Bitcoin Forum

I have closed this thread as suspected Pirate was running a Ponzi.

Please post here if/when you receive any money back.

Amount returned: xxxxBTC
Amount expected: xxxxBTC
Date account created: yyyy
Date/Time Returned: zzz
Type of Account: tttt
Refund transaction ID: ttttttttttttttttttttt

If you only want to include some info that is fine too!
PM me if you want to remain anonymous and I will only report what you send me (excluding your user ID!).

Edit: added account creation date as suggested by DeaDTerra
Edit: added account type as suggested by softwareseller
Edit: added (none so far) to title for quick reference - will update (or not!) as news comes in...
Edit: added transaction ID as suggested by smoothie

################################################################

Results:

Amount returned: 106.925872BTC
Amount expected: 106.925872BTC
Date Account Created: late July 2012
Date/Time Returned: 22 Aug 2012 17:24
Type of Account: BST Account
Refund transaction ID: c2d0742df8df67c0507fd270b3c262f8a0118ba3a9b91357c83a04d952d0a32d
Details: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=101942.msg1124019#msg1124019
AccountID: bitminern8

Good idea, I think we should also include when the account was originally created as pirate is redeeming accounts in order of their creation.
//DeaDTerra

Reserved. Will edit when BTC is returned
Please also add the kind of PPT. E.g :bitcoinmax

Also maybe a bracket instead of an amount...

<50
50-500
500-5000
5000-10,000
Etc....

Has anyone heard any news from pirate40 about any payouts or any communication at all?

Not yet.  I asked the same question.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wb9By-lODgk   :D

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zs_LeER8OeQ

Watching with baited breath...... ;D

he just came online and didn't do anything

i assume you mean irc or this forum?

if irc, what channel/server are you referring to?

no this forum

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=35827

We have a good idea how many btc involved... I wonder how many people invested with Pirate.

Yes he was on IRC for a bit this morning, people pummeled him with questions, his parting statement was:

basically if you cross the river you will destroy a great empire

haha, which empire?  reminds me of a historical event i read in the past... about a king goes to the oracle for advice.

this one http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle

Looks like someone's buying at every dip on Gox.

maybe a trustable person are able to collect the information so no one has to show up to much privacy

+1

Do you guys really think people will disclose that type of sensitive information?

I think some will.

I dont expect all of them will. But it will help to keep pirate accountable and the person posting accountable.

Just got my payment:  4k BTC baby! 024c461625eda936e310981c96339de58a0dd120b4959444928d29915a4cd651

It's so proofy it hurts! :o

If you check the map, it looks like its coming from the island that Pirate purchased.

Is this for real? Was your account balance exactly 4000 BTC?

lulz

excuse me but it is soo stupid to give nearly 40k USD away to a person wich you don't know neither met in real live neither having a contract with his person with his sign!  ???

Excuse me but it is sooo stupid to argue with someone on the internet over how stupid they are being.  (oh wait?)

 ???

So what... an hour before these funds should start showing up on Gox? Is there a way people could short cut this to get in before the massive sell off? I'd hate to be last in line.

T minus 5 confirmations.....

Best way to do this is transfer money to MTGox immediately !

Then buy BTC with it.... Sell those and wait for the market to drop and then buy those BTC back

You will have the same amount of BTC and some $

Disclaimer: Free advice is not always what is seems

No... it was not for real.  My point was to prove that the following statement made no sense:


It took me exactly 30 seconds to pen that post then watch BCI info for a big enough TX to come through.  There is no proof, and those that don't want to accept the proof will find a reason to not.

But I assume he is being paid in BTC, not dollars. He is going to have to wait for his 6 confirmations. What if he offers a fat transaction fee? How much faster could he expect?

Well played sir. 

So back to square one, no payment has been sent.

0 amount faster.

Again confirmed.....  I received no payment (i don't even have a BTCST account).

I suspect that you may underestimate what some people can figure out from the blockchain. The transaction you linked was actually really unlikely to be a BS&T payout - it was too round a number and there were no previous payments to the address in question.

I suspect you can't read very well.

so you had your five minutes please troll away now! thanks!

That goes for everyone that has posted in this thread so far (except the OP and the 1st 2 posts)

This is a thread for people to post if/when they get their funds from pirate

Not for people to post every 5 mins to ask if anyone has received any funds yet


If it isn't in the thread... then NO !!!!

Have you gotten your bitcoins back from pirate yet? oh wait...

yeah got back 50 btc from blockchain!

b2c83a5a3f46b0f49f709f07c0fc6ab968a6aac3749d8c2d5052bb7c5a49db72

And even if it is in the thread, still no.

no? no! :-*

Well, the thing is, with a ponzi, you'd expect SOME people to get back their coins. So to disprove a ponzi in this case you'd have to show that EVERYONE got theirs back (plus the 7% weekly interest on them). It would have been more useful to start a thread where people state they haven't received their coins back.

no, the scam (if it was scam) is already priced in so let us go to the next one! more scam more stronger bitcoin price!

Is this legit?

not for my 1GHash/s

Is that pic of you floating around legit?

Boy, would you guys keep this thread clean?

If thats not possible than I suggest OP at least collects valid claims and posts them in OP.

This is in the contract of the Vandroiy bet.  There should be no guessing involved, assuming nanotube has been kept up to date.

Does anyone actually know Pirate's real life identity ? And is 100% sure, that's his actual real life identity ?

Wow - my mind boogles that a man not disclosing his identity and not telling what he does actually manages to amass a half million bitcoins.

That's actually enough to retire on in many parts of the world.

So, in the event he doesn't pay up. Who are you going to sue this time ?

LOL.... :)

Uhm where isn't it enough to retire? I will retire when I have amassed far less.

Yes, he had a meetup at DefCon where he showed up in person. There was a post about it around here somewhere

5mil is the bare minimum to retire on in the US after inflation considered. You can expect safe income of about 100k a year. That's not really a lot when you think about it. Unless you live in some awful town.

It's a lot more than the majority have at retirement  ;)

Okay. So he divulged his name, and told the other dudes enough to make them believe he's the real Pirate ?

Still can't wrap my mind around the fact that people invest with enterprises like his. It seems it's rather easy to fool people if an individual is unscrupulous,
the history is full of examples of this.

Are you crazy? How do you possibly need a 100k income to retire on? What are you doing, eating steak every night? That is more than twice the median family income in the US.

Considering the fact that Medicare and Social Security are going to blow up, seems about right to me. Medical expenses will be through the roof, so a lot of your income will go just to that. In fact, the best investment a young person can make right now is probably their own health.

Sooooo, all we gotta do is round up everyone in that pic and waterboard them then... sounds doable...

-- Smoov

Greed is a powerful force, my friend. So powerful it divorces a man from his brain cells on occasion.

Sooo it's 7pm EST and no payouts yet? hrmm..

What does EST have to do with anything?  Pirate is in Texas?

