https://www.sec.gov/fast-answers/answersponzihtm.html
A Ponzi scheme is an investment fraud that involves the payment of purported returns to existing investors from funds contributed by new investors. Ponzi scheme organizers often solicit new investors by promising to invest funds in opportunities claimed to generate high returns with little or no risk. In many Ponzi schemes, the fraudsters focus on attracting new money to make promised payments to earlier-stage investors to create the false appearance that investors are profiting from a legitimate business.
Why do Ponzi schemes collapse?
With little or no legitimate earnings, Ponzi schemes require a consistent flow of money from new investors to continue. Ponzi schemes tend to collapse when it becomes difficult to recruit new investors or when a large number of investors ask to cash out.
What are some Ponzi scheme "red flags"?
Many Ponzi schemes share common characteristics. Look for these warning signs:
High investment returns with little or no risk. Every investment carries some degree of risk, and investments yielding higher returns typically involve more risk. Be highly suspicious of any "guaranteed" investment opportunity.
Overly consistent returns. Investment values tend to go up and down over time, especially those offering potentially high returns. Be suspect of an investment that continues to generate regular, positive returns regardless of overall market conditions.
Unregistered investments. Ponzi schemes typically involve investments that have not been registered with the SEC or with state regulators. Registration is important because it provides investors with access to key information about the company's management, products, services, and finances.
Unlicensed sellers. Federal and state securities laws require investment professionals and their firms to be licensed or registered. Most Ponzi schemes involve unlicensed individuals or unregistered firms.
Secretive and/or complex strategies. Avoiding investments you do not understand, or for which you cannot get complete information, is a good rule of thumb.
Issues with paperwork. Do not accept excuses regarding why you cannot review information about an investment in writing. Also, account statement errors and inconsistencies may be signs that funds are not being invested as promised.
Difficulty receiving payments. Be suspicious if you do not receive a payment or have difficulty cashing out your investment. Keep in mind that Ponzi scheme promoters routinely encourage participants to "roll over" investments and sometimes promise returns offering even higher returns on the amount rolled over.
Arbitao is not promising a high return on investment. We leave a big margin for error.
Surely, everybody knows how arbitrage at regular exchanges works, but there’s a huge difference between regular exchanges and cryptocurrency exchanges. The cryptocurrency market is not fully regulated and there are substantially greater differences in prices between cryptocurrency pairs at different exchanges. As a result, profits from arbitrage can be much bigger. Multiply this by hundreds or even thousands of different pairs and the profits can be really huge.
The software is working and has been generating steady profit. The capital that the ICO will bring is going to be used for scaling the enterprise so we can cover dozens of new exchanges and thousands of new cryptocurrency pairs. This will results in increase of profits for all investors.
On the other hand, in time, the effect of the massive arbitrage that Arbitao is performing will reduce the price differences on different exchanges and the spread is going to shrink. It may result over time in the daily interest rates dropping as well.
At this moment, and thanks to the initial investors, Arbitao is executing arbitrage operations on 671 currency pairs across 10 biggest exchanges. Since May 16th 2018, Arbitao has already performed over 2.5 million successful arbitrage trades. The whole history is available on the dashboard when you sign in.
When you take all this into consideration, calling Arbitao a Ponzi scheme is completely unreasonable.
Arbitao doesn’t accept investors from the US, so of course it’s not registered with the SEC.