btc-arbs.com - Update: dead HYIP, Refund progress: BTC-arbs still doing refunds

[stitch]

So, take that for what it's worth. They seem unconcerned with whether people invest with them or not...combined with the fact that they don't advertise, I feel like they're doing what they say they're doing and probably have been, for a while.

How can you say they don't advertise? I regularly visit a lot of bitcoin-related sites, and trust me, their banner ad is everywhere. This was also the impression that got me think twice about it. Anyways, I still have the minimum invest in their pot, and I wish everyone the best (but: prepare for the worst). Also, I have a bet running on when they will take the money and leave, so either way there's a fun part in it I enjoy.

[1714114438]

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[1714114438]

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[FreeJack2k2]

So do I, and I hadn't seen any yet. Only reason I found out about it is because someone I know referred me to it.

I guess it's a little funny to me that people won't bat an eyelash about sending the majority of their Bitcoin to BTC-e for trading, and the same lack of information and transparency exists there that exists with BTC-Arbs. The difference is longevity - BTC-e has been around for a long time and has not run off with anyone's Bitcoin, so people trust them. This site just started a month ago. I guess only time will tell, whether they become trusted. I'm willing to take a little bit of a risk on them, so far they've delivered and somehow, I find their relative lack of concern about whether people use them or not to be somewhat reassuring. I did some research on that PokerByProxy site and they had gone to GREAT lengths to give the appearance of legitimacy, including hiring actors to be in videos (claiming to be the site operators) talking up the site, doing interviews and really pumping it hard. I haven't really seen these guys doing that. They seem to take the opposite tact and just quietly go about their business, and if you want a piece of it, fine...if not, that's fine too.

A healthy amount of skepticism is good, if you are risk-averse, don't put a significant amount of money there...but I've got some appetite for risk, so I'm sticking with it.

[acid_rain]

Thanks Qwiner. It's a great thread you've started here, and it's always had a healthy discussion.

I guess as FreeJack2k2 said, we'll have to bide our time and see. I hope you can all withdraw your profits eventually. Time will tell, and certainly arbitrage at the smaller levels is still doable. I agree that 0.05 is not much of a risk.

I just get my blood boiling when scammers end up destroying the trust in a viable business + also manage to make coin so easily by preying on other people and to top it all off, get away with it. That's the harsh part!

After that rant I went on about earlier, I'm thinking of putting the minimum there too lol. I like how my hands and my head can never seem to listen to each other. Oh well, Feed the Monster I guess.

[ferguson]

acid_rain, what a post, made me hungry for some MilK & Oreo's after reading it all. What are your thoughts about arbitrage opportunities with the other more than 100 coins coming on stage?
http://coinmarketcap.com/

[acid_rain]

LOL ferguson, I'm not sure if that's a good thing or not. That my post made you crave Oreos & Milk.

The problem with the other alt-coins is the same as with BTC. + they have an even smaller volume of trade at the moment. If in the future that changes, then all opportunities arise from those situations. However as with all alt-coins arbitrage can let you profit with a compounded interest effect up until you reach the ceiling i was talking about in the other post. Then once you reach that ceiling, you will see a fixed return from arbitrage.

LTC has a good trading volume also. On coinmarketcap.com it's 24hr volume is $5,949,358 and its price is $15.38 meaning that 387,000 LTC are traded back & forth every 24 hr period between all exchanges combined.

Bitcoin manages to trade around 30,500 coins across all exchanges every day. But that's because of the difference in price (there's a markup of more than 4000% between LTC & BTC) so you could effectively say that BTC is currently 3.15 times more popular to trade than LTC. However recently LTC started getting some momentum probably cause of the hype that some exchanges adding LTC to their repertoire. The trading we're seeing right now in LTC could well go down in a couple of weeks when things stabilize again.

Also NMC, PPC, DOGE have good volumes but for DOGE in order to make a decent sized profit you'd need to look into trading 1,000,000's of doges at least, and still you'd be making only a few dollars on the arbitrage. For NMC & PPC you're looking at buying big batches of 100's of them at a time to make some profit in the region of $10's of dollars after deducting the fees of the exchanges.

