pirateat40's end game

[curious]

OK guys, so I wanted to post this in the bitcoin discussion forum, but I can only post things here right now.

I'd like to start a discussion about pirateat40 and his 2 projects: GPUMax and Bitcoin Savings & Trust
He may be just a very smart person that happened to be working on 2 very ambitious projects, but something just doesn't seem right about pirateat40.

Who is buying mining shares for PPS*1.4? Why would anyone do that? Pool hopping is not that profitable anymore, right? Why doesn't pirate disclose the reason for these purchases. How is pirate making >1% a day the money he borrows? If he really is legitimately making so much money, why give 7% interest/week when his closest competitor is giving 3% interest/week. And most banks have money with pirate to be able to pay out that much. There's ton of people waiting to give him money, so wouldn't the right business move be to lower interest rate and make more money? I've learned that if something seems too good to be true, it generally is. Could this be a long con? Or is he actually making honest money with these 2 projects?

Here's what I'm getting at, what if his end game is to kill bitcoin? What if the fed decided that they want to put an end to bitcoin before it becomes a bigger threat. Think about it. If you were trying to kill bitcoin, what would you do? You'd want to do a 51% attack to shatter everyone's confidence and at the same time pull off the biggest bitcoin heist ever. If mining hardware costs $1 per mhash, to match the total network hashrate of 11 thash, you would need to spend $11 million. Wouldn't GPUMax be the cheaper and smarter way to do the 51% attack? You need to convince 51% of the network to use it. PPS*1.4 would do it. And to convince people that it's not malicious, only allow purchases to mine at specific pools. But what's to prevent pirateat40 from one day use all that mining power maliciously? So how much does it cost to pay half the network 40% more on the earnings 1/4 of the time (i'm assuming there's only public work 1/4 of the time)? 7200 btc are mined a day... so 7200 * 1/2 * .4 * 1/4 = 360 btc or just $1800/day. Run that for a year, and it's only $657,000. And that's if he has half the networking hashrate, which hopefully is not close to yet. So this is a lot less than the $11 mil that would be needed to buy mining hardware. Trick bitcoin miners into attack their own network... brilliant!

So now how do you make 360 btc a day? You can either spend your own money or start a HYIP. So build up bitcoin-otc to have people trust you then start lending money at 1% interest a day and use people's deposit to pay the interest and the money needed to keep purchase on GPUMax. Keep growing the total loan amount so you have enough money but keep the growth contained so that you don't pay too much interest. And build up hype by making it hard for people to deposit money with you.

This scam can probably last until he gets 51% of the mining power. Then use whatever money is left in the BTST accounts and do a 51% attack against mtgox and other exchanges at the same time. Then disappear with all the money. Will bitcoin survive this?

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[PatrickHarnett]

Interesting (commenting to sub).

51% attacks are against the chain, rather than the exchanges, but doing so isn't a profit maximising activity as they show up pretty quickly and the movement of actual money isn't as easy as coins.  There are better ways of extracting maximum coins than that.

Also, if you wanted to do some research, you can work out who the person is in less than a minute (I re-did it now and it took about 5 seconds.)

edit: I note you've been registered about 12 hours.  Did you read the 40+ pages in the pirate thread where most of this has been discussed before?
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=50822.0

[Raoul Duke]

Hi, curious, I found curious enough that you say his closest competitor is only offering 3%/week...

Have you stoped to think that maybe his closest competitor is not as much a competitor as you think he is and is most likely also an investor in BS&T, hence the % cut?

[terrytibbs]

Hi, curious, I found curious enough that you say his closest competitor is only offering 3%/week...

Have you stoped to think that maybe his closest competitor is not as much a competitor as you think he is and is most likely also an investor in BS&T?

You only strengthen his point.

[Raoul Duke]

Hi, curious, I found curious enough that you say his closest competitor is only offering 3%/week...

Have you stoped to think that maybe his closest competitor is not as much a competitor as you think he is and is most likely also an investor in BS&T?

