Bitcoin Forum

I'd like to start a discussion about pirateat40 and his 2 projects: GPUMax and Bitcoin Savings & Trust. The following is pure speculation on my part, as I have no proof of anything. I just wanted to hear other people's opinion and am not trying to spread FUD.

pirateat40 may be just a very smart person that happened to be working on 2 very ambitious projects, but something just doesn't seem right about him.

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

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

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

This scam can probably last until he gets 51% of the mining power. Then use whatever money is left in the BTCST accounts and do a 51% attack against mtgox and other exchanges at the same time. Then disappear with all the money. What do people think? Far fetched or possible?

EDIT: previous discussion in newbies forum: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=77457.0

So this is speculation, opinion, and not FUD, and then you're talking about a scam. You also seem to feel no need to link to the prior discussion in the newbies forum, which suggests that your intentions are not so much to spark discussion as to stir up shit.

Also, every post you've made has been related to pirate, so you seem like more than a curious newbie. This is just speculation, and my opinion, and I'm not trying to spread FUD here, but you sound like a bit of a sockpuppet.

Put up (http://betsofbitco.in/item?id=349) or shut up.

If you believe that to be the case, how can YOU make money off of that scenario?

How much would you pay for all that hashing power? nvm, what do people pay for all that computing power in a year?

PEOPLE, change your perspectives.

Let me try another method. Why would I pay you 2¢ for 1¢?  Because pennies before 1982 are worth 3¢.

There are many ways Pirate can pay what he pays in a limited economy. Which this is. Why do people like to jump to the negative reasons rather than the possibilities? People outsmart themselves often.

Don't assume the negative because of an assumption. I've said this a lot lately. Assumptions often lead you where you want to go.

Prepare for the bad and hope for the best.

More importantly, why did you go negative rather than come up with a positive way pirate could accomplish his system.

What Ifs are never ending.

What If he is the government overpaying for something? Nah... The government wouldn't waste the money. Would they?

If you are really interested tho... Do your due diligence on the company.

If there are so many ways, why dont you list some ways that explain why what pirate does is more profitable than borrow money from a bank and buying coins with it? Assuming he'd even still need to borrow , at this point one would expect Pirate to have earned enough to finance his own operation without needing external capital. I dont see his requirements for external capital diminishing though, he seems to need ever more which by itself should raise red flags. If whatever he does is indeed profitable youd expect by now he'd need less capital to finance whatever he is doing.

The same goes for GPUmax. Im sure you will say there are many reasons people will pay 150%, but I dont see them; even laundering coins wouldnt yield those kinds of returns, particularly not  for bitcoins which are inherently difficult to trace. More importantly, I dont see anyone offering anything remotely close to those prices anywhere else besides gpumax. FWIW I just auctioned off 1M shares, were people falling over themselves to buy them at 150% ? Nope. They bid roughly what they are worth. Why would someone, anyone prefer to buy them at gpumax for 50% more?

Im all for not accusing anyone of scamming without proof, but there is a sticky "Trust no one" on this forum for a reason. When something sounds too good to be true, its not unreasonable to contemplate the possibility it is indeed not true. Maybe there is a business model behind it that Im too stupid to figure out, but until someone gives me a credible explanation, Id rather distrust pirate then my own ability to reason.

Blatant, brazen scam through and through. A rating on #bitcoin-otc is the perfect 'in' and the ratings would snowball from the participants. A lot probably know it deep down, but will defend it publicly until they're ready to take their principal + "gains" out (of course they never are). The participants in pyramid schemes are just as guilty and will get what they deserve. Fractional monetary expansion always collapses.

The lack of transparency is completely anti-thetical to the principals of bitcoin. I trust bitcoin because the blockchain is a fully visible ledger.

Don't forget someone can just hack into GPUMax with lots of people's miners are pointing there, then pointing everyone's miners towards a private server, essentially like a big pool..

First, as to why someone would buy shares at gpumax.