That's my understanding (Texas). He did say payouts during this week, no doubt he's waiting to hit certain thresholds before starting releases.. Or, he's booking a ticket to the Bahamas.

Stu

Well regardless, it is late in the day, on the day he promised to begin repayment. He has to be crazy or suicidal to just run off with so much money when everyone knows his identity..

Everyone knew Bernie Madoff as well...

Well he probably has enough to buy a new identity.... I'll sell him mine for 10%



Now boarding flight 782 from Texas to Toronto

He was 70. Pirate is 30. Also, I generally dislike comparisons to bernie madoff. Madoff promised a measly 10% a year for decades, while pirate offered 7% a WEEK. Mining alone makes much more than 10% a year.

That's almost 3x what I make at my full time Job. If you can't live comfortably on 100k, there is something seriously wrong with you.

Bitcoiners who don't live on 7th floor Times Square flat: Proletariat scum!

http://earlyretirementextreme.com $200000-$300000 can be enough.

Its cheaper in Mexico. Pirate lives in Texas so its a short trip over the border.

Place in Quebec near Chicoutimi that I plan to retire..... to lazy to post pic... will (maybe) update later.

I thought he was 40 ;)

The name actually refers to his retirement plan:

1. Steal bitcoins.
2. Buy a ship
3. Arrrrr!

I heard he made enough money to buy Miami, but he pissed it away so fast.

Never meant to last.

Never meant to last.

Where's the best list of lenders waiting for payment? Step forward.

watching... (because the new-fangled "watch" button doesn't seem to work)

Like him

Looking forward to this mess being over.

Watching.

Pirate, y u no pay?!

:)

Still no payments? I'd been pretty sure this guy was running a blatant Ponzi scheme from the beginning (and yes, I've got a bet down for a couple BTC, my money is where my mouth is).

Well, this should be fun to watch. I can't believe there are still people who think they're getting their money back.  ::)

Someone is bidding 0.73 BTC for a PPT bond on GLBSE!

Well this whole thing might work out really good for people with coins to spend..... Buying Pirate assets at a discount..... (but if payments don't get made and he flees the scene in his brand new Porsche GT3) It'll be one fucky place around here...

Maybe it is Pirate creating the distress and then buying the distressed assets.  :)

The combination of closing up shop abruptly on a Friday (when fiat flows are now frozen for 72 hours), and then dumping a decent amount of coins on the market might have worked.   Cause a panic and buy some of the owed coins at half off.  Then cause some vague delays for 3 or 4 days and cover the rest of the liabilities by scooping up the "nearly worthless" PPT shares at a deep discount.  On paper everyone is paid in full, while in reality a lot of wealth gets siphoned off. 

It might have worked but there was no capitulation.  No desperation sales at sub $5.00 prices.  Lets hope that wasn't the game plan because the shock has worn off.  There will be no cheap coins.

I was hopeful, but no payments made yet.... yeah.  It's all over guys.

We know nothing yet. DnT makes a perfectly valid point; if we assume its not a ponzi and Pirate can and will pay back, he and/or his fanclub would have an enormous financial interest in making it appear otherwise, allowing them to make bets and buy back PPT debt at a large discount. Pirate (presumably) knows exactly what will happen, and so might at least a few other people. That knowledge could be worth a small fortune by itself.

Now Im not saying its necessarily a wise assumption to make that he will pay back, but its no different than last week or last month. Id also like to point out that if it is a ponzi, it doesnt make too much sense for him to drag it out like this and keep up appearances for a few more days, or even weeks. He'd have to run, so he might as well do it now.

No money will come today, this week or this year.

(pure speculations - FUD, according to some)

I have, like Vladimir zero BTC invested, as Pirate came with big red stop signs from the very beginning..

you are underestimating the effect public appearances can have on an overinflated ego

Really, it makes no sense for him to drag things out??? Yeah, because if you need to run, the last thing in the world you need is some extra time  ;D

If funds haven't started being sent out by now, they're not going to be, ever.  "So meet me at the mission at midnight. We'll divvy up there."

Nonsense!

Noone expects that there will be any real transactions posted here.
>>If pirate would pay anyone back then that woud be worth a whole brand new thread of its own!<<

Meanwhile this thread can serve as a place to poke fun at people who trusted a pirate by his word.
Meanwhile this thread can serve as a coming-to-terms- place for the people who made a bad investment...

If this in an investment, so is the lovely bridge I have for sale

I actually thought of that yesterday. Glad you post it.

I'd have funds loaded up in the exchanges for the weekend. There might be a garage sale.

The money is gone. Nothing will be returned. If Pirate couldn't pay partial withdrawls and 5%, what makes you think he can pay complete withdrawals and 7%? On the plus side this might actually lead to the creation of that assasination market that being discussed last year. I can't wait for the bounty threads that are coming.

 "Everybody knows...That the world is full of stupid people...."

Doesn't that already exist with Black Market Reloaded? I've actually never been but remember reading there was zero moral restrictions there. I know stuff like that is banned on SR.

Anyway that's not a good thing, and anyone that tried to use such service would be in prison faster than I typed this post.

If Pirate won't return the coins I think somebody should teach him a lesson... is he hard to be found?

Dude is from Texas, you know he has some guns. You try to "teach him a lesson" you'll end up justifiably dead and he wouldn't even get arrested. Not worth it, even if you lost 6+ digits.

The people who bought from him should thank him for teaching them a lesson - don't invest in something you know nothing about, especially something that keeps needing more and more money just like a Ponzi scheme. The way I see it, people got what they deserved. He's probably fled, if it were possible to find him, it likely is not now. That could very well be the reason (or a portion of the reason at least) he's been delaying lately.

Of course, I am just speculating, he could pay up still, but my gut feeling has been that he's a scammer since the beginning and I think the fact he's paid nothing so far is quite telling.

Bitcoin is the perfect platform for a ponzi scheme... However, could we track the coins and consider them tainted?

Jesum, when did this become a "hit" thread? 

Blockchain.info?

What is really funny is that it has nothing in it! And that is what makes it so interesting - no one is claiming to have received any money from Bitcoin Savings & Trust!

I think pirate is having a good laugh seeing these threads

That's not a good reason to run with the coins...

unfortunately only on paper or do you have a proof of this with bitcoin flows?

Yes if they started at close to day 1, never compounded, and never increased their "investment".  How many people do you think fell into the category?

The ponzi scheme works because the classic distribution model is.
Day 0 - "7% that has to be a scam"
Day 14 - "Wow he made two payment.  Well I will risk 100 BTC.  Call it a gamble"
Day 21 - "Got me 7 BTC - I will withdraw it play it safe"
Day 28 - "Another 7 BTC.  Hmm.  I mean if I compounded these I could make 3400%. What if he caps deposits?"
Day 29 - "Depositing another 100 BTC plus the 14 BTC interest."
...
Day 80 - "Wow on paper I now have 500 BTC.  Ok time to go big.  Let me deposit 500 BTC more and compound everything".
...
Day 150 - "PIRATE WHERE IS MY MONEY YOU OWE ME 2500 BTC"

Of those two cashflows which do you think is the overwhelming majority of the 500K BTC?  :)

"All this has happened before and all it will all happen again."

