Bitcoin Forum

Here and elsewhere you can see where he's still calling this "just a prank":



And here's the original thread where he offers the bet:


It's funny how this "prank" only accepts participants with 250+ posts to avoid fraud.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=140654.msg1497432#msg1497432

Sorry to spoil the trolling OP, but I've never scammed anyone. The bet was a prank, but it was one made in extremely poor taste at a period in my life when I was highly stressed from work and not thinking straight (the trolls got to me a bit and I cracked to be honest). Since then I've lost over $100k in assets, work contracts and actual funds (paying people from the prank bet to make things right) and although I'll never be able to forget the poor choice I made considering I have survived only on bitcoins for 2 years by choice and understandably the fallout from my poor taste prank put me into severe financial difficulties, no one was scammed except me (which I'm taking as a stupid tax) when I was required to pay people who had no intention of paying me if they lost.

Looking forward to continuing to make things right and continue to provide services and products related to bitcoin in the future.

Cheers.

Well if that's the case then I must say Pirate@40 had a much more succesfull "prank."

Uhh sorry to jump in here because I guess it's none of my business, but I don't see why you have a scammer tag.
You didn't take any money, therefore it wasn't a scam.

You made a comment that frankly is a textbook case from first year law as what specifically "does not constitute a contract".
I am not a lawyer, but I do have significant experience and education in the law.

There is absolutely no reason for you to be paying this. 
It's not a scam, nor does it constitute a legally enforceable contract of any kind.
Even in Nevada this would not constitute a binding contract to gamble.

The reason it fails as a contract is because a contract has historically been comprised of 3 things.
Offer, Consideration and Acceptance.

Yes you made an offer (next time don't run your mouth)
Yes they accepted the offer side (they took a similar risk by accepting)

But the whole thing is missing consideration. 
For this to be binding, you would have had to escrow the funds somehow, and they would have had to escrow the funds as well and all of this would have had to have happened prior to the close of the offering window.

You calling it a prank is wrong though. 
There was a definitely a meeting of the minds, but no actual consideration was tendered by either you or the other side(s).  Thus it is not and never was a contract.  It was just an offer.

Man up, call it what it was, an ill advised offer that you simply cannot back, offer a mea culpa (I seriously doubt anyone here was relying on the funds from this bet to feed their kids).

If you are genuinely trying to pay people back as a way of "making this right", then you are just wasting your time and money.
It's not enforceable, and furthermore no one else would have been held to their side of this bargain either.
I have no weight around here, but if I did I would seriously petition somehow to get your tag removed. 

It dilutes the meaning of the tag to have you carrying it if this is the only reason.

I sent an email to Theymos asking him to reconsider the tag in your case.
Try to accept responsibility going forward (I'm not saying you haven't just that you need to) and realize that people will take you seriously if for no other reason than you have a very high posting count.

Truer words have never been spoken. If you look at the link in my signature, you'll see that Theymos once gave me a scammer tag for standing up for myself as a newbie too. For two years now I've known the scammer tag is not much more than just Theymos' opinion.

As for "untrustworthy", that was my suggestion to him instead of "scammer" as a compromise since I can see how many people I may have hurt from my prank/faux bet/lie/unconsidered contract/whatever you want to call it. This is me basically taking my licks and I don't mind paying a lot of scammers so that the extremely small handful of honest betters who were actually affected negatively get some compensation and not think of me too poorly for my shortsighted actions.

If after a few more months Theymos still thinks I deserve any kind of tags, then I'd cry foul. Right now I'm happy keeping it to give trolls some avenue of entertaining themselves. I know who I am, everyone who matters does too. (hint: this forum admin's opinion doesn't matter in my life)

You should have taken the next part of whatever law course you flunked out on (or, more likely, read a few more Google results).

A consideration can be a promise to do/pay something (and it can be conditional) - it doesn't have to actually be transferred or escrowed to be a consideration.  The purpose of the requirement for a consideration is NOT to say that contracts aren't binding until something has changed hands - but rather that there must be an agreed intent for a transfer of some value.

If I make a contract with you to exchange X for Y then your horribly flawed contention is that until one of us has sent there's no consideration and so there's no contract.  That's just totally wrong.

You're joking right?
Sadly no you're not, you just focused on 1 part of my posting and used that to try and attack the concept wholesale starting with an ad hominem attack on me.

Ok so let's start from the top and examine why this is in fact, NOT a contract.