My opinion is that LTC has the volume to be a viable alternative for arbitrage at the moment, however you'll need to find the two or three biggest exchanges for LTC and see how their volume per 24hrs is on their own, not as an aggregate across all exchanges (like coinmarketcap.com). But then again, don't take my word for it. I'm by no means a financial adviser and would never claim to be one (at least not on a forum anyway ;P). Trading is all about your own creativity. If you find a good opportunity, take it.

[megatron1285]

lol they closed any logins
Can't login with my account. Password recovery doesn't work too.
I'm very happy I withdrawed my funds yesterday (initially 0.05btc + bonus 0.001btc which covered transfer fee for btc-arbs)

[msc]

lol they closed any logins
Can't login with my account. Password recovery doesn't work too.
I'm very happy I withdrawed my funds yesterday (initially 0.05btc + bonus 0.001btc which covered transfer fee for btc-arbs)

It's working for me.

[megatron1285]

It's working for me.

yep, I finally could login too. Don't know what was that

[stalks]

It is interesting that the reply from SUPPORT had a name of "Adam".

Adam Lyons from notnull.org pool has been pushing this site to its miners via e-mail twice last week. Perhaps he has an investment in this scheme?

Email1: https://i.imgur.com/cK0GIoV.png
Email2: https://i.imgur.com/YB1htGb.png

Me mentions this thread in the second mail. It may be innocent, but I hold back in caution.

[FreeJack2k2]

The writing style is fairly different from Adam on the BTC-Arbs site. Don't think they're the same guy.

[webaddict]

Hi all,
As of this week, I have become an affiliate & investor of https://btc-arbs.com/referral/qwiner

https://btc-arbs.com/banners/btc_arbs_bnr_120x120.gif  https://btc-arbs.com/banners/btc_arbs_bnr_728_90.gif

I. AIM:
I hope that this thread can be:
1. a point of reference & updates for potential & existing investors; &
2. for potential & existing investors to share any negative or positive news about the site

When I picked up any important news, I will edited it on post 1, so that we can pick up any -ve / +ve news of the website quickly. I will put the latest news right below this line.

If you like this post, please help by signing up under https://btc-arbs.com/referral/qwiner. This is greatly appreciated!


IX. PONZI PROOF
The following statements/logics sounded very legible, they are much more legible than the rationale provided by btc-arbs.com. investors/potential investors, please be alert, be careful with your valuable & hard-earned BTC. Perhaps we should pull the plug before they do!
Post # 21:
1. Setting up an office @ Geneva = expensive to operate
2. Converting of BTC to USD b/n exchanges takes some time
3. Daily profits is never NEGATIVE
4. Daily profits is unbelievably HIGH for arbitrage trading (post #25)
>>>> Yes, I agreed that there is a risk involved with this website, but every BTC websites involved risks that U might never SEE your BTC again.

Post# 35: (had also made some v. good points)
5. Assuming daily ROI/profit rate = 2%, with an investment of only BTC0.05, annual (365 days) ROI = BTC68.87041. I try this out with varying amount of investment using EXCEL. For BTC0.01, annual ROI = BTC13.774. The annual BTC we can get from this investment, really sounded like money is growing on trees, and pigs might fly. Unfortunately, "there is no magical formula in this world to make money"
6. Excellent ROI + withdrawal is so attractive, which aim to make us to invest more BTC into the site
7. Creation & maintenance of the website is not for us investors to make money, but for the WEBMASTER.
Investors, with these in mind, we really should pull the plug before they do (post # 30). Or be a "greedy idiot" (post # 35)

