Bitcoin Forum

Just a poll...
The interest rates are going to decrease substantially on August 1st.

Hopefully this will give pirate a better idea of what will happen.

Please share your reasoning for the choice you are making as well.

I withdrew all funds tonight, because I don't want anyone absconding with my hard-earned principal.

I just added a bit more. It may be the last month at 6.9% weekly with profits reinvested :)
And then I will switch to withdrawing interest weekly.
I will open a savings account and maintain my current passthroughs.

I don't have a dog in this fight ... but this post of Vandroiy's was worth reading :

First-Hand telling of an online Ponzi: Eve Online's Currin Trading

 - http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=91214.0

Staying, and I'm gonna drop some more money in so I can get the most interest for the longest time possible :)

Centralized depositing is probably the worst thing we could do as a community, if I remember correctly from a discussion last night on #bitcoin-otc, 1% of the entire bitcoin economy has cash in passthroughs, not even direct trust accounts. BS&T is turning into the DeepBit of the bitcoin banking world, we need to change or else a pirate default could spell the end to bitcoin as we know it.

I am sticking around.

Staying with bitcoinmax.

Staying and sticking more into it... Win big or jump off a roof :)

When the ponzi collapses, I won't feel bad for you at all. If you want to waste your money, fine, just don't invest more than you can lose and still be happy -- because you WILL lose.

I am at the point now what ever I put into it has cost me nothing so worst case my losses are covered. Best case I make money. Up to a point

BUT I do agree with Maged any investment/Lending money to friends etc. Don't invest more than you can afford to loose. But not that I am saying that will happen. It might it might not 

The main thread just got locked, hmm?

Because you trolled it to death with unoriginal comments.

If that's what you call a smoking gun I revealed, sure..

So I guess that means you're willing to call him a liar and a scammer to his face? https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=91252.msg1004534#msg1004534

If you pay for my trip to Vegas, sure.

one point tho from that thread, you are inclining that he said he is at risk when btc value raises; in reality pirate said he is exposed to risk during rapid price increases - and even that probably conditioned with short periods of time when he is on USD side and doesn't apply to being always at risk during fast price increases (and we haven't seen those increases often recently in several month)

You're not making any sense.

Exchange rate is up ~30% in the last 30 days or so, it shot up almost 20% in a mater of 4 days, how is this not the risk event he says he is sacrificing his profits for when hedging by using other people's money instead of his own?

by fast increase i think pirate meant something like 10-20-30% increase withing minutes maybe hours, not days

Where do you live?

I'm willing to contribute towards your travel costs as I'm sure others would if it would help you to shut the fuck up.

Center Europe.

So according to you, because I don't know all of what pirate has said so far, he is giving up a huge portion of his profits for the past several months highly unlikely event of 10-20-30% of an increase of the exchange rate within minutes or hours?

Answer this: are you aware how much potential profits he is giving up by using other people's money with his rate of return?

Just curious,

For those telling Hazek to STFU, are you doing so because you also think it's a ponzi and simply want more people to jump in and pump up the pyramid so your fun won't end?  In other words, are you perceiving Hazek to be a threat to the ponzi?

For the record, I have a small amount invested in a pass-through and to that extent hopes it continues as well.

Hazek should STFU because It's not a Ponzi.  It's most likely a money laundering scheme. 

I actually met Pirate back in October 2011. I purchased a 5970 from him for $240 when they were selling for $400 to $450 in the forums. He lives a few miles away so we met up at a local gas station for the trade. We didn't talk much but he mentioned he had 7970s coming at the end of the month, which I thought was weird since they weren't coming out until January. I only found out recently that he started BS&T a month later so I'm assuming he was selling stuff cheap to build a quick rep. He didn't seem like the Bernie Madoff type..

With that said, I'm not sure what to think about his operation. He's been paying high interest rates since November, so if it's a pure ponzi, he has to be adding large amounts of investors each week. I had a few coins in PPTs that I took out today. I'd prefer to watch things unfold from the sidelines.

Apparently he was or is still the director of a Texas mortgage lending company.

http://www.tlpwebsite.com/
http://www.merchantcircle.com/business/Lending.Partners.972-665-1900/shoutout/list

Such a position might be ideal for conducting pirate's type of side "business". It's based in Plano, right next to McKinney, where he apparently lives. This was pretty easy to find via google searching, but I think people have been hush hush about discussing his personal details for whatever reason. He is holding a massive number of our bitcoins, so I see no problem with getting to know him better.

Ultimately, perhaps this can alleviate all of our ponzi worries --- just the fact that we know his real life identity and thus have some sort of legal recourse in the case of something unsavory occurring. And that makes one think, that if he was some sort of incredible mastermind, he might have set-up the whole pass through structure as a way of offloading legal responsibility to his top lender circle in case of default. But I doubt it...just being thorough in my musings.

IMO, Hazek isn't adding anything new to the conversation. The "BS&T is a Ponzi" argument has been made dozens of times already. It's easy to find in the forums and near impossible to miss. Unless he has some new evidence to present, he should just STFU. Most everyone on here has already made up their minds, and those who haven't or are new to Bitcoin have more than enough information to make their own decision.