Contracts 101. 
Any agreement whether verbal, or written is considered a valid contract binding on both parties unless it fails certain criteria.

It must actually be constructed as a contract.
For something to be constructed as a contract it must have 3 things. 
Offer, consideration and acceptance.

Both offer and acceptance are only considered valid if it can reasonably be determined that a meeting of the minds has occurred.
For an offer to even be a valid offer there has to be a demonstrated intent.  This intent must be one that a reasonable person would believe to be serious.
This is where it begins to fail as a contract because a reasonable person would not believe that he was serious based upon a post in a random forum on the internet.
Therefore it fails.

But let's say this wasn't a random forum on the internet, it still doesn't pass the reasonable person test because a reasonable person would understand that if the offer is to do something illegal it is automatically invalid.  Gambling is pretty much illegal in most places including the USA.  I say the jurisdiction is USA because it is not otherwise specified and the whois information for the domain bitcointalk.org is not valid information, thus the jurisdiction would likely fall to the region of the gTLD and .org is USA.
Therefore it fails again.

But let's say it had met all the previous criteria, then what?
Some types of offer are prima facia invalid regardless of the legality of the action.  One of these contract types is a contract to gamble. 
The only jurisdiction where a contract to gamble is held as legal is Nevada (at least in the USA), however there are some fairly serious stipulations involved and none of those were met, because in Nevada a contract to gamble is considered an aleatory contract and thus one of the parties must be a regulated entity.
Therefore it fails again.

But what if bitcointalk.org were in fact a properly registered and regulated entity?
If we treat this as a contract to gamble i.e. an aleatory contract that is not itself invalid, then it still constitutes an aleatory contract and money actually needs to be on the table, a promissory note is sufficient but a verbal or written "ok" is not.  Since bitcoin does not really have a concept of a promissory note there would have needed to have been escrow.
Therefore it fails again.

My WHOLE point rests upon the assertion that no reasonable person could be held to this offer because no reasonable person could believe intent from the circumstances of the situation.  I have shown at least 4 places where this admittedly stupid mistake fails to meet the standards of a contract.  Your assertion that it was valid sans escrow is technically correct when taken in complete isolation of all other facts, but misses the point of it not being a contract. 

Now if he had accepted funds and not returned them it would be a different story, my theory is founded upon the fact that no one sent him money for this or that if they did they were returned ALL of the money they sent.  Thus for all intents and purposes no consideration changed hands.
Therefore it fails again.

Ok, now your turn.

p.s.  I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice, just armchair analysis.

It was obviously not a prank. I he'd won, he would have taken the money for sure. Just check his original post, he was very serious.

The fact that the scammer still tries to justify his default with "I was trying to prove a point about using escrow", etc. it's just a demonstration that he is not sorry about what he did - at all.

Similar bets had been made on here and paid up.

Which immediately invalidates most of your junk about what a reasonable person would believe.  Bets on here get made and paid - so a reasonable person is entitled to assume good faith when a bet is offered.

As far as jurisdiction is concerned, the jurisdiction is rather obviously this forum - where it's been explicitly made clear before that if you make an agreement to do something then you're expected to do it.

Your argument that it's an illegal contract in nevada is irrelevant because:

a) Matt isn't in Nevada.
b) The scammer tag is given for breaking a contract - not for breaking a legal contract.  If you don't want to get a scammer tag AND you don't want to break the law then the solution is not to enter into contracts that are illegal.  That's not actually all that hard to work out is it?

Contract is not the same as Legal Contract.  If I enter into a contract with you to do something illegal then don't do it then I HAVE scammed you.  Now it may well be the case that scamming you is preferable to breaking the law - but that doesn't alter the fact that I made an agreement and broke it.  And that's what gets the scammer tag here.

Where our views are maybe more in agreement is that I believe there's plenty of forum members who have done as bad as or worse than Matt and not got scammer tags.  In my view he got his, in part, because he did it so blatantly and in such a public manner - so it didn't take much effort to find the evidence.  Whilst there's valid reasons to argue against him having a tag, trying to misinterpret things to argue no contract was entered into isn't one of them.  Noone here cares what RL jurisdiction etc applies - the simple test is did he promise to do something specific and then fail to deliver. 

If (and ONLY if) there were some convincing evidence that it was a prank from the start and that he 100% would not have taken a penny if his side of the bet won then I'd tend to support removing the tag.  But I'm by no means convinced of that and recall a post he made which gave the distinct impression that at least initially it was meant as a genuine bet.