Excellent post!

Yeah, you hit the nail on the head. Ponzi schemes commonly rely on people compounding and wanting to throw more money into them.

I'm just curious - for the people who are still standing up for pirate - can you name one good reason he's supposedly decided to keep accumulating an additional $50k+ of debt every day? If he was going to pay back wouldn't he have started immediately? Surely he can lay hands on at least part of it.

Well, Im not sure I want to be the guy to stand up for pirate, but to be fair, if he has some sort of deal with customers, like, I dont know, future contracts or whatever, its not unthinkable he has to dissolve/settle those contracts first before he can return the coins. Assuming he would have them, if he passed the coins on to some other party for whatever reason, it might take him some days (and of course, potentially, forever) to get them back.

I think we can easily get a verifiable grounding on whether pirate is returning, ask bitlane, the supposed user that pirate blames the rush on (which I think is BS BTW), he was the most vocal about not getting his deposit withdrawn on time (or, according to him the lines of "communication" were down), surely he would be the man to ask whether he had received his coins yet, since he was supposedly the one that was closed on immediately (hence automatically according to pirates policies, the first to have their funds reimbursed), no?

Edit: Oops, he's already put himself at the back of the list... https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=101152.msg1120790#msg1120790 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=101152.msg1120790#msg1120790)

This of course is the classic HYIP/Ponzi situation. "Funds are tied up, so sorry about the delay, perhaps over the coming months I can recoup some of the money..."

That might be true, but the problem is that, due to the general atmosphere of FUD and non-news of the past 48hs, some "investors" are now accepting lowball offers on their debt and will take big losses due to fear of getting nothing.  So even if you assume it's not a Ponzi and he will pay out, he is indirectly screwing some of his former clients by not keeping them in the loop as to what exactly is going on with their payments.

If I was running a business where my reputation was at stake, and I had custodianship of other people's savings, I'd damn well make sure to answer all communications respectfully and let everyone know the exact status of the payout situation at least once a day.  If only so that my customers could sleep well at night.

So at this point, although it's not yet confirmed that it's a Ponzi, the past 48hs do seem to confirm that Pirate has no moral problem with his customers jumping off a cliff due to his own lack of transparency.

PS: these are unemotional outsider observations, I have no exposure, direct or indirect, to his business.

I agree 100%. It's all to clear how pirate doesn't care one bit for his lenders. If he pays everyone back and later comes up with a BS&T 2, I'll be sure to stay clear for this reason alone.

I dont think we are gettin our btc back, lets face it =(

MODs should remove the long offer forum or post an avertisment.

:D  Spare change?  1AZ7QeAnzW8ywfJPUS3DeiXxCmetYgUTLe

I'm saving up for the next big scam . . . . ASIC's!   ;D

Playing devil Pirate's advocate again; we dont know how much he told his customers. Remember there arent that many, and they generally seem quite confident. Its their customers customers, all the passthrough, bonds etc holders that are jumping off cliffs.

There are people selling BTCST accounts for under their face value, these people are pirate's direct customers and they have been left in the dark. Pirate is undeniably ignoring his customers' worries.

Disclaimer: I have 4 BTC in some friendly bets against pirate.

If this were found out to be true, it would reflect very poorly on the morality of first-level lenders if they had repayment information that they were not passing on, therefore artificially depressing (manipulating) the market on the securities they have sold.  It would make the collateral damage to Bitcoin and this forum's reputation much worse to have several bad actors instead of just one, so let's hope that those guys have the courage to do the right thing for their customers.

As the saying goes, when the tide goes out, you find out who's been swimming naked.  By the end of this month, we will have learned a lot about the reputation and moral character of several prominent people on this forum.

I'm actually more surprised that people are still buying BS&T accounts at all...

I'm sitting in #BTCST for the lulz:

"[22:44] <@pirateat40> Wouldn't it be fun to run with the coins though?  I could make history....  If i pay back, I just get forgotten. :("

[22:55] <hashking> Pirate, what are you plans for your friend BITLANE
[22:55] <BTCKing> arrr
[22:55] <hashking> *your
[22:55] <BTCKing> lol... bitlane
[22:55] <@pirateat40> Trendon Shavers is a DBA, just to be fair.
[22:55] <ssst> bitlame
[22:55] == simonk83 [~CARLY@unaffiliated/simonk83] has joined #btcst
[22:55] <ssst> bitblame
[22:55] <vite> hashking: love your service, shame pirate is making it a pain for you to pay me the pirate deposit
[22:55] <ssst> bitshame
[22:55] <ssst> bitgame
[22:56] <michaelmclees> pirate, are you admitting you're connected to trendon shavers?
[22:56] <hashking> Thanks.  Pirate will payout.  Don't worry.
[22:56] <_sharpfocus> bitflame?
[22:56] <@pirateat40> hashking, i'm going to roast him a bit more well done than Vandroiy.
[22:56] <hashking> Nice.

[22:58] <ssst> pirateat40, i know your plan
[22:58] <ssst> devalue debt
[22:58] <ssst> buy debt for penny on the dollar
[22:58] <ssst> no debt
[22:58] <+jcpham> I use my nanny for all sorts of things also
[22:58] <dissipate> copumpkin, the 'contract' was he was going to be paid off on Monday with interest.
[22:58] <+jcpham> master manipulators
[22:58] <Joric> price is rising as we talk, we need more FUD
[22:58] <copumpkin> dissipate: not really
[22:58] <BTCKing> pirateat40 what are you going to do with your loot to celebrate
[22:58] == defactomacro [47a54a02@gateway/web/freenode/ip.71.165.74.2] has quit [Ping timeout: 245 seconds]
[22:58] <@pirateat40> ssst, you shall see soon enough.

[22:58] <+_matthew_> lol@theymos uppped his bet
[22:58] <+_matthew_> [ANN] A new bet placed! There are currently 1929.3 BTC in bets against pirate. Only 8070.7 BTC spots remaining! If you think Pirate is a ponzi, a scammer, or for any reason not going to pay within 3 weeks from today, bet (or hedge against) in this thread: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=101751

[23:00] <+jcpham> you could pay bitlane 1 btc per minute
[23:00] <dub> so that it takes months
[23:00] <+jcpham> as the price plummets
[23:00] <+reeses> I should offer bitlane 50%
[23:00] <+jcpham> that's be funny

[23:00] <zveda> hey pirateat40 can I have some money too ?
[23:00] <copumpkin> dissipate: there are varying degrees of burden, and a PM saying "yo stfu I'll do you by monday" is pretty low on the bindingness spectrum in my book
[23:00] <zveda> if u have some left over
[23:00] <dub> then _matthew_ should be beaten to death with whats left of bitlane
[23:00] <dissipate> copumpkin, in fact, BTCST was probably illegal from the beginning. not that i care, but thems the facts.
[23:01] <@pirateat40> zveda, I don't have enough to go around.

