opened a China account and started buying low in one market and selling high in the other. “It was too easy,” he says.
The price discrepancy eventually disappeared, but it gave him an idea: He could make more money if he gave others the means to take advantage of similar trading opportunities between countries. So in early 2014, he started the Bitcoin Mercantile Exchange with two friends.
