Bitcoin Forum

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This is an informative post.

He is right though. The bet has pretty ambiguous wording and I don't know if everyone has informed themselves on what actually constitutes a winning bet.

I have a feeling that there are going to be quite a few sad people when pirate offers his investors a token amount (like 20% of their "investment"), and they accept (because, you know, better than nothing) meaning Matt wins the bet according to his rules.

I hope I am wrong, and people are better informed than I am giving credit for, but I think people are letting greed cloud their judgement.

Well I erased this post because I am not sure at all and I dont like to publicly call out on people.

Also it was private conversation but in my opinion when there is 100k$ at hand this privacy argument dont really hold.

Still, this is just my opinion. I still feel a little scummy for this "betrayal" of private conversation, but, oh well...

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I want to first precise that I have nothing against Matthew and that I am just acting preventively.

However, I just wanna state a few facts:

- I contacted matthew to bet. He replied very fast (within 2 mins or so)
He instantly offered me huge amount of money possible for the bet (quoted : "Since we're doing this privately, I will accept much more than 250BTC if you need. The limit was for newbies to deter scammers from flogging into my thread with 9000BTC claims.")

- I offered to bet 850 btc (whats left to me after btc fiasco) and using an escrow as this is a big amount.
He replied again instantely that he trust me as I am a friend of Roger etc. (which I actually not, I just trust roger as we both are bitcoinica's victim and his character seems honnest & mature)

- I told him that I was not trusting him for this amount and that I need an escrow. He just said that I should let him know if I ever change my mind (ie if I am willing to bet with no escrow).

- I replied that I would give him a 3rd party to send bitcoin to.
And that if he effectively trust me, he can as well send me the bitcoins from the bet.


He did not reply afterwards.

As I come from the poker world, huge bets are routinely taken and escrow ARE mandatory and JUDGES must be elected for abritraging the results. Rules should be deeply detailed.
Making huge bets without these garantee is REALLY risky. And 10k btc is not kid money.

cliffs :

- He is very eager to bet a LOT of money without escrow
- He can "trust" you basically over nothing
- He is suddenly very unwilling and unresponsive when you makes step towards getting an actual escrow.
- The form of the bet is very un-professionnal as far as big bets goes

Combination of all theses facts makes me very weary that someting scummy is in the air. I MIGHT be wrong and I HOPE I am wrong but I do think it is my duty to let others know my stance on this.

And again, if I am proven wrong I will be the first to apologize strongly towards Matthew.
No offense intended towards him, I just want to warn users of the website.

Emilien

Edit : ok he just send me that he dont want to break his cascassius gold bar just for one person.

If you trust Pirateat40, you can trust Matthew  ;D

for the history!

Matthew's thread says he wins if pirate pays back as described in his [pirateat40's] thread.  Pirate said he will would everyone back with interest down to the hour.  If pirate pays only 20% back, and Matthew calls that a win, I feel like the community will not pay him.  Then someone has to decide who gets the scammer tags.


Yes, this is extremely suspicious and everyone should be made aware of it before betting.

For Spain!

as well

FOR SCIENCE!

@OP: Don't sweat it. You're only doing what you believe you need to do, I respect that. I will be closing the thread here in a bit and I am still not sure if I want to break it just for a bet. I -will- PM you when I make up my mind. Thanks for your patience.

He just bet 25btc with a 13 (now 26) post user.

Should I print a tabloid? Would you buy it?

You know I PM users, find out their info, OTC ratings, businesses they operate etc, before accepting, right? Many times I get PMs far in advance and discuss, and the message you see asking to bet is actually hours later, and many times they send the coins to a trusted escrow (small amounts like 25 BTC and such).

Well as I said, if you are indeed very honnest, I will deeply apologize. And I appreciate the fact that you stay civilised even when accused :)

I still dont understand why you did not make your topic with a big & trusted escrow so nobodies would have had any doubt of your legitimacy

I'll do that last, just as a final show. I love keeping people in suspense and I want to teach people a lesson who are saying "Pirate is a scam because he's waiting". Those same people say "Matthew is a scam because he's waiting". If you had everyone bothering you, stalking you, harassing you, lying about you, wouldn't you want try to prove them wrong in a highly dramatic manner that makes them question the very foundation of their sick, pedantic reasoning?

Unlike betting with pirateat40, there is no risk in betting with Matthew (unless you use escrow). Everyone still has their money in their pockets, and if someone doesn't pay, at most you'll get some words and a forum label.

to;dr if Matthew doesn't pay, you haven't really lost anything.

From the bet thread:
 
So technically, Matt wins even if pirate pays only 1%, as long as his investors agree to accept it. (Which they will, because even a token amount is better than zero.)


That is the one sentence that prevented me from placing a bet....it gives Matt too much wiggle room to win.