You only strengthen his point.

Strenghten his point or not, if that was what he tought then he wouldn't even mention "the closest competitor" or would've laid it down from the beginning like it is.
Or do I understand it wrong and he isn't even trying to make a point but instead just trying to figure out how someone can make so much money when he obviously can't himself?

Also, whatever. Nobody but Pirate himself has the answers to all that, and if anytime he wished to give them I bet he would give them to his depositors first and not to some jealous nobody who just dropped from the sky 12 hrs ago to start questioning other persons honnesty.

Also, if someone wishes to question Pirate about his business they can go do it on his threads. There's no need to start spreading FUD on the forums by opening new threads about HIS businesses.

I'm starting to see a pattern here...

I say that the user curious is nobody else but some MPOE-PR sockpuppet... Remember that MPOE is trying to short PPT.X bonds.

[MrTeal]

How vulnerable would the exchanges be to a 51% attack stealing BTC for sale? If Pirate defaulted BS&T and proceeded to fulfill all the bids at MtGox, would he actually be able to get the USD out of MtGox into his account before they froze the system? MtGox has shown a willingness to go back in time before.

[P4man]

Im not quite buying the OPs conspiracy theory, but  I admit I got no better answers to his most pertinent questions either, and Ive been wondering for quite a while.

Another issue to add to the list, is that shares offered for sale outside gpumax dont seem to attract anything like the rates GPUmax gets. If there is such a market for hoppers/gamblers/pool testers wanting to buy shares at 150% PPS or more, why arent they bidding on contracts like the one in my sig and other similar ones?  Apparently gpumax offers those buyers something that regular miners cant. I just cant see what.

Lastly to throw some oil on the fire, a quote: "GPUMAX is something much bigger that it appears and until that information is public all i can say is wait for it."

None of that proves its evil or a scam, let alone a government front to destroy bitcoin, that seems rather far fetched;  but I sure am curious what it really is.

[Raoul Duke]

P4man, if you follow GPUmax thread you'll see that they haven't that much leased work. Also it is known that GPUmax most of the times points the leased mining power to certain pools. Just ask Graet form ozco.in and he'll be one of the pool operators to confirm that.

Ofcourse that still doesn't tell you who's buying the shares, especially to point them at hop-proof pools... but someone is!

Also, have any of you guys ever stopped to think that mining, even if they need to pay more than shares are worth, are one of the gratest ways to get clean coins?

Clean coins can be very valuable to certain persons in certain business, err, areas...
But now I'm already talking too much and if any of you haven't figured this out for yourselves you didn't even deserved to hear it from my mouth in the first place.

[P4man]

P4man, if you follow GPUmax thread you'll see that they haven't that much leased work. Also it is known that GPUmax most of the times points the leased mining power to certain pools. Just ask Graet form ozco.in and he'll be one of the pool operators to confirm that.

sure, a lot of gpumax volume can be traced back to regular pools, maybe all of it (for now), but that doesnt solve the mystery, if anything it adds to it, because even deepbit seems to be getting a fair amount of gpumax traffic, go figure.

Ofcourse that still doesn't tell you who's buying the shares, especially to point them at hop-proof pools... but someone is!

Also, have any of you guys ever stopped to think that mining, even if they need to pay more than shares are worth, are one of the gratest ways to get clean coins?

Sure, but even for dollars, afaik criminals usually dont pay 50% for money laundering.  For something which already is as difficult to track as bitcoin, I just dont see that as a likely explanation, not at those prices, and those volumes. It also doesnt explain why they would use gpumax exclusively and not jump on other occasions to buy mining contracts that would clean their coins just as thoroughly for just a fraction of the cost.

[Raoul Duke]

Sure, but even for dollars, afaik criminals usually dont pay 50% for money laundering.  For something which already is as difficult to track as bitcoin, I just dont see that as a likely explanation, not at those prices, and those volumes. It also doesnt explain why they would use gpumax exclusively and not jump on other occasions to buy mining contracts that would clean their coins just as thoroughly for just a fraction of the cost.