Matthew - I remember the thread well.

I remember thinking that you were doing a daring thing and at that time I honestly thought you were going to make good your bet. I would have bet money that you would.

At no time was there any indication that you were 'making a point' otherwise you'd not have been so forthright and bold in your statements.

Your intent was doubly clarified by many posters saying you'd never pay up and that you'd use a technicality to get out of paying.

My personal opinion is that the bet went against you and you panicked. It's just my personal opinion but what isn't opinion is that your integrity took a huge knock.

It's unclear whether you should have been given a scammer tag or not as the opposite case can't be proven; that you'd have been happy to take other people's Bitcoins if the bet had gone the other way. From your actual actions people could claim that that you would have (lack of integrity) and thus it was proof enough that you would have but that's just conjecture.

So yeah, back to the original point of the OP. When I read the same post earlier today it irked me too. Possibly because I felt like you were trying to re-write what happened but whatever it was it just didn't feel right. (I can't quite fully explain it so perhaps someone else can do a better job.)

It was a "prank" only because he lost the bet.

Had he won, it would have been a legitimate bet.   ;)

Obviously. What's hilarious is that the guy keeps saying on and on that it was a "prank", just to "teach people a lesson".

Then he apologizes with hiper-long posts about how immature he was, etc... But does not want to admit that he would have taken the money if he had won, that the bet was completely serious (man, just look at the terms and how much effort he put on it), and that he just chickened out when he realized he was going to lose.

In my opinion the only lesson learnt by everybody is that MNW is completely untrustworthy, a child with which is better to never do business unless you want to be burnt.

Prank or not, scam or not, he has made great progress resolving the issue - whatever you choose to call it:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=140654.msg1497432#msg1497432

In the long run that is all that really matters.  People make mistakes, they pay for their mistakes, they learn and grow - I know I have.

OHAI Nova!  In your first post, you argue that giving Mathew a scammer tag dilutes its meaning, and seamlessly segway into trying to prove that *all the transactions on these forums* fail to meet the legal criteria for binding contracts.  Do you mean to say a scammer tag is *never* appropriate on these forums, and if so, why is it bad to "dilute [its] meaning"?
An important caveat:  Yes, arguing to the alternative is very rakish, but only if you know what you're doing.  Otherwise it's called "contradicting yourself." (an occupational hazzard in armchair law) :D

I hadn't seen this thread before. Apologies if my previous post came off as condemning you (it really wasn't meant to).

I remember the first time I came across your posts from when I first joined. They were so raw with youth and people wouldn't give you a chance.

I left the forums for about a year and came back to the whole Pirate debacle.

I imagine there's been plenty of time for personal growth since those early posts and it's humbling to see you're still working hard to build a community and that you're doing your best to correct a mistake.

All the best :)

"Surely matthew would have taken the money if he had won"
"There is no way he wasn't serious because no one would have gone to such lengths to troll"

Everytime I read opinions like these it just reminds me how scattered and poorly I've presented myself the last two years (anyone who knows me knows to what lengths I used to go to do something funny or mess with people). I'm quite happy I'm not suffering from that problem as badly these days and I accept that the owners of windows I broke will always think what they want, but my integrity is not up for bargaining.

What I'm doing now is basically settling that I crossed a line when I fooled others whom I thought were ignorant at the time (I was a bit manic). The several bitcoiners who lived with me can attest to the constant laughing and making fun of super serious old men who thought they'd win millions of dollars from a forum bet. It wasn't the right way to handle those people. Looking back, I'm ashamed I didn't take the high road. I'm more ashamed I put myself into a situation where others could so easily start threads questioning my integrity and not be immediately laughed at.

Life is hardly over though, and I'm happy to be given a chance to make things right for everyone who was involved. As for people who weren't involved, my advice would be to stop putting people in situations that require so much trust in the first place. That's the only lesson that matters for you.

You have no integrity, and you demonstrate that post after post. You are NOT TO BE TRUSTED, and this is clear to everybody in these forums.

That's a well argued point and I tip my hat to you.  Also I don't know if the tag had been changed in the time since I interjected or if it was always marked as untrustworthy, but my point was only intended to reflect upon the meaning of the scammer tag, which you cannot dispute would be diluted in this instance.  If you accept the fact that people trusted in him, regardless of his underlaying intent and he failed to follow through with what he said he would do then I completely agree, untrustworthy is an appropriate tag

Still I'm glad we had this dialog, it's been a fun and interesting conversation.