Say they really don't want their transactions followed. I can't think of a better way than to trade "tainted" coins for freshly minted ones.  ( Lets assume coins are tainted via willing trade rather than stealing or other victim crimes. )

But why do it this way rather than other "laundering" methods. Well if volume is big enough the fees will be huge. You also have to trust whoever the launderer is. You have to trust lots of different site or pool operators with your coins all the time and that their system actually works along with a few other things. Can't just buy shares at other pools because the volume is so big (do others even accept btc?) . So rather you just offer a really high buy price to get more volume. Keep in mind your main concern is volume more than price per bitcoin. It could take so long to cash out you lose more in volatility than "overpaying" for shares. It seems buyers outnumber miners on average for gpumax.

As for the savings and trust. I don't really know. Someone with control over a few hundred thousand USD worth of BTC could surely make good money. We know he has the programming skills to make a site like gpumax, it's not unreasonable to assume he has arb bots or other ways to exploit the market with his holdings. It can also be used to further obfuscate any BTC earnings.

I might believe this if I saw it elsewhere besides gpumax. The volume argument doesnt make much sense. There are plenty of opportunities to rent big farms, Ive not seen anyone pay anything like gpumax prices.  You think someone like GigaVPS would say no to an offer to buy his hashes perpetually at "only" 130%?

But if someone is reading this, I got 50+GH available for rent with far lower stales and issues than GPUmax for a 50% lower surcharge.  Im not kidding, I can provide that.  And yet no one will take it.

Why?


Yes it is unreasonable to just assume that. All the other arbitration bots have proven to be scams. You wouldnt need that kind of coins for it anyway.

Can you explain what exactly is a "51% attack against mtgox", please?  ::)

I can only think of one "team" this would be valuable to. So to me it makes sense there is only one and they run everything themselves. In fact it's the only way I see it actually working for it's intended purpose (increased security) When you have to constantly work through others (renting p2p or through other pool) it becomes less anon for more work and risk (scams) , rather than just set up some sites that eventually will run mostly automated and you are in control of everything yourself. As long as you have the skills to set up a site like that.

Why go through all that  trouble?  If you think its too much hassle or risk to pay Giga and a few other large miners once a week, then set up a pool (a real pool, running its own bitcoind) and pay your miners 150% PPS. Get hashes from anyone who wants to, and you get the purest cleanest self mined coins and its oh so much easier than what GPUmax does. There is not even any need to pay 150%, most miners will happily take 110 or 120%.

I do agree with the "team" thing tho. It does seem likely that whoever is paying for those shares is either really close to Pirate or Pirate himself. Thats the only reason I can think off why that person would not buy hashes any place else.

Ummm,

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=77334.0 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=77334.0) If you replace the ******** in that thread with Zhoutonged, you're essentially looking at a fairly easy way to make an awful lot of $ simply by holding enough btc and moving the market every once in a while particularly if you take bitcoinica leverage into consideration.

Have you considered that a large number of loans through his network (directly or indirectly) are being used to fund and pay for mining equipment?  I would suggest that is helping bitcoin grow rather than hurting it.

If growth slows and things start looking unsustainable, whats to prevent him from simply lowering interest rates?  He's already done it once and I don't think anyone made a fuss about it.

1 Kilo of cocaine street price: $15,000
1 Kilo of Cocaine sold at SR: $125,000
Covering up your business with legitimate bitcoin ventures: Priceless


***100% speculation***

Despite so many people being convinced that he's a scam, the "yes" bin on betsofbitco.in is not growing any larger. You'd think people would want to profit on something they are so sure of ::)

This is quite honestly how we should be handling many things all the time. Here’s the link: http://betsofbitco.in/item?id=349

Pirate is ponzi? Make some free money on it!

I hedged that shit and put 1 BTC on both sides.  8)

it would be hilarious if the whole bitcoin community would be ripped off by someone called pirate   ;D

seriously, that is one of the reasons I would never give him a coin. I could not stand the irony.

Market Share.