U must read the info. in Post #74 - But here is the summary:
Poker by Proxy, (maybe some of U have seen its ads or had been an investors) >> had proven to be a pronzi scheme.
Backup site: https://web.archive.org/web/20131203020947/https://pokerbyproxy.com/
note:
- same type of design/style
- same type of info
- same page names (!!) like /join.html, /results.html, /login.html, /results/2013/12/04.html - as a webdev I can tell you that exactly the same page names on a site is rare - most have at least "register" instead of "join" or no .html suffix. That specific result page /results/2013/12/04.html is extremely rare - almost impossible. You can check this on archive.org by hovering over the link.
- same HTML structure, like (NOTE: /assets/img/ same URLs)
The members area:
http://i1.ytimg.com/vi/1kY24FUzqS4/maxresdefault.jpg
note:
- identical members menu
btc-arbs investors/potential investors, google up 'poker by proxy'.
By the way, these excellent constructive posts, #35 + #74 are contributed by the same person, NLNico. Thank you so much for providing the info. to alerted to us, bitcointalkers of any seemingly reliable investment but is in fact, a ponzi scheme, before things start to crumble.
btc-arbs investors/potential investors, with all these detailed ponzi proof as provided by NLNico, perhaps U should withdrawal your balance (to be safe) / partially withdrawal your investment balance (as to say that "I am not a greedy person") / leave your investment balance or deposit more in (as to say that "I am a greedy person"). But please remembered that, greedy person will always end up with nothing, or worse, heavily in debt.
Finally, I would like to say thank you to bitcointalkers, I did not create a lot of forum threads in my life, but this one is certainly a successful one. As it had attracted quite a good no. of views & replies.   But then, I certainly have spend considerable amount of time & effort in this thread. I hope all of you will have a safe & happy investments

Hello, investers / potential investors, please be aware that, investment @ btc-arbs.com will certainly not 100% safe, as the website claim. So please invest with cautions.

7 March 2014:
For investors/potential investors who wish to a see a detailed analysis / technical explaination (instead of gut feeling), on why btc-arbs.com = truly a ponzi sheme. U must read post # 98 @ p.5


II. PERSONAL OPINION:
Since rbitco.in, I haven't been making any investment with my BTC. Initially, I thought the site was a complete scam, but the site gradually return 90% of my fund to me, but I am not getting any interest or login bonus as promised by the site.
I think https://btc-arbs.com/referral/qwiner sounded legible than a lot of different BTC investments I have seen, and I hope it will not be a scam, most importantly. The site sounded legible because:
1. It clearly explains how the site earn its fund, and distributed to its members. It sounds legible. I am an accounting student, I have learnt some basic theories of finance, one of those was: an inefficient market VS profit, there is a direct relationship between the two. And the BTC / cryptocurrency exchange market is clearly inefficient. As can be seen by the different trading prices across different BTC exchanges. Due to this, I think as long as the market is inefficient, there will be profit for the site and its investor. And I think the daily ROI (Return On Investment) rate is dependent on the degree of inefficiency in the market.
 2. We can withdraw the profits and investment anytime we like. This is very different compared to other investment sites, such sodisfun & leancy. I joined up Leancy, but when I tried to make the min. deposit, it won't allowed me to complete the transaction with such amount.
You can all click on the link below to learn more about the above 2 points  https://btc-arbs.com/referral/qwiner

07 MAR 2014:
LOL, I think for existing investors, for now I think the best strategy to invest @ btc-arbs.com is just to leave the minimal withdrawal BTC in your account, & earn some bits of BTC. As some of us might have earned over & above that no. of BTC anyway, so it might not hurt @ all if anything happen, we'll only lose BTC0.01. But really, we have nothing to lose.



VI. DEPOSIT
Deposit at the site was different to gambling sites, it takes a few hours for your deposits to show up.

There is a minimum deposit for the site = minimum investment = BTC0.05
However, for balance with less than BTC0.05 @ the site, U can still get a share of the site's daily profit/daily returns.

Post #35 - 37: Deposits did take as long as 12 hours to deposit >> certainly takes more than 6 confirmations.

Post#59:
1. Deposits @ this site is very strange, do not just did your deposit & forget about it, U need to go back to the deposit page, & click confirm, otherwise, U will be very very worried, just like Krichwins in this thread.
2. Deposits made to this site is not automatic, it is manually updated by btc-arbs.com. Therefore, deposits will take more than 6 hours to shown up. But I don't know will this depend on the time of the day.