The problem with a general "untrustworthy" tag is that it's highly subjective. There are many who trust me immensely, and for good reason (it benefits them to do so). They may not trust me for making public bets with millions of dollars I don't have, but people trust me with funds, business decisions and management on a daily basis. If the tag were "untrustworthy with public bets" (aka deadbeat) then it might even be more appropriate, except then it wouldn't make sense when I have settled with the last better. The way I see it, this topic is something to be discussed *after* I've finished settling with everyone. At that point, I highly doubt even Theymos himself could sufficiently argue a need for any tag.


I appreciate that. Something people may not know is how badly it hurt seeing my own friends (people like Erik Voorhees) turn against me publicly. It was a real turning point for me when my own friends couldn't handle my behavior. It forced me to look at myself and whom I was really hurting.

Although I appreciate the hypothesis presented for consideration, I know what I am and what I am not. I can most certainly live with a few people in the world thinking poorly of me on a forum for my past mistakes and even the occasional dramatic accusation. The way I see it, all I need to do is make sure in the future I don't let myself into situations against where such accusations can ever be considered "founded" and I suppose I'll be fine.

GTFO TLDR; all this legal mumbo-jumbo and whining

hon·or [on-er]
noun

1. honesty, fairness, or integrity in one's beliefs, actions, and words

Ask Theymos for a "dishonorable" tag.

I would agree were it not for this thread:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=140654.msg1497432#msg1497432

This looks like repentance to me.

Disclaimer : I did not have a wager with MNW.


MNW set up a wagering scheme last year.  This scheme was set up in such a way where it was impossible for him to lose and impossible for anyone else to win.  He took in wagers knowing that there was the escape clause of calling the wager a "joke" or a "lesson" or whatever if he lost.  There was many opportunities for him to stop the wager and come clean - he didn't.   

If the wager went in his favor, do you think the outcome of calling it a "prank" would have occurred?  In my mind, absolutely not. 

If MNW started another wager now, would anyone on this board bet against him?  You'd have to be an idiot to do so. 

A wager is a trust and a contract.  In some places, welching on a bet may cost you your life.  In my opinion, if you had pulled this stunt anywhere else besides an Internet forum, I'd be constantly looking over my shoulder until those "prank wagers" were paid off.  You should consider yourself lucky. 

"Untrustworthy" is more than fitting.  A lot of people had trust in you by making a wager with you.  Unless every person that had a wager with you was compensated, I'd say let the title stick. 

Reading this, he seems to be on the right track.  When all of the wagering parties have been compensated (except a reasonable time period for "no response" individuals), let him make the case for the title removal.

It wasn't really setup in such way, it went more like this:
https://i.imgur.com/DlYPT.jpg

I agree.

Reneging on a bet is 100% a scam, if you fail to see this then not only are you a scammer, but an idiot as well.

Your "prank" pumped up the value of bad pirate debt as people sought to hedge against your bet, guaranteeing a win no matter the outcome (the mere possibility of this shows how outrageous the bet was though... but people get blinded by greed)

I wanted to bet against you and even posted in the thread but you refused to escrow so I chose not to...

But many people did bet against you.

You caused people to buy bad pirate debt (and lose all that money) as they hedged against your bet!!!

After the bet ended and I took a leave of absence I had some time to think over the matter and came to the same conclusion, hence my return to make things right. (In that if I believe that reneging on even the most ridiculous bets makes me a scammer, then I cannot let that happen now can I).

Lack of foresight on my part. The network effect was something I hadn't really planned on and adds to the immaturity of the bet in the first place. I've learned a valuable lesson about bothering with people and their money and would prefer to stay out of it in the future. That said, it is not my "fault" people were greedy. It is merely my fault for misrepresenting and assuming people would get the joke and instead not be offended. It just shows you how detached from the reality of the situation I was at the time.


I didn't cause anyone to do anything. They all made their own choices. That said, I feel *bad* about their choices and have thus decided to settle with people, despite the fact that many of them are scammers who would not have paid if they lost. This point keeps getting brushed over in an attempt to paint me as some kind of a scammer, but people have already publicly and privately admitted that they had no intention of paying if they lost as they knew the bet was a giant troll. I still stood for my principles and began to pay people despite that. Write that one in your history books. I already have and I consider it to be nothing more than a stupid tax.

This is my personal perspective because I entered into about a 1500 BTC bet with him which Matthew backed out of.