This is sensible. You've weighed the risks and decided. On a percentage scale, How much do you 'trust' him? 0 -> 100%  Then invest as appropriate.

You know as well as I, before anyone gives him a signifiant amount of money, due diligence has been done. They know who he is and probably his and his families entire history. They know how he does it and the risks involved.

Your skepticism is healthy, voicing it is not always healthy.


Don't be to hard on yourself. You're not stupid. ( I hate that term as it is subjective). I still can't figure out the Airline Industry business model, so lump me in with you.

But if you are really concerned about him, before you invest your money. The first question is: Who is Pirate?  Because do people really give large sums of money to pseudo-anonymous people on the internet. Answering that question will probably shed light on what is happening.

NDA's have probably been signed and it might take some work. But, Apple tried to hide its suppliers for the new Ipad but they forgot to include the dock workers on the loading docks.

Your skepticism does you service though. Run through the possibilities. The 'Trust No One' mantra is relevant as always. The nice thing is that you don't have to trust anyone. In my book, trust is earned through trials of fire, not whether someone charged you back or not.

Pirate does have a cloak of haze around him. As he grows, that will disappear as it did with Mark. Remember, there are sometimes real companies behind these businesses that have to live in the real world and interact with it.

Don't you find the challenge of figuring it out exciting though?  

I just find throwing out speculation as to his intent harmful rather than productive. Another post did a good job utilizing the percentages and leaving the speculating up to others.

So far, Pirate has done what he said he was going to do. Past performance doesn't guarantee future performance but it lets you judge risks.

Could you expand on this? You mean increased barriers of entry (aka moat)? What market would this be?


The airline market is a long term losing market, it has an inherently bad business model.

For instance see "The intelligent Investor by Ben Graham (revisededition)" http://www.set.in.th/ben_graham_the_intelligent_investor.pdf
 'It is commonly accepted today that the cumulative earnings of the airline industry over its entire history have been negative. The lesson Graham is driving at is not that you should avoid buying airline stocks, but that you should never succumb to the “certainty” that any industry will outperform all others in the future.' (p21 footnote by Jason Zweig)

Yes, 'moat' would be a good term. By keeping entry into, not only his model but other's models, he can maintain a lead during expansion.

First into a market doesn't always succeed if others figure it out to early. But if enough market share and trust has been accomplished then the first in can turn it into a powerhouse.

As to 'What market it would be', that is for others to speculate or pirate to explain.  But given the math and the finite amount of bitcoins, the end can be calculated. Remember, he pays in BTC not USD and it is relatively a small market.

He is paying 150% pps as stated earlier.

Someone wanted a list of ways to do it. I'll offer 'other' possibilities rather than the dark nefarious ones.

I stated that I would pay people 2¢ for 1¢ for pennies before 1982. With quantity, I might even do, 2.5¢ for 1¢. Why? Cause they are worth 3¢.

1. How much do you pay for Gas?  Is that what it really costs though? Buying Oil on the Spot Market would be way cheaper for you.        What determines the prices at the spot market? All the 'farmers' agree to a price they are willing to accept in payment for their work. What does the the 'broker' who paid these rates charge?

2. Leased Computing Power paid in BTC to miners but contracted in USD from one of the largest distributed computing project in existence.

3. Let us suppose Pirate controls 40K BTC in his account and pays 1% per day of 400 BTC back out to those investors. Now lets suppose he makes 2% per day off of those 40K BTC. How many BTC are created each day? 7,200 or so. So all he needs to get is 800 BTC of those per day on average to pay 1% to others and 1% to himself. But he would need to know where the blocks are going to hit. hmm...
What are the odds of accidentally calling the Pool and time of the next block to the minute? nah, nvm couldn't happen. But, hedging markets could net some 800 BTC if done appropriately.

4. and many, many others. Good and Bad from individuals, companies, and governments.

5. Any or all of the above.


But as to the OP. Pirate's End Game.

