Why are Indian bitcoin prices higher than international prices?
This is the exact reason that bitcoins in India are higher. Given a completely free market, arbitrage would almost immediately cause this difference to settle. However due to the restrictiveness of INR itself, and the inability to effectively move INR, BTC/INR is much more expensive relative to some other international markets for BTC. The free market of bitcoin is essentially putting a markup on BTC purchased with INR because the market itself is saying INR has less value than the official exchange rates, likely because of portability of INR itself and the restrictive regulations the Indian government uses to control INR. The demand spike in India follows a similar trend in neighbouring China. In the past month, while the dollar strengthened, and the Chinese currency weakened to an eight-year low, the demand for Bitcoin in China increased dramatically. Over this period, the price has surged over 25% to around $740 per Bitcoin on major global exchanges....