He is currently supposed to be repaying me based on our agreed terms from Feb of this year. I have not been paid yet nor have I heard from Matthew about it recently.

Anyways back to my perspective on the "bet" or "prank". The "prank" in my view was a scam. It was a blatant lie which gave Matthew an unfair advantage concerning buying/selling pirate debt.

Calling an agreement that you back out of a "prank" is like saying that BFL is now backing out of their 1000 BTC bet (given they had malicious intentions in stating they would meet their said specs and did not) and then for them to call their bet a "prank".

Matthew, call it what you want, but I call it a scam.

Still waiting for some sort of update on our agree terms to settle our bet under the new terms agreed to in PM.

Anytime you wanna update me would be appreciated.

Thanks  :D

Thanks for sharing your opinion smoothie. I'm not sure if I can call it a "wrong" opinion just because I hadn't realized or acted on any supposed benefits, but I admit that once I heard the speculative arguments from some intelligent community members I knew what kind of mistake I made and that it wouldn't be easy to forget about and move on. As for your own bet, you're on a long list of people I haven't neglected contacting, and the second your turn is up you'll get a super happy message from me.  :)

I will be waiting.

Please let us know the outcome.  Thanks, smoothie.

Bold and italic is my emphasis.  How this guy isn't banned is beyond me.  The community is asking for it.

You contradicted yourself there. The community *was* asking for it, and they got it (albeit not a smart thing to do). The level of scams and trust to strangers at that time in the forum was insane. The stunt that I pulled was to show that no matter who you trust, an escrowless bet with an internet stranger is the epitomy of stupid. I went out of my way to make it painfully clear to everyone that "I cannot tell a lie", and other textbook scammer claims, and people still went on blind faith. I even raised the maximum bets allowed to give the same people a chance and it backfired because they only took it more seriously. What I did was stupid, the *wrong* way to "teach a lesson" (which TradeFortress is now learning as well) and I regret having gone down that path.

As for being banned, I've been banned many times, for many reasons, never created a sock puppet account to subvert the ban and always took it seriously as a reflection of myself, corrected myself, and came back to work harder, troll less, and do more "good". My intention is to have a net positive effect on the community and to get these ideas out of my head and working before I die. If my childish games have taught me a lesson to be more serious, and I understand what is expected of me, why would you attempt to rob me of the chance to make up for my mistakes by banning and ignoring? Have you never made a mistake? Do you not believe in reform? Do you think anyone who has been to jail before should be forced to stay there forever? Do you not realize that sometimes people's biggest mistakes are the defining point in their life before they go on to do great things? How about instead of mocking the person I was, you inquire as to the person I strive to be? Or, you and a few others on this forum could just post your life history as I have always done openly and let's see what petty, superficial criticisms we can come up with to make blanket judgements on your character. :)

I'm not the same person I was when I posted that bet. I was completely disconnected from reality. Thanks everyone here who has had their share of mistakes for cluing me into the real world, and to everyone else who wastes a breath trying to slow me down, I'll be happy to drive you crazy by simply continuing on a path of learning and experience. Enjoy the show I guess.

Will do.

What is beyond me is how you can still say that your bet was a "prank" to "show people a lesson about escrow". That point should be enough for you to keep indefinitely your scammer tag.

Why? Because it's BS. You thought Pirate was legit, and in fact you said many times that "he may be doing something we do not understand, but I think he is legit", I remember that. Thus, you really thought that Pirate was not a ponzi (you said it in many posts), so there's no way you were going "to teach the community a lesson", because you really thought you had chances to win that bet. If you wished to "teach a lesson", you would have created a bet that you had no chances to win (and with a complete different wording and terms), and this is not the case at all.

Your post history proves that you really thought Trendon was legit, so you are either lying to yourself to maintain the delusion that you are smarter than everybody else, or you are just laughing at us all. Honestly, I think it's the first option, which is a pity, because the real step forward for you would be to admit your real mistake: you thought you would have made big money because you thought you were much smarter than everybody else, but when you realized you were going to lose you just decided to chicken out because you did not want to spend the rest of your life paying people what you owe them.

Saying over and over yours was just a "prank" to "teach a lesson" just proves you are not really sorry about what you did, and that you are avoiding to really face the gravity of your default (because it was so obvious it was a prank... Right?).

That's what makes me mad at you, not the fact that you defaulted, but that you are looking for shortcuts to avoid facing the harsh truth - and doing that in front of yourself is more important than doing it in front of the community.

