[notreallyserio]

How extremely odd. Wonder why the values haven't converged? Do people inside the country not have access to this information? What's stopping someone from buying 150 rubles for a dollar and then buying $1.40ish for those same 150 rubles?

[TestSIM1]

I should have perhaps mentioned in the original post:

1$ = 152,3₽ (buying 1 US dollar)

1$ = 85,7₽ (selling 1 US dollar).

Just because you pay 152₽ to buy 1$ doesn't mean you can sell it at the same price. At least banks won't buy it.

According to banki.ru the best price for selling US dollar now is 94,00₽.

Hope that clarifies it.

[notreallyserio]

I see, the friction is in doing the reverse transaction. I guess you could find a buyer outside the traditional markets to complete the arbitrage transactions but that's going to be risky. Thanks for the clarification.

[Andrew_nenakhov]

In times of such turmoil the spread between buy and sell price becomes so vast that it'll shield the exchangers from such schemes.