This simply doesn't make sense, and buyers beware.
If you can make money with 0% risk, you will save the money for yourself. You'll invest all your money (it's 0% risk, right?) and then re-invest your earnings.
I suspect that this approach gets far more scalable with larger reserves due to transaction fees. It's probably also safer/easier to risk clients' capital than your own.
Also, does each user operate under the same settings?
Seems like more users = less arbitrage opportunity because we're competing against each other.
Who gets priority when trading? Or is it more like we're pooling our money for arbitrage, and then each node gets a proportional split based on their deposit amount (like a mining pool)?
We don't want to get into too much detail as we are aware of few competitors (though they don't offer their platforms to public but to selected clients instead) but we can tell you that your thinking is on the right track.
Historically we've been able to make up to 8 % profit a month. This is reasonable arbitrage profit - anyone claiming to make more is probably fraudulent, so beware.
I can't answer the pooling question but will tell you that we make sure it's 100% fair for all users.
* if there was a profit to be made for free, why wouldn't they invest their own money and take the profit themselves?
* as soon as enough people are arbitraging, the market prices will tend to the same equilibrium price. Buying in the cheapest place will push the price up and selling in the most expensive, down.. until equilibrium (same price)! There will be no profit to be made, but to the ones providing the arbitrage service
*also you need to take into account friction costs (fees) of moving your capital (non-bitcoin) from exchange to exchange. Those cost must be taken into account of the arbitraging price.
Hey vgrocha, we're realists and sceptics ourselves, so we appreciate the feedback and we'll try to answer your concerns.
1.) The reason for this is very simple. You need bitcoins to make arbitrage happen. Bitcoin fluctuates so much that it carries a large currency risk. This is why none of us has more than a few bitcoins on their accounts - we're not wealthy or reckless people. In order to exploit arbitrage opportunities ourselves, we'd have to buy large quantities of bitcoins to arbitrage them and make profit. Some people on the other hand already have large amounts of bitcoins and don't have much to do with them except watch the price fluctuate. We offer them a better use of it ;)
2. Profit is not made for free - there are risks involved. One simple risk is that one of the bitcoin markets we trade on goes bust. We list all risks on our website.
3.) This is true - there are plenty of people arbitraging the market which is why price differences among markets are already minimal. However when you have a large enough volume of users you get lower fees. It also depends on how good the algorithm you use is. You can check arbitrage opportunities currently out there right here: http://www.cryptocoincharts.info/arbitrage
4.) Yes, we of course do that. Our profits are calculated by subtracting all the fees associated with trading.
Yes, still in beta. We've actually shifted how platform works since then. At first we were holding profits in bitcoins which was was fine as price was either going up or was holding a steady value. Now, with a 70% price drop in the past 6 months we've actually switched algorithms around so our profits are maximised in dollars. This way users make real profit (dollar-wise) regardless of where bitcoin is headed.
If you can make money with 0% risk, you will save the money for yourself. You'll invest all your money (it's 0% risk, right?) and then re-invest your earnings.