Until you don't do that, for me you will still be an untrustworthy, mentally unbalanced child.

I have neither believed he was legit nor non-legit, only that people were so quick to judge (just like you) what they didn't research or understand themselves. It doesn't matter what I *posted* at that time, because most of it was posted to draw out logical fallacies, discussion or to piss off trolls who already had grudges against me (people like you right now). I naively thought my stunt would somehow have an impact to stop the blind trust in this community, at the same time I was honestly enjoying myself bothering people like you who think they have me "figurered out". Yea, it was pretty dumb and I was definitely detached from reality on it. As some others posters have already said elsewhere, "he only taught himself a lesson". People are still falling for total bullshit here on a daily basis, so overall it was just a waste of reputation and a pretty immature thing to do.

I still have no evidence he was a ponzi, just common sense and speculation that he was one. I still have no evidence Zhou Tong stole money from Bitcoinica, just common sense and speculation. What I've learned from all this is that you shouldn't interrupt the mob mentality unless you have *evidence* against them, not just opinion. It was very entertaining to screw with the mob, push them on, etc, but I honestly was so disconnected that I wasn't realizing the gravity of the situation (e.g. they weren't just trolls, they were people afraid of losing their money)

There's always a chance I could have won the bet, but that wouldn't have told anyone if Pirate was a ponzi or not, it could have simply meant his con was intended to be even longer and pull in more suckers. It has already been argued that he could have used my bet to instill *more* trust for his scam (which is not what I had intended and felt horrible after making that connection myself). What I would have done with funds if I had won is obvious. I am here to build, I am friends with almost every business and exchange owner in bitcoin. Do you really think I would have kept the money if I had won? Really? Why do you think I am driven by money? I waste money all the time just to get ideas out there (as you should know by now) and see if things will work, probing and poking the world around me. I want to correct my ideas and become successful on honest terms, I always have. This community is largely negative, bias and abusive though, and that has jaded my opinion quite a lot. Luckily, I have bounced back and have a new "fence" to not cross in my life.

You assume too much. What you mean is, if *you* had wanted to teach a lesson, *you* would have done A or B. I am not you, and I didn't understand what was going to happen. I was disconnected from reality on that one.

I was laughing at you all until I realized that what I had done had collateral damage, in which case I stepped up and am making good on it like any man should. I'm not sorry for pulling a prank, I'm sorry for not realizing the damage it was causing. I threw eggs at a guy's house and broke his window basically, and you're here telling me that "You obviously knew that throwing that egg would break the window". Really? I "obviously knew"? You really don't know me very well if you think I "obviously know" things before doing them.  ;)

I've admitted all my mistakes regarding that bet. Your opinion and repeating the same thing over again is not going to materialize a new mistake out of thin air. If you can prove to me that I did something that I didn't realize I was doing, I'm obviously going to learn from it, but you can't argue with a person who knows themself and why they do things that they intended to hurt others. You're wasting your time.

Repeating that to yourself doesn't make it true. Only I know how sorry I really am and everyone who was involved in the bet who has continued communication with me knows what's really going on in my life, mind and heart after all that mess. You're a bystander, so obviously you don't know the whole story, but you don't need to. All you need to know as a member of the community is that I'm not a danger, not a scammer, and am making good on my misguided promises of past as I grow up and take the reigns, raise the bar and look for a more mature existence.

I'm not mad at you for trying to call me out on what you logically believe to be a hole, but I do have understanding that when you're drunk in the street and punch someone in the face, simply saying "I'm sorry" the next day doesn't cut it, and that you and people like you will keep me company for quite a while. I'm not afraid of that as I know myself and what my intentions in life are (hint: they're to build, not destroy).

Count the threads I've started and replied to in this community regarding this issue. Count the lost businesses, contacts, relationships, trust and well, money, that I've lost doing the *right* thing. I'm pretty sure the harsh truth has been faced and you're the one avoiding it now.

I can live with that. There are some people who think because I said a 17 year old girl is hot in her pictures (which she is), that that makes me a pedo (someone who likes toddlers), or someone who thinks because I stood up for what I thought was right that I am a "paid shill" of this or that. I can honestly live with one more anonymous, sockpuppet voice not trusting me. I'm not here for you, I'm here for me and the people who appreciate me. Not to be cliche but, "Hater's gonna hate".

Cheers

So you are really saying that if you'd win that bet you would have declined cashing it? You would have said: this is only a prank, as nobody did escrow I just condone everybody's debt?