What's DBA?

Doing Business As...

Interesting that he now claims the name is a pseudonym. I seem to recall him explaining the cheque fraud thing under that very name  here a long time ago.  Am I imagining that?

edit: I wasnt. Here it is:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=82849.msg912935#msg912935

Or DataBase Admin.

So it means Trendon Shavers is a?


That was what I read initially too but the context kinda rules that out  :D

So...
His wife, mother, father and 2 brothers are also fake ?

If he took the time to get that many people in place, including his twin sons...in order to pull off this scam, I guess he deserves the money, right ?

As of now, he has defaulted.

Has anyone begun contacting his family, friends, associates, and ordering pizzas to raise the heat?

That is an awful suggestion. Why would anyone stoop that low ?

a drunk pirate may just think he forgot about ordering the pizza... and then enjoy pizza... i know i would

Y'know, if giving someone $25k of your money and then ordering them fast food is your idea of payback, I'd quite happily be your enemy  :D

^ LOL,,,,,,, Ma'am ?  Is this pirate's mommmy? He stole my bitty coins, can you ground him? take away his TV and NES

I am sure he has a super nes.

This guy should be doxed 18 ways to Sunday. There should be video of this guy's wife dropping off their kids at school posted. Give him an incentive to pay things back. As it stands right now, why should he give any of it back? He's gonna walk and nobody is gonna touch him.

If anybody robbed me of 6 figures I'd vivisect his family in front of him and make him eat the pieces. Some things are worth going to prison over.

I have been invested for over 7 months. Do you honestly think I am the type of person (from what you know of me from here) likely to simply sit on his hands this whole time ?

...and as far as the Pizza goes, this is by far the best place in McKinney (972-547-2700).
Their menu is extensive, they are EXTREMELY helpful and they show up in MUCH LESS THAN 30 MINUTES.

I have a very small amount invested, as I cleared out my holdings once the rates started changing.

But there are some others with HUGE amounts owed to them who DO care and WILL take steps to be paid back.

If anyone thinks this guy will be able to walk away scott-free, well, I disagree.

My concern for the community is that this CAN easily and quickly get out of hand.

Having played the scenario out in my head a bit, I can see some mafia/cartel henchmen visiting mr. Shavers and taking ALL of the BTC and $ leaving everyone else out in the cold.

We are talking about millions of dollars here, after all.


I hope it doesn't go that far, but this Pirate guy sure likes to push the envelope, not communicate with his lenders(so we can tell), and mess around a lot.

It may be the death of him or his loved ones.


FYI: I don't advocate bodily harm to shaver. I wish to see him live up to his word and return what he has said he will.

It wasn't a suggestion, it was a question.

He only has about $25 of my money.

I am not so stupid.

Glad to see that sarcasm isn't wasted on you....lol

As I was saying above:

...and as far as the Pizza goes, this is by far the best place in McKinney (972-547-2700).
Their menu is extensive, they are EXTREMELY helpful and they show up in MUCH LESS THAN 30 MINUTES.

 If anyone is up for some juvenile antics, those of us living in Dallas can get together for some hardcore house TP'ing if anyone has his address...

Oops, my sarcasm meter is off! :)

The proper authorities could do far more damage than juvenile antics ever could hope to achieve..... Hence the McKinney Police Dept # (972-547-2700).

It's a much easier conviction with an already outstanding charge for theft, even if NOT found guilty the first time.

They also LOVE hearing stories of cross-border confidence scams worth millions of USD..... in a Canadian accent.

If I had been at the dinner in Vegas I would have swiped anything the guy touched then get it dusted for prints and dna tested if he owed me considerable amounts of money  :)

so only bitlane needs to be repaid?

and erebus of course as the public destraction center?

and some coins of bitcoinmax happened to be
the lost funds of BCST even as they weren´t at BCST
at the moment of closure?

sure it´ll be as easy as " its paid "  or    " its not paid " ;)

some are paid and because of that others are not paid !

all of them with a perfect OTC rating , i guess

Bitcoin community has developed as sodom and gomorrah

Cheers Zyk

Happy to be a part of it

go in the lending section and struck your deal with me ;)

P.S. 7 % weekly only availabale for the first three 8)

What gets me is that as far as I can tell, most of his "friends"/large lenders aren't saying much.

I would be raising the heat if I was in their shoes.

Maybe they are scared of him getting mad at them too and moving THEM to the back of, or OFF the line.

http://www.johnshelleysjournal.com/nail-hammer.jpg

/thread

I just received 1.05776 BTC, 19:11 8/21/12 EDT, from GPUMAX which is owned by pirate@40.  I'm still hopeful.

interest payment?

No not interest.

GPUMAX (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=55819.0) is a service owned and run by pirate@40 which buys and sells bitcoin mining.  I sell some of my mining shares to him and he buys them at a premium over what the current difficulty produces at any mining pool.  The 1.05776 BTC (https://blockchain.info/tx-index/16796802/dfca95c6a0b7575c90abe19fe8ec99834504276cbba7a162377ec707338c2d5d) is my cut of today's sold mining.  Yesterday I earned 1.86416 BTC (https://blockchain.info/tx-index/16627998/8b37e5d14fc73713cdc250fe38e1f313a8c0b6f12a60938cb1bc2d15113b6790) at 16:10 8/20/12.  pirate@40 is still running GPUMAX as if he doesn't want to rip off his customers.

OR maybe he already started the payments and is asking his lenders to remain silent, just for the Lulz.

if that was happening, i'd be concerned of something more sinister than lulz

Its only a small payment try withdrawing thousands of coins and see if he still pays  :)

Officer,a bad man called pirate from the internet stole my bitcoins

you got 3 seconds to start walking or your going in the drunk tank ;D

I still trust in the refund.
To operate with the amounts that he operates, mtgox should have up his birth certificate and his movements discussed in IRC could be related to his account, is not anonymous.

On the other hand if he were pay, it seems a bit risky maintain this situation, which could adversely affect gpumax

It's not a bank.  It is a fee for service.  GPUMAX doesn't hold my coins it pays me every day for mining that I sell.  Those two payments represent 386.82700808 BTC.  So we know that he was willing to part with at least that much since he closed his bank.

Pirate is the median between the buyer of your shares and you. That's not to say Pirates hasn't or doesn't use GPUMax for is own use.

I'm not sure what the average hashrate of GPUMax is when public work is available, but I would imagine it's considerable. GPUMax also pays out daily, but it's not unusual for there to be a couple day delay before payments are made. If Pirate was about to take off with all the money, it would make sense for him to provide 100% public work for 3 or 4 days that points towards his own private pool. He would get a decent bonus of untraceable coins to add to his tally.

Lol, so suckers gave him $5 million in BTC and they are also mining coins for him?  He has it all figured out.  Genius!

sighhhh

so much misunderstanding,of, just everything, by a lot of posters here....