I assume Pirate's End Game is to make money for the longest period of time possible, and if that isn't everyones 'End Game', go home. The not so wise do this through schemes such as ponzies, pyramids, etc...  Something tells me Pirate is a little smarter than that. I am relatively certain that investors will get at least their principle back. That is all one can ask for today. But I can see a whole lot of people bitching when Pirate returns their money and says: 'No Thanks'.


I will tell you what I do know. Anyone with 5K BTC or more that wanted to invest with Pirate would know who he was, where he was, how his model works, and judge the risks for themselves and avoid posts like ours as a waste of time cause they don't make financial decision's from forum posts. Although, apparently, a lot of people do.

I have no idea what you are saying here. That essentially pirate sold long term mining contracts? Seems unlikely at those prices, but even if, the obvious way to to fulfill his part of the contract would be on his own pool, rather than redirecting hashes through a massive proxy. So much easier, no middle men, etc. He could also increase his profits many fold by lowering his price to something like 120% PPS. ABC pool seems to do pretty nicely with 97%.


I dont even think its possible to do anything with our mining shares other than create blocks, but even if this were possible, you would expect to see a non trivial change in the networks hashrate depending on whether gpumax is running or not. This isnt the case, ergo, those shares are used to produce bitcoin blocks.


again, Im not following. Care to explain?


And yet Ive not seen anyone claim to know that. Have you? I dont mean anyone spilling the beans, but just saying he knows the answers and therefore decided to invest. All Ive seen is people guessing and/or not caring and just relying on his trackrecord.

Most people with lots of money tend to be discreet about it.

Discreet!?! Pffftttt......

I have 200k bitcoins! Suck on that egg.  ;)

P4Man,

 I am just pointing out other possibilities that are not nefarious as many assume. The answers you seek are buried on an Island somewhere and Pirate has the map.

People love to get the dirt and assume the worst. Often wrong.

Let us say what many think and see how ridiculous it is.

<foolishspeculation>Pirate runs a large underground drug cartel and/or laundering operation out of the State of Texas in the United States and pays a huge amount of interest of 7% per week. And he does so by advertising on a public forum that is searchable via a search bots like google. He responds regularly to customer service requests and continues to post on the forum and in IRC. He uses Trillian as an IRC client being the high felutin hacking crime lord he is. Oh, he likes Jimmy Buffet and apparently GoDaddy. We have to solve the GoDaddy problem. </foolishspeculation>

Geesh... I must now apologize. Sorry Pirate, don't send your goons after me. I don't want any horse heads either.

I'm with the skeptics here.  It seems foolish to do a significant amount of business with an anonymous party.  There is no legal recourse for any dispute.  Traditionally when legal means are unavailabe violence becomes a significant tool of negotiation.  That is way too much work for me, especially with an imaginary partner.

You can always trust me. 1) because my handle is my real name.  2) well, because I trust me and 3) I'm not asking you for anything.

Sam

+1, all the trolls and speculators as to his downfall only think he is anonymous because they have never dealt with him, or at least not so in any significant amounts.

There's one thing you forget about GPUMAX and that is all of the 'much more' talk......

You all assume that the reselling of GPU hashing time & rentals will apply to BITCOIN-ONLY.

Perhaps during the GPUMAX 'beta' Pirate is calculating exactly how much a Bitcoin Miner needs to make per/minute of GPU Lease time in order to re-sell that same hashing power for other ventures to the public ?

People need to stop being so narrow minded.

Do you honestly believe that Pirate has given anyone the impression that he is the 'put all of your eggs into one basket' kind of guy ?

To think that Bitcoin is the ONLY application for a service such as GPUMAX would be suicide for the developer(s) especially considering the time and money invested to bring such a platform online.

Think about that for a second ;)

It seems the community has voted with their BTC and do not think pirateat40 is going to have an "end game" anytime soon.

http://betsofbitco.in/item?id=349

Hrmmm...... All the debbie downers don't have any btc to bet.

Speaking of debbie downers, where is MPOE-PR when you need her?