That's BS, and you know it.

This.   


So, an analogy would be that in order to show the level of trust of a neighborhood, you would need to break into those people's homes and steal a few things.  You would have given them back later, right?  In order to show the unwashed masses not to trust an Internet forum user, you scam them. 

And still calling it a "lesson" or a "prank" doesn't help your cause. 

You must never have been a hacker before if you don't understand that logic. I admit it's a controversial logic that non hackers don't understand, and it's something TradeFortress is pulling right now by suckering newbies into trusting him on Ripple etc (which I don't approve of), but at the time I thought it was an appropriate display and I had always had problems with my boundaries in regards to trolling. I don't have those problems now, my life has been fundamentally changed thanks to a wake up call, a few creative outlets presenting themselves and a new job that keeps me thinking about consequences of actions.

Looking back though, it was in fact inappropriate and over the top and could have given people a certain sense of comfort to do more stupid things with their money (aside from the already stupid thing they did with it). The battle I was fighting was a losing one though and I made things worse by deflecting the attention away from the real criminal. What else is there to talk about? After 8 months and having already apologized, started settlements with everyone involved (paying half already), you'll excuse me if I don't jump up and down to help you beat this dead horse. Is this just because you don't like the word "prank"? I'll use a different word then. How about "stunt"?

You know damn well if you won, you would have pursued our debt and made sure anyone who didn't pay up received a scammer tag. I went in when the amount was capped to 10K BTC, thought you were nuts, did some math, decided why not, this ponzi has came to it's end, free money. No payments from pirate... you got cold feets... decided let's go nuts and pretend it was a prank, accepted crazy bets until you reached 80k + BTC.
Seriously man? We've seen so many ponzi schemes throughout the years it's not even necessary to research anything when you see a continuous percentage far higher than any man has ever been able to make it's obviously a scam. Then add an anonymous internet currency and the fact that a person so incredible smart he can earn more % than any man in history before him decided that hey, why not just deal with the hassle of investors and share the wealth. The numbers don't add up it's a no brainer.
Most people were not falling for anything, they were just greedy and wanted more bitcoins. They knew it was a ponzi scheme and invested with the plan to get out before all the other suckers. Anyone with more than half a brain knew those returns offered is impossible long term.

No, the mob should provide evidence. E.g show to any other investment that has been able to offer such returns long term. Or maybe prove what's wrong with the exponential growth argument.

Well, that's what it did, suckers started buying up pirate debts to hedge, because they believied your bet was legit.

Would have kept? If this was a prank you wouldn't have accepted any money in the first place.

Well lesson learned, and it wasn't a prank.


Well I don't know about your country, but if you read the law here, a child is defined as someone in the age range of 0-18 and if you think a 17 year old is hot, or even a 17.9 year old, that makes you a pedo because you find children attractive <sarcasm>you sick son of a bitch!!</sarcasm>. Now you have three options:
1. Be proud to be pedo
2. Chicken out and say you don't find anyone less than 18 years of age attractive.
3. Point out these mistakes whenever you see people making them.

Matt, I hope you have at least the balls and the decency to keep the promise you did in your "apology" to the community, just a few months ago:


Oh... Wait... You are now auctioning shares of your batch #3 Avalon to noob members, in the auctioning subforum. Instead of using that income to repay your debt, you come back to the community to increase your profit.

Post after post you just expose how untrustworthy you are. Your words don't mean nothing. Do you know why? Because you think you are much smarter than you really are, and you live in that perpetual delusion.

I'm probably twice your age, and yeah I've been in the scene probably while you were still in diapers.  I understand completely the hacker mentality, and kid - you ain't even close.  A hacker seeks to take things apart, understand how they work, then modify them and/or make them better.   Where in your messed-up sense of logic does your "stunt" fit into those parameters? 

Yeah you made a mistake.  You thought you were smarter than everyone else and it blew up in your face.  I also think you acted on some bad information (maybe from pirateat40 himself) and got MNW'd in the end.

Rampion. your trolling is starting to become obvious. That post was made almost 9 months ago (not a few) and it was made when I left the first time and hadn't attempted to make things right. The fact that you'd cheaply try to paint a picture otherwise shows me you're not interested in making things right, just attempting to make me look bad.