IV. DAILY ROI (Return On Investment)
Response to post #13, absolutely, to earn your DAILY ROI, your balance need to be in your account, before the the ROI rate for the day was announced, for eg. today is the 22/02/2014, & the DAILY ROI for the day was already published, & U make a deposit to your account on 22/02/2014, of course, you won't get any share of today's ROI. However, when 23/02/2014's ROI rate was published, U will definitely get 23/02/2014's ROI rate added onto your balance

This can be viewed by clicking on https://btc-arbs.com/referral/qwiner, then RESULTS, which is next to HOME (on the very top of the page)

DAILY ROI seems to be a popular queries for most readers.
Well, I believed DAILY ROI = (Investment + Accumulated DAILY ROI) X DAILY ROI rate

Hey investors/potential investors, I have less than BTC0.05 in my account, which is less than the site's min. investment amount, but I still got the daily ROI, added onto my account. This is so cool. But don't try to deposit with less than BTC0.05, I don't know if they will credit your account if it's less than BTC0.05. I have raised a support ticket about min. deposit, the admin. did say the min. deposit = BTC0.05

The site will show your (investment + ROI amount) balance with 4 decimal points ie. = BTC0.0000. Any ROI amount that is less than 4 decimal places is ignored or not credited to your account.


X. Registration
Response to post #27, registration is pretty simple, LOW LEVEL of personal info. are required, they do not ask for ID proof.

VII. WITHDRAWAL
Someone is interested about withdrawing at the site
I have no plan to withdrawal at the moment, because I don't have the need to, besides I only have a small investment. Perhaps, visitors of this post might be able to tell us their experience.

This is in response to post #19, Well yes, U can withdrawal, one of my referral told me that she invested BTC0.15 @ the site, then she got up to BTC0.164 over a few days. She then withdrawal BTC0.154. Her account's TRANSACTION HISTORY revealed that her withdrawal was process within 2 minutes. But then the respond time might be depended on the time of the date. I am basing this on the time taken for them to respond to my support ticket, sometimes very fast, sometimes take a few hours.

Response to post #28, TICKED, unlike most gambling site, btc-arbs.com do not charged any withdrawal fees. My referrer also did not reported any withdrawal fee


VIII. btc-arbs.com's BACKGROUND
In reponse to post #15, yes I have noticed. I don't know, and also did anyone seen btc-arbs.com's ad in DEC or JAN. I have been seeing heaps of btc-arbs.com in FEB.
As to the RESULT's history I don't know why there are nothing for the past months. I wonder when we reached MAR, probably the FEB results will still be there.

Here are more facts that deviate from what btc-arbs.com had claimed: http://www.statscrop.com/www/btc-arbs.com
The linked revealed that:

• the site is only about one month old
• that its server location is in Malaysia, not in Switzerland, they claimed their office are in Switzerland, & yet they host their server in Malaysia? Hm, very suspicious

Hm, This site's credibility is highly fishy, perhaps is much safer to stay away from the site! Why would they lied about the site's age & location? I am very scared right now, with my funds deposited with them. How can I trust this site anymore?

I am now raising a support ticket relating to the above concerns, & see what they will say about this!

BTC-arbs had responded to my support ticket. Here is their response: https://www.dropbox.com/s/7yb0nlz4d52to8h/BTC%20Arbs%20-%20Message.pdf
Do their explanation sounded reasonable to you? I think it sounded OK! What do U think?


III. MINIMUM INVESTMENT
Re: What is the min. investment?
----------------------------------
Qwiner on 18/02/2014 10:19:26
The home page it says: 0.25 BTC          On FAQ: 0.05 BTC
----------------------------------
From   administrator
Sent on   February 18th 2014
We recently changed this. The minimum is now 0.05. Our homepage will soon be updated.
(Sorry about this, but I don't know how to do screenshot, and url link won't work, if u don't have access to my account.)

This is good news for us, as you can start to invest from as low as 0.05BTC, to minimise loss, in case anything bad did happen. Please do note that min. withdrawal is 0.01 BTC.


V. CAUTION
OK, warning all, as with any investment, there is a risk that U will lost your investment, so just be prepared for the worse (such as the owner of the site is a scammer), if U don't like to take risk, then don't invest. I will not be endorsed & be held liable by any loss, resulting from my post. So be warned & invest at your own risk.



