I run the market maker bot on bter to make money. It provides liquidity but it trades on a spread against bitstamp's BTC price. It has the side effect of also supporting the peg. This isn't false volume in IMHO as even non Bitshares supporters would do this to make money.
Changes I just submitted:
1) config.json now supports new parameters MinBal_Quote, MinOrder, and Base.
2) Logic changed to use all funds in your account up to the MaxOrder parameter with an order no smaller than MinOrder that also does not put the account below MinBal_Quote.
For example if you set MinBal_Quote to 1 and MinOrder to 0.5 and MaxOrder to 5 it would use all the funds in both bitUSD and BTC to submit orders of value 0.5 BTC or greater up to 5 BTC that still leaves 1 BTC of value in both BTC and bitUSD.
Questions for you:
1. do you actually make money? I'm running a market maker bot of my own design on the same trading pair and it's actually been a surprisingly good volatility-hedging machine, but I'm certainly not netting any profits in USD.
2. Are you aware that your bot (I assume it was yours; could be wrong) was offering almost $1000 of a 4% arbitrage opportunity yesterday? If I had had the funds in the right places, I could have sold bitUSD on the BTS exchange, sold BTS for BTC on bter, and then bought your cheap bitUSD with the BTC, earning 4% net of fees. This is a PSA more than anything; I just wanted to let you know that you're frequently offering the world significant portions of your surplus. And, if I keep seeing these juicy arbitrage opportunities, I don't think I'll be able to keep myself from writing an arbitrage bot.