Petty criminals don't pay 50% to launder money, that's true.
And they don't need to pay dollars. SilkRoad coins go to GPUmax, clean coins go the criminals wallets. Please note, SilkRoad was used as an example, and nothing that I'm saying is to be taken as a fact.
If they bought mining shares they could never be sure they would get clean coins. With GPUmax, they can.

But now I'll just STFU because I have nothing to be nosy about Pirate's business, he has always been an upstanding guy to me after all, nor do I need to explain this type of shit to ignorant folks(not talking about you P4man).

[Raoul Duke]

edit: I note you've been registered about 12 hours.  Did you read the 40+ pages in the pirate thread where most of this has been discussed before?
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=50822.0

But now I'll just STFU because I have nothing to be nosy about Pirate's business, he has always been an upstanding guy to me after all, nor do I need to explain this type of shit to ignorant folks(not talking about you P4man).

Yes, I've read both threads. I've been following everything about bitcoin since may of last year, so I'm not ignorant.

I didn't intend to say you were an ignorant person, just ignorant about certain aspects of certain stuff. We all are, ones in some areas, others in other areas. Also, I wasn't talking about you specifically, but in general terms only.

And if you were not ignorant about pirate's business plans you wouldn't be asking so many questions.

In fact, Pirate's original post about his lending business shed more light about what it trully was than it does today.
The ones who remember the exact words posted there will have a better idea, the one's who don't, tough luck, they should exercise their memory skills

[notme]

In fact, Pirate's original post about his lending business shed more light about what it trully was than it does today.
The ones who remember the exact words posted there will have a better idea, the one's who don't, tough luck, they should exercise their memory skills

So why was it that he decided to delete that original post? Please enlighten us with that information if you know.

I didn't intend to say you were an ignorant person, just ignorant about certain aspects of certain stuff. We all are, ones in some areas, others in other areas.

Are you not "ignorant about certain aspects of certain stuff" or do you know everything there is to know about every topic? Maybe I should click on the highlighted "ignore" link below your name, psytard. (Yes, I read up on you in the alt currency forum.)

It has just become more of a source of information for investors, and less selling to potential investors.

[P4man]

If they bought mining shares they could never be sure they would get clean coins. With GPUmax, they can.

I meant shares as in hashes. GPUmax isnt the only place you can buy shares/hashes to point to a pool and get clean coins, everyone and their dog is offering mining contacts, no one seems to get anything like GPUmax prices for them tho.

[Raoul Duke]

Maybe I should click on the highlighted "ignore" link below your name, psytard. (Yes, I read up on you in the alt currency forum.)

Please, do click the ignore button, FUCKtard. After all, ignorant guys must love Ignore buttons.
Also, press the logout button and never come back.
Don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out!

[Raoul Duke]

Maybe I should click on the highlighted "ignore" link below your name, psytard. (Yes, I read up on you in the alt currency forum.)

Please, do click the ignore button, FUCKtard. After all, ignorant guys must love Ignore buttons.
Also, press the logout button and never come back.
Don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out!

LOL. Hit a nerve, did I? 

So why don't you explain why someone would pay that much more for shares at GPUMAX versus buying other mining contracts AND why BTCST would give an interest rate that is more than double what other banks give?

As I said before, the only person who would have to explain something is Pirate himself, and before explaining it to a fucktard that hides behind a sockpuppet account he would explain it to his depositors/investors.

Now, get lost. You didn't hit a nerve, but it seems I did hit a nerve by answering to you.

I've been here for a year using the same handle, and one year from now I'll still be here using it.
We can't say the same about you, can we, you coward?
Don't forget to press that logout button, fucktard...

[coin_toss]

OK guys, so I wanted to post this in the bitcoin discussion forum, but I can only post things here right now.