II. PERSONAL OPINION:
Since rbitco.in, I haven't been making any investment with my BTC. Initially, I thought the site was a complete scam, but the site gradually return 90% of my fund to me, but I am not getting any interest or login bonus as promised by the site.

I think https://btc-arbs.com/referral/qwiner sounded legible than a lot of different BTC investments I have seen, and I hope it will not be a scam, most importantly. The site sounded legible because:
1. It clearly explains how the site earn its fund, and distributed to its members. It sounds legible. I am an accounting student, I have learnt some basic theories of finance, one of those was: an inefficient market VS profit, there is a direct relationship between the two. And the BTC / cryptocurrency exchange market is clearly inefficient. As can be seen by the different trading prices across different BTC exchanges. Due to this, I think as long as the market is inefficient, there will be profit for the site and its investor. And I think the daily ROI (Return On Investment) rate is dependent on the degree of inefficiency in the market.
 
2. We can withdraw the profits and investment anytime we like. This is very different compared to other investment sites, such sodisfun & leancy. I joined up Leancy, but when I tried to make the min. deposit, it won't allowed me to complete the transaction with such amount.

You can all click on the link below to learn more about the above 2 points  https://btc-arbs.com/referral/qwiner

BTCBTCBTCBTCBTCBTCBTC We all want more of it BTCBTCBTCBTCBTCBTCBTCBTCBTCBTCBTCBTC
[/size]

Hey Qwiner,

I really wanted to thank you for giving a good analysis on BTC-arbs. I was very close to sending a full BTC and after the Poker comparison, I think I'm just fine keeping by BTC. If you'd like to be tipped in a specific coin, send me a PM and I'd love to send some your way.

[NLNico]

You are welcome.




:X

[mystix]

 
What say you?

Thanks for taking the time to read this

The analysis was good on the Ponzi scheme up to a point, but the thinking was too limited. The assumptions in that post are based on the idea that you musst be exchanging BTC for fiat in order to be doing the arbitrage. Certainly that is possible, and since BTC arbs has account slots for BTC and $, a good assumption that this is being done. It isn't necessary or even likely in my mind that that is all thats being done.

As far as BTC itself is concerned, all thats necessary is a means of transport between 1 exchange and another. To most of us, in most markets that means would be the $, but in a world where nearly a hundred different coins exist on different exchanges, its certainly not the only possibility.

Ive often used the features of 1 currency, usually faster transaction times, to transport BTC from one exchange to another. I have at times used that transaction to make money. If that were automated through scripts to work at the push of a button instead of manually calculating and entering the actions as I have done, it would be even more effective.

At this moment there is a spread of $616.94 $618.999 and $624.42 between the main exchanges on BTCwisdom. In this 1 instant today we're looking at an almost 1% difference. Given 50% for overhead as an easy guess for general business practices were talking about a need for BTCarbs to produce 3-4% per day in positive margins to be able to give out that .5-2% gain we see in the accounts. With transport fees figured in they could likely make this happen in perhaps 12 transactions. Smaller would be easier on the markets themselves, while larger would be more efficient for dealing with fees. There again I think the use of alternative coins for transport seems more likely as some of those transaction costs are quite small compared to BTC or converting to fiat.

The use of multiple currencies, and multiple coins also greatly blunts the argument that any use of arbitrage would tank the market from huge transactions. Split that transaction set up 100 different ways, across multiple exchanges, and across multiple coins. You could easily 'hide' quite a large volume of movement that way. I'm not inferring they hide them to avoid detection here, but rather use hide to indicate a lack of disruption at the exchanges used.

How they're doing it on the $ side.. I dont really care to think about that much, as I don't do that myself. On the BTC side though getting a 1% gain would be quite feasible. Getting multiples more then that would be feasible even for me, but the time necessary to develop that automation would not be insignificant. I'm happy to pay them to do it for me.

Now with that said, I don't have a lot of BTC tied up there either. About .5 BTC. I wouldn't even have that much there if I hadnt done my own calculations to see that its doable though.