Where have all the old, wise and patient ones gone that used to spend hours on end stearing the misguided musings back on track?

 :-\

Staying the hell out of this hot mess, would be my guess.

I am trying to understand the logic of lenders... if they get all their coins back but a bitcoin is devalued from this month's highs by 100-200%, then what was the point of lending it out?

That is not their logic. That was the implied logic from some posters who may not have experience with the sizes of capital invloved. I'd think lenders would be more likely to look for new ways to leverage their regained BTC...

If you just heard about GPUMAX please STFU.

Huh? It is not like all of us have time to read every single thread on this board and chase down references to everything around here.  harsh.

???

Given the risk there is little logic,  My guess is they didn't expect to all be paid at once,  Anyway, wanting more coin has nothing to do with USD trading values.

It is not like any of us have time to read every brainfarts posts.  This place is sickening,

+1 / extremely relevant to find out what Pirate is doing with GPUMAX.  This guy could owe as much as $5M USD+ and you are still somehow allowing him to sell your hashing power?  with 10 other way more reasonable looking mining pools available?

Just like BTCST you can read the relevant thread and find the information you want, or you can keep making baseless claims

Just like with BTCST, discussion of GPUMAX is filled with people who insist that they're absolutely certain what purpose it serves and that anyone who can't figure it out or who claims it's used for pool hopping or money laundering is an idiot, yet refuse to actually say what they think it's for.

I thought it was a hashing power "ion cannon (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low_Orbit_Ion_Cannon)" people can rent out to make some quick mining cash?

lol, didn't read the thread then?

The amount of cash it costs to buy a particular number of shares on GPUMAX is quite a bit more than the expected value of that number of shares, though. Miners wouldn't be willing to supply it if it wasn't.

lol

We've got some reports that pirate has paid out 6 small accounts that I believe to be true.  Pirate has personally confirmed this.

Money coming out :)

there are reports of accounts being paid out...

https://i.imgur.com/HOZ8I.png

Would the address (1NGYcUEwXMLH2umYzNs23KUS1EAEtLF7My) in the picture be the Bitcoin withdrawal address of the account?

http://blockchain.info/address/1NGYcUEwXMLH2umYzNs23KUS1EAEtLF7My

Edit: The picture was changed to display balance only somehow.

That would be the deposit address.

Interesting, time for REVERSE denial. "Nope, don't believe you"

Or "It's only a couple of small accounts, just another stalling tactic"

Apparently using freshly-generated coins too in some cases, e.g. this payment http://blockchain.info/tx-index/16885882/c2d0742df8df67c0507fd270b3c262f8a0118ba3a9b91357c83a04d952d0a32d - very interesting.

Edit: not just freshly-generated coins that weren't mined by any pool that blockchain.info is aware of, but ones that were mined with a very unusual 47.5 BTC / 2.5 BTC split in the coinbase payout, which means custom software.

Edit 2: and yep, that entire payment comes from coinbase transactions paid to http://blockchain.info/address/1PSf86KnLuzM7Ris5kDhTEZwooR3p2iyfV - which represents 5+% percent of the total Bitcoin hashpower right now at a quick estimate. I have a bad feeling about this.

????

For me it looks like he bought this coins directly from a large miner, which makes sense to me.

GPUmax? Would make sense if he needs to cover the tracks of his clients.

in that case we would see an intermediate address...

Maybe he's working with the miner to send coins to addresses?

Or... Pirate used his lenders' money to create ASIC chips.

how can't you?  but what does that specifically tell you?

It's GPUMAX.
There was a thread about this some time ago, when GPUMAX hashing power was being directed to a private pool, with 47.5BTC going to some other address for every block.
At the time, Pirate said that this private pool would be "part of the business model" of GPUMAX.

Asides from GPUMAX being a coin laundry I don't really see what use it'd be when mining to a pool under your control...

http://mcclane.zonalibre.org/00intro.1.jpg
RELAX. He isn't really paying anybody back.  This is just smoke and mirrors.  Besides, this is precisely what happens when a normal Ponzi collapses.

I know you were trying to be sarcastic, but people do usually get money back from ponzi schemes.  They just don't get all of the money they're owed or all the money they put in.  Normally the distribution is done by a trustee.  In this case, it's being done by pirate/the ponzi schemer himself.  I would expect that he's just choosing people at random to pay back, but he won't pay everyone back.

Pirate, one account and 100 BTC is not good enough. You should try harder.

Man, some will feel so sorry when Pirate will pay everyone back.

thats for sure.

I didn't have the time to read the whole BS&T thread, but wasn't the found only accepting large investments (>100BTC!). 100BTC would be a PPT account, right?

He did accept the small accounts, but not with the same high interest rates.

wow, its going to take a *long* time for GPUMax to mine 500k btc. So much for paying oldest accounts first, eh?

My guess is he pays back little accounts with GPUMAX so that these random investors have no idea who his clients are. Maybe this is why he had to trust YOU to lend to him large amounts...

Well, at least we've moved from "Pirate ain't paying back squat" to "So much for paying oldest accounts first."

Unless paying out to his clients were terms of the sale, or unless he bought the private keys themselves, etc.

People draw so many conclusions from so little data, I swear.

Sometimes I wonder how the MSM would talk about these issues.

https://i.imgur.com/oIMU6.jpg

Time to go watch the "Distressed Pirate Debt" market.     /bye


Dalkore

In this case, it's actually easy to confirm that Shadow383 is correct - it's GPUMAX. I should really have googled the address myself:

So the question remains - why is pirate paying over the odds for hashing power for his private pool, and where are the coins coming from to pay GPUMAX?

There are a few theories but I'm partial to the money laundering one. Pirate is likely to have a lot of money to launder, maybe from big Silk Road operations, either his' or his partners'.

Yay, now its safe to do the money dance! coins returned by friday!  ::) :D

I've received my money from pirate already. Now waiting on my other money in the ppt schemes.

Proof?

proof or it didn't happen

He has claimed his method doesnt involve anything illegal. Selling high demand goods with a big profit margin would probably be closer to the business model if I would hazard a guess.

lol

if one was smart you would go to a person in power... i dunno... a district attorney or someone below him and explain
what happened if they have time. explain to them they would be all over the tech news if they could assist in the case
of the stolen bitcoins. get 15 minutes of fame in certain areas of the news.

they might bite if they were smart enough to get it. but that takes a bit of work to find that special someone who
can pull strings like that and desire publicity like that.

if you had a bst account (at 7%/w ?), why did you put additional money into PPTs (at less than 7%/w)?

there is laws around contracts and pirate agreed to a contract which is preserved in glbse if he renages on the contract he has broken that law and can be pursued through the courts for remuneration.

when did pirate use glbse?

i thought he had.  idk he has not used it?

He doesnt use it only passthrough operators do. You have no contract with pirate unless you invest directly. But the it depends what contract you signed by handing him coins.