I'd like to start a discussion about pirateat40 and his 2 projects: GPUMax and Bitcoin Savings & Trust
He may be just a very smart person that happened to be working on 2 very ambitious projects, but something just doesn't seem right about pirateat40.

Who is buying mining shares for PPS*1.4? Why would anyone do that? Pool hopping is not that profitable anymore, right? Why doesn't pirate disclose the reason for these purchases. How is pirate making >1% a day the money he borrows? If he really is legitimately making so much money, why give 7% interest/week when his closest competitor is giving 3% interest/week. And most banks have money with pirate to be able to pay out that much. There's ton of people waiting to give him money, so wouldn't the right business move be to lower interest rate and make more money? I've learned that if something seems too good to be true, it generally is. Could this be a long con? Or is he actually making honest money with these 2 projects?

Here's what I'm getting at, what if his end game is to kill bitcoin? What if the fed decided that they want to put an end to bitcoin before it becomes a bigger threat. Think about it. If you were trying to kill bitcoin, what would you do? You'd want to do a 51% attack to shatter everyone's confidence and at the same time pull off the biggest bitcoin heist ever. If mining hardware costs $1 per mhash, to match the total network hashrate of 11 thash, you would need to spend $11 million. Wouldn't GPUMax be the cheaper and smarter way to do the 51% attack? You need to convince 51% of the network to use it. PPS*1.4 would do it. And to convince people that it's not malicious, only allow purchases to mine at specific pools. But what's to prevent pirateat40 from one day use all that mining power maliciously? So how much does it cost to pay half the network 40% more on the earnings 1/4 of the time (i'm assuming there's only public work 1/4 of the time)? 7200 btc are mined a day... so 7200 * 1/2 * .4 * 1/4 = 360 btc or just $1800/day. Run that for a year, and it's only $657,000. And that's if he has half the networking hashrate, which hopefully is not close to yet. So this is a lot less than the $11 mil that would be needed to buy mining hardware. Trick bitcoin miners into attack their own network... brilliant!

So now how do you make 360 btc a day? You can either spend your own money or start a HYIP. So build up bitcoin-otc to have people trust you then start lending money at 1% interest a day and use people's deposit to pay the interest and the money needed to keep purchase on GPUMax. Keep growing the total loan amount so you have enough money but keep the growth contained so that you don't pay too much interest. And build up hype by making it hard for people to deposit money with you.

This scam can probably last until he gets 51% of the mining power. Then use whatever money is left in the BTST accounts and do a 51% attack against mtgox and other exchanges at the same time. Then disappear with all the money. Will bitcoin survive this?

Nice job spreading FUD from behind a sock puppet

[miscreanity]

Hint: Bitcoin is not the only source of work that can be hashed.

[Sturmvogel]

Hint: Bitcoin is not the only source of work that can be hashed.

AFAIK pirate's pool has no custom mining software. So the question is: can you get something other than Bitcoin hashes using standard miner (cgminer, diablo etc)?

[MPOE-PR]

Another issue to add to the list, is that shares offered for sale outside gpumax dont seem to attract anything like the rates GPUmax gets. If there is such a market for hoppers/gamblers/pool testers wanting to buy shares at 150% PPS or more, why arent they bidding on contracts like the one in my sig and other similar ones?

Since you're smart enough to ask the right question, allow me to suggest what is perhaps the right answer.

If you were going to steal a large sum of bitcoin, would it make sense to steal old coins that have been sent to you by well known members of the community, or would it be wiser to steal freshly minted coins?

A, but how to get freshly minted coins...

Well, if you could somehow get the more naive miners to give you their hash power so you can spirit away the freshly minted coins then you'd be all in the clear.

Hmmm... but how to get them to give you their hash power....

Well, if you traded the old and soon-to-be-tainted coins for it it might work, mightn't it?

The price paid by GPUmax simply reflects pirate's desperation to wash as many coins as possible before this entire thing blows. Let me guess, has price going up since the 17th? Nice how that worked out then.

[dirtycat]

interesting thread.. watching