Yup, BTC Trader still paying out like clockwork and I have no doubt they will be for many months if not years to come. Why? Because unlike this joke of a ponzi HYIP, they are engaged in legitimate arbitrage trading!
I'd like to quote myself from back on April 3 when I tried to warn people about BTC Arbs and got into an argument with some fool who actually thought BTC Arbs seemed more legit than Bitcoin Trader (who's laughing to the bank now?!):
Some people have done well in BTC Trader because bitcoin had been declining in value or at least staying the same value related to the USD. You put you BTC in and you took out more BTC because of the USD to BTC conversion. Now that BTC has started to rally that game is probably over. You will actually lose BTC if you put BTC in and pull BTC out. That is because they do everything in USD.
There are a bunch of strange things about BTC trader like that. (However, it has stayed in business, I give you that point.)
Strange things:
1) Forcing everyone into USD. (It is great when BTC is declining, but is hurts in a rally.)
2) 120 day lock in periods, that is just very risky and pro-scam, even if they are real and doing real arbitrage.
3) Only doing trading during their business hours in a 24x7 market. Frankly that doesn't make sense and might not be true from the results they post.
4) The gains/losses seemed unrelated to actual arbitrage opportunities that occurred in any given day.
5) Mining contracts and arbitrage? That just seems very strange to mix those two.
What they do have going for them is that they have been in business for months and at least appear healthy. Maybe they will go for months or years. However, with the concerns listed, I still find it hard to believe they are actually doing arbitrage. At least they are not open about what they are doing. Then again BTC-Arbs wasn't open either.
I choose BTC-Arbs because of those concerns and it did turn out to be a bad choice. But with the BTC rally going on and the 120 day lock-in, I would have lost out on BTC-Trader too. Bad timing is bad timing. Only good thing is this wasn't a major investment for me, although I do hope to get a least my 1 BTC investment back.