It is called the SEC (https://www.sec.gov/complaint/select.shtml), but then they would probably send the IRS after you to explain where the funds came from in the first place.

Clearly to spread the risk...

All the passthroughs are reliant on pirate anyway,if the BTCST defaults it will be interesting to
see what happens to all the guys that were offering 2-3% "risk -free" bonds and investments
more than likely some of them were collecting  7% rates from pirate and pretending to be investeed in something
safer

I somehow doubt that filharvey was getting 7% a week, since that would require a large investment and as far as I'm aware pirate hasn't paid out any of the larger investors yet.

Replace BTC with a foreign fiat currency, BTCST with a fraudulent investment fund the officer has never heard of, how does this change the situation? Nobody expects you to keep certificates of fiat based securities at home either, all trading is online nowadays. He'll do the paper work and since the damage is high, pass it on to a financial crimes department.

and they can pick their asses and smell their fingers after...... and do nothing for no one... Just like in real life......

I imagine you just have to mention the words "silk road" and "money laundering" and you could get an investigation started.
Not that that'd get you any of your money back, mind you...

Replace BTC with ISK or WOW gold, and see how it changes the situation. Protip: You have just as much chance of getting any relief from BTCS&T as the depositors at EBANK from EVE Online had, i.e. none.

Quoted for posterity :D

Actually, didn't that guy put a bounty on himself, and fly off into space in a death-star style ship? So, those guys have at least a chance to get some of their money back.

Bitcoin should be able to stand on its own. Calling for governmental regulation and/or oversight is the typical knee-jerk reaction for people who feel or have been slighted in their business dealings. We have the talent and ability to overcome these problems before bringing widespread attention to what BTC is instead of what it  could be. Government intrusion into any area of our lives always results in a loss of liberty and could make BTC too much trouble to deal with and has never protected anyone from those people of poor character. The entire USA was ripped off by the collusion of the US government and the financial sector. Government is not the answer; we are.

+1

+1

Damn good post.

Do mexican hitmen accept btc ?

This is not the place for threats.  Quoted to preserve stupidity.

Personally, I'm not against any and all forms of government intervention. But sadly I can't think of a single government in the world that has been able to legislate stupidity out of the population... so in the case it wouldn't have worked anyway.

And why would wanna legislate on the stupidity of people? Because you know better? You know that Pirate is a scam and those who invest in him are looser? Your line of reasonning is one of the main reason why governments fail everytime. Because of I-know-better-what-s-good-for-you people.

Actually the best solution against frivolous investments would be liberty, and its counterpart: responsibility.

Actually, yeah, on a number of fronts, I do know better. But as I said, though some have come close, no government has ever been able to wipe out stupidity.

You really missed my point.

Reputation and character are the indicators that people should be relying on, not rules and regulations. Until we put a premium on those no tactic will protect us. Shame is a great deterrent to people considering offending others.

I didn't miss your point, I just chose to not take it too seriously.

Exactly.  This idea that the entire Police force of an entire nation consists of the cop from the Simpsons is just asinine.  People do realize that the FBI for example has a internet crimes division.   They employ data analysts, statisticians, forensic accountants, computer experts, etc.  FinCEN deals with ponzi schemes and other "investment" scams everday.

Since the logical jump from BTC to fiat seems insurmountable even among some bitcoin users lets replace BTC with Gold.  Imagine Pirate ran a Ponzi where "investors" were encouraged to mail in gold and would be credited the amount of grams deposited and interested owed.  They could get their weekly dividends mailed out to them and even request a withdraw of all gold owed and be sent other investors deposits.  Now Gold isn't money but it does have value.  Police do investigate theft of things which have value. 

The idea that Bitcoins have no value and therefore no crime has occured is just silly. No judge is going to rule that way.  Sex for Bitcoins = legal loophole.  Bitcoins have no value therefore the prostitute isn't engaging in prostitution.   Ransom for bitcoins = not a randsom just free speech.  Bitcoins have no value under the law remember.

You don't want stupidity to be outlawed because you know you'd be imprisoned for life.

Thanks for making your point. You feel better now?

Applause!!

Cheers Zyk

However governments exist and it is naive to think you can opt-out.

With no govt to protect him, someone stealing $5M would likely end up getting tortured to death unless he revealed where the money is (and then probably killed anyways in a very unpleasant way).  People get assaulted and killed for a lot less then stealing $5M.  The thief's property, assets, home, kids, wife would also be at risk of seizure by "investors" who combined have a lot more guns then he has.  Under such a scenario that RISK acts as a deterrent.  Scammer is less inclined to scam when there is a real consequence (and no a scammer tag on bitcointalk.org is hardly a consequence for gaining $5M in wealth in a couple months).

However while the victims can "opt-out" and pretend the government doesn't exist.  Pirate can choose to "opt-in" and use the very same govt to protect him from any consequence for this actions.   A band of investors tracking him down to "negotiate" a settlement would likely find themselves arrested by the very govt they are pretending doesn't exist.  Saying you won't use the legal system in place, as some purist masturbation exercise may make you feel good but it won't accomplish anything.  It will simply encourage more scams as scammers realize they have nothing to lose.

+1 much needed realism.

Has anyone received their coins back? any reasonable amount over say 100 BTC ?

I lol'ed.

Yeah, I lol too. Troll's got to troll right

They mostly track pedophiles who use bitcoin to buy kiddie porn on Silk Road. 

I though SR had a no harm clause?

Yeah, SR specifically states no weapons, no CP. They just want to sell drugs to consenting users (on that domain at least, Dread Pirate Roberts has had weapon dealings attempts). There are other sites however that apparently list "no moral boundaries" on their market. However, most SR users probably don't want to see that shit.

the US government is pretty badass imo.

</thread>

Just got an invite to join GPUMAX. The pirate is working!

Yep, he will pay a few more small time creditors with just-mined coins. LOL.

He'll start paying this weekend... when everyone is away from their computers and unable to respond quickly to the flood of coins. Demand will be down... price will drop further. He will repay in batches, scooping up as many coins as possible until the price has regained it's previous level, then refunding another chunk. He will take this opportunity to make big bucks off the refund. Funny thing is, this will actually help stabilize the market, preventing a real crash.

That is, at best, an optical illusion. It assumes, for example, that there aren't enough people with enough money already prepared to pick up anything that is sold. That would put a bit of a crimp on the plan, wouldn't it?

Extremely risky, but if he was able to make the price drop from 15$... when people will see another big batch of sales, the prophecy will self-realize... assuming the growth was exponential, most of the money was deposited recently, so overall interest could be 50% or lower. If he sold at 15$ and will now buy single digit, he might really repay everyone and exit with a sizeable profit. My admiration if he manages to do that.

There's no crimp is he is enough people ;).

[22:12] <@pirateat40> Total Accounts Paid: 11
[22:12] <@pirateat40> All small accounts.

Just when I thought

I learned something from this video:

http://youtu.be/mII9NZ8MMVM

that is why I moved into BITCOIN

I can also confirm my account was paid in full and closed. 