27 BTC would earn more with the pirate than in the bet.

Giga, do you know the details about what Pirate is doing?
If so, Im obviously not asking you to tell us what you know, since I assume thats confidential,  but Im curious if you know, or if instead you invested based on trust in the person rather than the businessmodel.

P4man,

I was attempting to troll copumpkin's level headed post. Seems I need to work on my trolling skills a bit....

Also, this thread is quite ridiculous.

Best,
gigavps

I dont care who you attempted to troll :), the question was sincere, and I would just as sincerely appreciate an answer.

It probably is. :)

maybe pirate has put up a disagree bet and will default on july 5th  :P

Hey, the ratio is 5.7:27.28 or over 20% chance for a default before July 4th now, so that’s more than before.

People are starting to pick up the free money!

Get it right !!!


http://www.paulandstorm.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/baby-pirate-lg.jpeg

Actually it's 17.2 %

Such as?

No, learn to maths. 5.7/27.28*100=20.89

Or am I missing something on how the site works?

Lol @ learn maths.

Total wagered = 5.7 + 27.28 = 32.98

Portion voted for default = 5.7/32.98=0.1728

So 17.3% to be exact (I didn't round)

American always like to write it in the form 1:X, with that respect the odds are 1:4.8 (which is 17.3% of course)

So what should I charge for my 'math' teaching service? mmm  ;)

Thanks, I really shouldn’t do any thinking and particularly not trolling when barely awake. ;D

It would be convenient if betsofbitco.in showed the percentages for probability in addition to absolute BTC amounts.

Poker Player, eh?

What are our 'outs'?

False.

Maybe you guys live on different streets.

go to new mexico you can get a key from the cartels for 15k all wrapped with their stamp on it.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/27/how-much-is-cocaine_n_883853.html#s297564&title=Greece_104_per

Click on the image to see street prices for various countries. US is listed as $120 per gram. Thats $120K per Kg.
I dont use let alone deal cocaine, but if someone can get me 1KG for $15K, I might be interested :)

The drug industry has huge volume discounts since everybody who touches the stuff needs huge margins to take on that kind of risk.

I always thought that Pirate was laundering money or doing large drug deals and he needed bitcoin as an intermediary currency, which it is perfectly suited for.

Tag, you're it!

The low end dealer is selling for 120/g which he bought for 80/g from a guy who bought for 40/g from a guy who bought for 25/g from a guy who bought a key for 15/g. please keep in mind that each guy cut it 20%(rough guess).

Here is a PBS documentry that shows price of a kilo in columbia to be around $1500 USD.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/drugs/special/math.html

Thank you captain obvious :) I was, however responding to this quote:


By 'street', I assume he didnt mean El Chapo's driveway, nor the streets of Kunduz, Afghanistan ;)

Right... it's $1500 in those locals, just like gamer4156 said in the rest of his post you left out.

you've got male!

I initially said that you can get a kilo for 15k, which if you are in a distribution city like Atlanta or Albuquerque finding a key for 15,000 wouldn't be all that difficult. I just graduated from school in arizona and an acquaintance paid for most of his college by selling blow. He bought a 1/2 key for $9500. There are significant discounts if you buy in bulk.

Excellent contribution. Well reasoned, convincing, and blunt. I defer to your superior powers of argument and will be withdrawing all my coins tomorrow.

I know who he is.  It wasn't hard to find out.  But as copumpkin notes, discretion.

what does it help if he "looses" his wallet?

also with everybody on this forum pumping their coins into this lending bubble through various channels like a big funnel he will soon be able to buy an island in the Caribbean an hide away forever.

How do you know we are not already on the island with him......

 arrrr, just envious  ;D

LOL... love it!

I read this and even if it sounds like its oversimplified... here goes.


Satoshi either created a monster or he created the duck that lays the golden eggs.


But... if you notice, that in every group there is one person that ruins it for everyone.


Most of us here believe like a "duck" group, but if the Pirate ruins it for everyone, the early adopters of BTC still came out ahead.