Some are noobs, some are trusted members who know me. You continue to use loaded words to paint a darker picture to fit your skewed reality. Case in point:

I saw this kind of ignorance in the auction thread itself. People don't realize that in order to pay back millions of dollars in faux internet bets denominated in BTC, you actually have to earn BTC. It seems like a much smarter thing to do to purchase a mining rig that earns BTC when you have to make payments in BTC over a long period of time, doesn't it? Also, why did you think that those bitcoins that went towards buying the rig were mine? Did you think I don't have any friends who know my difficult situation? You sure do love making assumptions, something only a troll would be doing.

You incorrectly assume I had a profit to begin with, instead of a huge net loss in addition to making good on my promises. All you're doing is proving to me that you don't actually care about this issue, you just want to spew misdirected venom.

The mistakes I made are mine to own and make up for. It is absolutely clear to everyone here that Rampion has a hard on for trolling me (as could be seen as far back as the auction thread). I'll be happy to prove anyone of like thought wrong with future actions, but I'm a little tired now responding to uninformed vitriol. If you can post an actual argument, I'll obviously respond (because I enjoy learning, especially about myself!). Judging by the direction you're taking though, it seems you're out of steam and are stuck on a loop so I'll go ahead and leave this one for now.

Please look up the definition of that word. It doesn't mean what you think it means.

Despite everything, I appreciate even the trolls for helping to remind me of what I should be striving to be better then. Thanks for that.

So, you are publicly stating that all the BTC generated by your Avalon (except the % you have auctioned) will go to repay your debt with the community?

That would be a good start, Matt.

I'd be happy to answer your question (thank you for keeping the loaded words and insinuations to only a few this time . I know it was difficult for you  ::)). I have no need to make any public announcements because I don't owe the community any debt (at least I was under the impression this community is far larger than the number of people involved in my bet..at least I hope it is or bitcoin has no chance of success).

Most have already been paid, but the people remaining I have made settlements with and they will be paid per their terms, and yes, not only did the auctioned shares go straight to paying some of those settlements but bitcoins mined from those rigs will also be used for settlements. I'm not involved in bitcoin for profits at the moment, I'm involved to make money so that I can pay what I agreed to pay. Since that bet I was told by someone "trust takes years to build and seconds to break". I take that to heart now and have no intention of being in any role that requires unnecessary trust. That said, I've made my personal life and identity public to a point of weakness, to ensure that I am held accountable for my actions always. I'm happy to learn and help others learn from my actions as well. Can't wait to finish making things right and continue doing what I do best-- building.

See you around Rampion.

Which is exactly my point....

And since you only replied to this off-topic comment, I'll assume you agree with the rest of what I said.

Matthew,

I have no skin in this game but it's pretty clear that your best course of action is to continue to try and compensate those you owe a debt to, keep your nose clean, and STFU.  Sorry to be blunt, but trying to explain yourself by using words like "stunt," "lesson," and "prank" is only pissing people off even more.  You're better off just saying you were wrong and are trying to make amends, and leave it at that as every sentence you write is going to be scrutinized.  By coming back and trying to justify your actions or give insight into your thought process, you're just coming off as someone who isn't 100% remorseful.  Forgiveness comes in time and by your deeds, nothing you say is going to speed up that process, to the contrary, it will probably just slow things down.  JMHO.

Mattew attempted to scam and wont be long I imagine till the next scam of his.

In the 2 years I've been a major contributor to the bitcoin business community I've never scammed anyone and I don't intend to. I'm a builder. You're obviously free to judge me on my mistakes, failed businesses, or even my haircut though. Every bit of feedback helps me do a better job. Click the link in my signature for a list of mistakes you might want to judge me on some more. :)

I'm one of the "shareholders" of the Avalon Batch 3 he auctioned. He has 2 ordered and 1 of them is sold to people like me, in small branches, so he won't get ANY BTCs from the mining he will (I hope) do with that Avalon.
I still trust him, and this is a GREAT opportunity to prove the community that he is legit: If he pays in a weekly (as promised) schedule he is clean to me (we all make mistakes).

PS: I'll keep you all posted on this Batch 3 auction and if he pays or not. It's the best way for him to be "re-trusted" again.

Thank you KaTXi, appreciate that!

That's the point that makes me mad at him. When he is saying that his bet was a "prank" to "teach people a lesson", he is telling us:

"you are so stupid that you didn't even realize my bet was a joke to teach you all a lesson".

As this is BS, because he obviously thought Pirate was legit and he told that many times, IMO he is just lying to himself to maintain the delusion that he is smarter than everybody else.