Amount?  :o

many a mickle makes a muckle, many a pirate will loosen his buckle   :D

None of your business, probably ;)

excellent!

Please read OP before posting companheiro ;)

Cheers

Zyk

I think somebody mentioned in #BTCST that 11 accounts had been paid in full so far.  All smaller accounts though.

So much for oldest first...

It wasn't clear whether or not these were the oldest.  Though I suspect Pirate has dispensed with that pecking order.

Big accounts are probably going to be offered some sort of deal. Can't see how he can repay them.

top-left of the default client you will see a "Send Coins" button.

let me know if you need any further help with it.

I'm fine with it. Perhaps you can help Pirate by donating the thousands of coins he is short of being able to reimburse everybody in full right now.

Participate in the panic selling. He'll pick 'em up cheap.

I will participate in the panic buying  :)

i'm going to do a bit of panic holding.

mostly just holding though, not so much of the panicking.

I don't buy or sell, but I'm gonna panic just for the hell of it!

Oh shit!

Or it could go the other way round: Lots of bargain buyers trying to cash in on this scheme, preventing the price to go down enough. Kind of like what happened with LTC when a 51% attack was announced last time.

Can someone change the title to include accurate numbers. 11 reported, 1 confirmed.

Proof of the confirmed payment? 

Claimed by pirateat40 on #btcst.

Oh, and people get kicked for requesting details.  :P

Edit: Disregard this, I was referring to 11 reported payouts, not the 1 confirmed payment.

It's in this thread. The transaction was posted, and the originating wallet was confirmed to belong to Pirate. I believe Pirate also acknowledged that a payment had in fact been made around that time.

Not sure how much more proof is possible.

ahhh, thanks for the info.....I have not been reading every post in detail. 

Glad to see one confirmed. 

So, there is one confirmed payout among how many victims investors?  I believe pirate claimed he was going to pay everyone back by the end of Friday, and it is now Friday.  Things aren't looking good for those who were invested.

This whole thing it's a scam... isn't it? :) The greed is always a good thing to exploit.

I thought he gave a week starting last Monday?

Wait...    what?

WHY DIDN'T ANYBODY WARN ME ABOUT THIS ?!?

https://i.imgur.com/8CI5g.jpg

:D because it was a complex scam

Probably just a coincidence.

https://i.imgur.com/8GfV1.jpg

Round 2?

pirateat40 need coins and maybe from here it comes --> https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=94675.msg1129588#msg1129588 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=94675.msg1129588#msg1129588)

I'm sure there are many more investors that wish to remain anonymous that have been paid out.

My account has been paid, so you can add another to your list

Sorry, but am only adding accounts with some reasonable evidence, and some details about quantity etc... Otherwise it just descends into a "me too" thread.
Happy for them to be in PM if you wish, and will remove account info if that is requested.

No. Reported does not include people just saying so. We need some evidence, else anyone can create a new account and post "I got paid too".

Then thread loses all value. (Not that I claim it had much to begin with!).

Sorry, sticking with my existing title. Reported means we have some reasonable evidence. If I change it now will confuse people. And will not include claimed as said in previous post.

I understand. Everyone can figure out by having "reported" vs "confirmed" that one actually has evidence. And the "11 reported" figure came from pirate himself. The few people that have been willing to report they also have been paid, seems to indicate that more than the 1 confirmed have been paid.

I think it adds value.

pirate did say he has paid 11 and i have no reason to not believe him, hence my post. I do not intend to bother posting 'proof', sorry.

ROFL. 

I mean, who needs proof these days?! 

We do need a list. It's imperative, not just for public interest, but to prove the bets that are currently going. Is there a spreadsheet available?

How do you plan on proving pirate paid, when some random jack ass claims he didn't pay him?

-I- don't prove that, Pirate does.

Im sure some people believe me, i dont need to provide proof to them.

on a serious note, i just cannot be bothered :)

I just got my invite to gpumax yesterday.  I spent all night getting things setup.

Then I started to wonder what the real benefit of the site was and had a hard time figuring it out. I can manage my miners just as easy without it.  And the only reason I could figure for people buying shares would be to test out a new pool (can't be many of those) or to gamble on a pool getting lucky. It didn't seem like enough to sustain the site.  So I started to read up on the man at the top.

First thing I noticed, was that when gpumax first started he was all over the place.  Answering questions all the time, posting every day all day.  And in the last month, nothing. 

I got curious and dug deeper.  Found a post that said he wouldn't be taking any more new users for gpumax until September, which made me wonder why I was even invited in the first place.

then I started reading up on bs&t...

and Im starting to feel used.

are you going to tell us the conclusion of your research or do we have to guess ?

Pirate just made a 642 BTC payment (https://blockchain.info/tx-index/17063551/3025fe4758c7818c43f8c4ccb44037c7089181ef7eb5435eca9f031434ee3239) to GPUMAX customers.  5.366441 BTC of that was to me.

His last payment was only 196 BTC (https://blockchain.info/tx-index/16796802/dfca95c6a0b7575c90abe19fe8ec99834504276cbba7a162377ec707338c2d5d).  So he has trippled the activity of GPUMAX.

Maybe GPUMAX is in some way helping him come up with his lenders bitcoins.  As of now he has not skipped town.

the timing was definitely noteworthy...

It's worth noting that a bunch of invites just went out, so there's likely a bunch of people with new accounts test-buying public work.
Also, according to the business registration Pirate isn't the only one involved in GPUMAX.
And finally, 642 BTC is totally trivial when you're supposed to be paying out over 5000 BTC per day just in interest  :D

I thought the same, until I racked my brains and thought of a really cool occasional use of the hashpower.  Not sure if that's what pirate's customers are using it for, but there's a good chance.

Think hard and you might come up with a reason for its existence too.

Shhhhh. Let them be smug in their accusations a little bit longer.  ;D

Cracking passwords for the CIA?

I've not tried making a purchase yet - do they start instantly if public work is currently underway (ie, somebody at GPUMax is there to start it  :P)?

While hash power may have uses outside Bitcoin(+altchains), existing miners wouldn't be able to do that without significant changes to the software. In particular password cracking wouldn't work. Considering the value of altchains, it's extremely unlikely that the hashpower is used for anything but bitcoin mining.

I see no way to make additional money in mining(pool hopping gain is likely too small), so the only application I can see is money laundering, where somebody pays a premium to exchange his dirty coins for freshly mined ones. So I think GPUMAX is used to launder money.

GPUmax can be used as a centralized server or node or anything, to control Bitcoin, if 51% attacks happen by anyone.

GPUMAX rips the wings off of fairies to process into pony food.

Or owner of GPUMAX could use it to >50% attack network, to return some of their debts, but mainly for fun.  or even a threat of possibility of attack could lower price just enough, for knowing party to purchase BTC, for profit.