[stitch]

I agree: The arbitrage could be done the way they claim. In times of high market fluctuations there are even much higher opportunities (up to 6% after fee substration). But still, I think their trick is to claim they do something that is possible in principle. Why has it to be legit just because it's not obviously a scam? The poker proxy website thing that has been mentioned in this thread is proof enough for me, even if some people here say 'well, maybe it's the same website template', do not forget the pages even have nearly the same contents (USD and BTC, results and blog entries), and the new one came up just the moment the old one died. Honestly, I am also exited by the daily profits and stuff, but who could seriously argue that all this is just coincidence?

[supersajin]

Interesting concept.  I'll throw some coin into the hat and see how it goes.  Daily % is average, Leancy is the best @ 5% daily but it's always good to diversify!!!

[nightengale]

A relative has had good experiences for the last week or two with this, and passed along this website. I'm on the fence, but have a little appetite for adventure. Won't "invest" more than I'm willing to lose, but an argument can be made both ways as far as the "scam" accusation goes. Only time will tell. I just have one more question -- and I'm throwing this out there not to be a prick, but for legitimate discussion...

If there's no profit in arbitrage opportunities, then why does SecondMarket have an "11-person Bitcoin trading team"?

http://finance.fortune.cnn.com/2014/02/25/secondmarket-bitcoin-exchange/

[virtualreality69]

I had a few bucks in btc-arbs.com for a week, but the return really isn't worth the risk, and I withdrew everything this morning.   They claim UP TO 10%, but it hasn't been remotely close to that ever. I think the biggest day they had was only 5%.  At that rate (highest single day) of return you're looking at minimum of 20 days (realistically closer to 40+ days ) to gain the interest of your initial investment.

If I'm going to gable any amount of money based on interest I'm going to go with something with a fixed rate (9%+) like barclaysclub.com.  Even if their website is twice as sketchy, if they hand out a guaranteed 9% I'm looking at only 11 buisness days to make back (free daily withdraws) my investment.  Even if they run away with my initial investment at the end of day 12 I'll have made it all back +9%.

In summary: btc-arbs.com may look good on paper (up to 10% returns daily), they rarely have good returns, and they charge a btc fee per withdrawal.

"Invest" (i.e gamble) your money safely and never invest more than you're willing to loose.

- VR
I am in no way paid by or working with/for Barclaysclub.com or btc-arbs.com

[FreeJack2k2]

I had a few bucks in btc-arbs.com for a week, but the return really isn't worth the risk, and I withdrew everything this morning.   They claim UP TO 10%, but it hasn't been remotely close to that ever. I think the biggest day they had was only 5%.  At that rate (highest single day) of return you're looking at minimum of 20 days (realistically closer to 40+ days ) to gain the interest of your initial investment.

That's what makes them more legitimate, in my eyes...not every day is going to have a great opportunity for arbitrage. However, they DO use the days (like today) where the exchanges are very close to each other, to rebalance their accounts and prepare for the high volatility days, without needing to wait for wire transfers. So that ends up being a positive. I have seen them miss the chance to capitalize on opportunities because a bunch of cash was tied up in wire transfers.

Where else can you put your Bitcoin where you'll see any kind of passive return? Even if you only managed to average .5% a day, that's better than any savings account you'll find.

[mystix]

Went to look at that Barclay's club site... Ow, my eyes. Can tell its got some Russian influence thats for sure.  

Anyway.. The interest difference isn't as great as it first appears. 9.5% is promised. Within the FAQ you see that its 9.5% every business day. BTC-arbs works 7 days a week. So the interest is still greater on the Barclays site, but its not 10:1. Averaged out its more in the range of 5:1.

[dyask]

Went to look at that Barclay's club site... Ow, my eyes. Can tell its got some Russian influence thats for sure.  

Anyway.. The interest difference isn't as great as it first appears. 9.5% is promised. Within the FAQ you see that its 9.5% every business day. BTC-arbs works 7 days a week. So the interest is still greater on the Barclays site, but its not 10:1. Averaged out its more in the range of 5:1.

What site is that?  (URL please)