If Matthew wins the bets on a technicality like that, I'm taking the scammer tag and walking...but I don't think he intends to play games. My gut feeling tells me he is pissed that people called pirate a ponzi without proof and he would rather see people out their money where their mouth is.

Also, I'm not sure he can dole out scammer tags as he sees fit. I imagine if there was not agreement in who won the bet, then a lot of people might get labeled scammer...that would hurt the community...imagine if bitcointalk is calling regular users scammers, what's an uninformed visitor gonna think when a large fraction of posters are "scammers."  Not good.

P.s.  my belief is that anyone offering such wild interest rates is a ponzi...I mean, I'd mortgage my house to get in on a scheme like pirates if I were him and I knew I could make a fortune...so why pay others so mucj interest? It doesn't make sense to borrow money at crazy high interest rates if running the scheme with his own money could make him so much money so quickly. The maths just don't look good to me.

Matthew wouldn't be the one to hand out scammer tags.  He is labeled as "staff" on the forum, but as far as I know, that power only extends to management of one small subforum here.

This is not going to happen. Not ALL of them would accept that. For starters, Bitlane wouldn't. All small/medium lenders who have hedged their bets against Matthew won't take a small %.

I do understand the concern that Matthew may not honour his payment, that's a matter of trust towards Matthew I guess, unless you have a good escrow you already trust and both sides pay in advance.

I'm willing to escrow for 1% or 1BTC each side by the way ;D

This whole business of Matthew's bet and Pireat's drama is more riveting than the casey anthony trial. This is high end entertainment here.
If y'all could keep this shit up for the next couple of months I would really appreciate it. I'm not being facetious even.. People pay good money for this kind of shit.

You need a publicity agent?

Stern
Lenno
Colbert
SNL!

I see big things in your future!

Sorry but Matthew has confirmed this is 100% or nothing.  Nothing but FUD here.

I will make a prediction as my fledgling "established" member post.

There will be so much confusion and disagreement concerning the outcome of this bet that few, and perhaps no payments will be made in either direction.  Perhaps MW even intends this to be the whole point of the fiasco exercise.

^^^

You may be able to tell that though I am a new poster I have been a lurker long enough to be pretty jaded. ;)

Learn to PM.

Reached quota...

Does not work properly on my cell

confirmed :)

lol fair enough mate

I disagree with this completely...MNW is actually providing a valuable hedging/price discovery opportunity for all involved. Now arbitrageurs can effectively short pirate debt to 50% par...injecting massive liquidity into the market for pirate debt.

We would be much better off if he ran analysis and picked ROI for similar other events...alas shorting is misunderstood and vilified ("gentlemen don't trade puts" as they used to say in Chicago), and the concept of numeraire is lost to the world.

For the record I vote pirate is a pirate/ponzi. If not, he was very generous...or didn't realize there are cheaper ways to borrow money :)

As I said to everyone in another post no one should pay Matthew a cent even if he does win the bet unless he can prove that he could cover the bet in the first place and if he cant prove he can cover the bet, he should be labelled scammer. The thing to remember is that Matthew is the editor an chief of Bitcoin Magazine. He and Bitcoin Magazine have a lot to loose if here if things turn out bad. A) he does not pay if he looses OR B) he does win and it turns out that he never had the money cover the wager in the first place.

Matthew I wish you luck here, there is a lot at stake and things are not looking in your favour at the moment.

Also, the original bet mentioned nothing about additional clauses as mentioned above. It was that pirate paid out everyone in full including interest as described in his original thread within 3 weeks. That is the bet I and everyone will be holding you to. None of this pay out 90% and investors accept crap. 100% plus interest or Matthew looses.

He proved he owned 20706 btc -by moving them) back when he was betting "only" 20706 btc.

I don't remember the bitcoin adress though.

There is no such thing as "sick, pedantic reasoning". [Are you going to call Pifagora theorem sick and pedantic too?]

There are sound arguments and unsound arguments. There are valid arguments and invalid arguments.

There are also people who are uneducated and more so unable or unwilling to learn and those who, when faced with undeniable argument crushing their silly hypothesis, are hiding in some disturbing psycho denial state and exhibiting symptoms of emotional withdrawal from the reality.

I would withdraw from reality if I just flushed 30k BTC down the toilet...

He didn't flush it down the toilet. The guy that half the forums has on ignore was teaching us how to be more sociable.

You know the old saying, if I owe the bank a thousand dollars it's my problem, if I owe the bank a million dollars it's the bank's problem.  Right now Pirate has the power to dictate how much he's willing to pay back simply because many of his creditors are going to be desperate to get anything back.  Is a 50% payback a default?  Of course it is.  It's not a 'hair cut', or 'easing of debt'.  We've seen the same tricks applied with Greece (and soon Spain/Italy/etc) where there is massive pressure to take a huge loss to avoid triggering an actual default.