This isn't really possible since the second anyone noticed this happening they just point their workers another direction and he'd lose majority. Miners aren't going to mine themselves out of existence.

I'm curious what people think the use of hashing power is though. As noted already if was anything but bitcoin then miners would ahve to use something other than cgminer ect. which does work on gpumax afaik. The whole "we figured it out because we're smart and you're dumb" is getting old.

Most likely is just a way to mint untraceable coins to pay for that ticket to Bermuda at noon. But it could be as simple and innocent as clever pool hoping. Most pool have fixed this so growth as this point seems odd though.

Any sort of knowledge that leads to profit will very rarely be shared freely, the more people milking profit the less profit each person gets for the same work

But the people who say it are all highly suspect. Matthew for example has admitted little technical knowledge of bitcoin or mining but he has figured out something developers cannot. Also all of the people who have figured it out of course will never start a competing business themselves. So every single person that has figured out what gpumax and bs&t does have no interest in profit themselves. Makes a lot of sense. The other fascinating thing is everyone that has figured these things out have direct financinal incentive for bs&t to be legit while naysayers have nothing to gain.

Most of it was used previously to pool hop. Or atleast that's what I would have imagined as the market for clean coins was low. Atleast one miner had detailed their use of it for hoping in the gpumax thread if anyone is really curious, go spend some time reading through that thread.

The intended purpose of the GPUMax service is to provide clean coins at a price. Or atleast thats really its most useful feature. And its not something thats been a secret. So it makes no sense for everyone to act like they just stumbled on this super hidden use for it.

As far as 51% with it, not possible with the hash power there. The last time GPUmax exposed its hashing power a month or so back, it had roughly 1TH total capacity at the time.

duuuuuuuuuude you just smugged all over him.

I've thought a potential reason to use GPUMAX would be if you solve a block and another pool solves a block at the same time, you can pay gpumax users extra to build off of your block, hopefully increasing the chance that the next block gets built off of yours rather than the other miners.

Wouldn't Pirate be the only one with that option? Regular GPUMax users don't have that kind of granularity.

I don't know anything about the interface to gpumax. Obviously for what I was talking about you'd need to be able to construct the block you sent out to gpumax workers. If you can't do that then my idea doesn't work.

What I thought of isn't illegal, a conspiracy theory, or anything to do with money laundering.

If you understand how the system works, you too can think of it.  Pirate said GPUmax isn't about subverting the network (not his words - he said something about not destroying the cryptocurrency we all love) and that corresponds with what I thought of.

I have nothing to gain or lose from GPUmax, I'm not involved.  My only claim is I've thought of a viable use than can pay good returns (it's unclear to me what those returns might be, that would take some interesting analysis).  I'm sure you can think of a use too if you throw away nutjob ideas of a conspiracy etc. and just think for yourself a bit.  Literally it took me about 15-30 minutes last night, but I'm willing to put that down as luck and it might normally take 6 hours.

Is that what it's being used for?  I'm not sure, but like you I cannot see any other viable use either :)

That's what the free market is all about right?  He who can exploit the opportunities wins.  Perhaps pirate (on GPUmax at least, nor sure about BTCST) is just smarter than you give him credit for?  If so, kudos to him, I'm not going to give the game away just because I can.

Can someone explain what GPUMAX actually is? Or post a link to where I can read about it?

I'm guessing its just like another mining pool.... except you are simply paid for your hash rate and the hashing power could be going to anyone willing to pay for it?

GPUMAX is a service.  It allows you to route your miners through the service so that you still mine at your normal pool, but only when there is no public work.  When public work is available, then your miners are working on the public work at a pps that you set in your account.

the public work comes from people who purchase shares at a rate higher than the standard pps rate at other pools.

Which is where the confusion comes from.  Most people have problems trying to figure out why someone would pay more for a bitcoin than you would get back. (ex. pay 1.2btc for 1btc).

The thinking about it, im guessing its intended to be a form of gambling, or pool hopping.  Where you purchase 100,000 shares, then the public 100-200ghash, or whatever the speed is that day, get pointed at your pool until those shares get found.

I imagine that there is a possibility to make a lot of money that way, but from what I've seen in the GPUMAX forum, the odds of return are small.  It just doesn't seem like enough to sustain the site, but I haven't purchased any shares either, so i'm not speaking from experience.

The same reason why people will pay 15-30 dollars for 1btc on ebay when they can get it any exchange for far less.

So they can pay with PayPal?

GPUMAX only accepts btc for payment right now.

And its a use that hasnt been proposed, debated and debunked a few 100 times already? That list is pretty long,  you know.

Now Im quite willing to believe there could be things I havent thought of (even though I have thought about it for more than 15 minutes :) ), but it strikes me as unlikely that apparently no else would have in these 9 months of BST and 6 or whatever months gpumax has been operating, even though both are among the most highly contentious and most debated topics.

Your idea would work if the timing were better.  Right now, jobs are put into a queue and started manually from there.  Perhaps once it's out of beta you will be able to buy jobs that start right away.

If you want BTC for Paypal go bitcoinary.com and enter a trade of Zyk

Cheers Zyk

this guy is a scammer according to a good amount of members on the forums, just heads up

yeah, no one here was really looking to puchase btc with paypal, it was just used as an example of why people would pay $15-$30 for a btc off of EBay.

but thanks for the heads up anyway...

The reason you do it, is somewhat gambling.  You purchase the shares for the extra horsepower if you will, to try and get "lucky".  If you have it pointed towards a proportional pool, which pays out due to hash rate/shares used to solve the block, and you get lucky and get a block that is 1)Solved quickly, and 2) Multiple blocks solved within the time it takes you to get your shares, you can walk away with much more coin than what you put it.  So if you buy 250k shares, and you get up to 600GH for it, you point it towards a proportional pool, and say it takes 500k to solve that block, and of that 500k, you grab 25k of those shares, you get a decent pay out because its proportional, not PPS.  Now say you get really lucky and that takes only 10 minutes, well you have more shares coming your way so its on to the next block the pool finds.  And again you are lucky and get somewhat the same result.  When its all said and done, you can come away with much more than you put it.  But again, its all about luck.

Where you get screwed like in this example, is when you dont get multiple blocks solved quickly.  You get stuck in one of those 10 hour long  rounds.  Now, you are spending more coin than what you are getting.  Its all about timing and luck.

Play Satoshi dice instead?

When I asked about this, the best answer for the purpose of the service was for buyers to pay a premium in exchange for getting generated coin (aka vanilla or virgin coin), coins without a transaction history. But there is little demand.

Lots of discussion, fact remains, still money not returned...

So, it's been a week since this thread has been created.

I've counted 12-13 some-odd small accounts that claim to have been repaid, but nothing substantial.

Has pirate disappeared ? Any updates on this ?

EDIT: nm. found this thread: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=101958.0

Pirate needs to stop the bleed (interest) ASAP.......

a YEAR  into the scheme and hes only starting to notice that 3400% is a bit
too much "bleed" to be profitable ?

 ::)