Actually, one member of the Lending forums has already stated that his interest rates for a pass-through will continue to be 6.75%...

Another said 6.9% too.

(Full disclosure: that's not me)

and I am offering the full 7%.

Monthly? Pfft. Big boys play with WEEKLY now. 

Uh oh..... reeses is a mac user!

* gigavps gets out the pitch forks

I'd be getting out if I had any, sure smells like trouble brewing.

What do you base that on? Increased amount of trolling? The trolls work themselves up into a frenzy over this once a month or so. Everytime it seems worse than the last. Everytime it settles down when pirate does what he said he would.

Only reason you guys are whining is this: interest payments are "too generous" and your huge egos are severely bruised because you can not figure out wtf is he doing :) Really?
So, if he paid you a crappy 1-2% per week, everyone will calm down and be happy?
Whine about those Mh/s mining Turds, that are only good for the issuer because coupon payments are based on Mh/s only.

If the PP business is good and he likes to keep it going, there is no reason to fuck it up for others and especially for himself.
Pirate, can you keep paying those fat coupons and buying back those wonderful zeros?
Yes or no

Cheers

No. We are whining because we know the future. Just watch.

Just how exactly sustainable is a 3313% APR, you tell me

And we don't even care as much about all of you who support (and may or may not account for the risk of) putting your money into something with so many red flags, you are free to lose your money however you please. The reason we're so vocal is because most people don't account for the risk, most people are not financially literate and savvy in this area of expertise to know just how high the risk of them being scammed in this case is and these are also usually the people that can least afford to lose the money and we are vocal so that hopefully maybe these kind of potential "investors" get warned and hopefully decide against risking their money.

You can't imagine how fking destructive ponzi schemes are. I had a rl friend who fell into one, heck I even have my sister participating in one right now (though luckily I managed to get her to at least take out what she initially put it) and I have first hand real life experience what happens when the shit hits the fan. That friend, when it all went bust, do you know what he did? He went and crashed his leased BWM and almost killed himself just so he could collect insurance, he lost most of his good friends who care about him and surrounded himself with vultures who care about nothing but their own personal gain and would do anything for it.

So yea. You know, you're right, it must be that I'm jealous when I warn people from getting themselves in a spot that could lead to all kinds of shit, yeah, that must be it.  ::)

Captain obivous award for you !

No ponzi here dood ... wake up. ;)

Mostly because of the response to it. When pirate locks his thread, and when his entourage start trying to silence people, I start wondering why? Is there a kernel of truth in there somewhere, and that's why it bothers them so bad?

If it's so clear, and considering than in six month his business never missed the target profit, then why are you saying this is a very high risk venture to insure? :)

What he does is clear, and not a ponzy? Then you can insure my fund with pirate for a small fee and make a good profit in the end. Or am i missing something here?

It is not running for a year yet. Hell, in he beginning Pirateat was mostly talking with himself just to make the logs.

Problem for you guys, Goat, is that you are running out of posters. Thus the thread was locked. People who have been on your side a week ago are now crying foul even though they got money out. No matter how much you post, severe Ponzi accusations will make people read up on the topic.

And we know you have a sharp time-out. How many weeks can the operation last without user base growth? We all know it's not long, and that's why we can keep up until it's over. Someone large will withdraw eventually, and if not, after a few weeks someone small can do it instead.

Game is over. Take whatever your share is and say goodbye to your forum status. You guys are overestimating yourselves, we can and will make sure there's nothing more to win here.

Most of the trolls do not give shit about past performance and your 7% . Most of the trolls just do not want you to continue to have those 7% much longer at expense of multiply naive victims of something that is very likely a ponzy scheme and at expense of wider Bitcoin Economy and Bitcoin's reputation and public perception. Trolls do not want to be associated with ponzi fraud even indirectly.

If it is indeed a ponzi scheme (which is highly likely) then YOU  and other fanboys by promoting it, clearly in order to extend your gains or protect your "investment", are potentially effectively being co-conspirators trying to deceive public for your personal gain (what is the definition of fraud again?).

The sooner the ponzi bubble collapses, the less is damage and the better wider Bitcoin Economy will be long term.

And there is not that much time left...


Would it be correct to translate this as "leave us alone and give us some more time to inflate this baby and do not scare off naive suckers for a little bit longer?"

I am just wondering after the folding what will happen with the multiple of people promoting the scheme and their reputations ...

Yeah sorry to burst your ponzi "investor" apologist's bubble but that's not how a market regulated by strictly market consumers (i.e. the free market) works.

No no no.. People may have learned this lie in public school that if there is no government regulation then there is no regulation at all and chaos follows but as you can see that's not the case at all. I can't wait for this scam to implode so that this market gets more aware of the dangers lurking for to scam and steal and some private agencies pop up that will provide the service of audits and ratings which right now aren't being done like at all. All we have are a few concerned participants raising valid concerns trying to educate the less financially literate but make no mistake, this too are perfectly valid and inescapable regulations that naturally arise in any free market.

Nothing although I plan to singlehandedly change that in the future with a service I have plans to develop.

Good to hear.

The bitcoin-otc system is a total joke dominated by these same "people" and their sockies.

Filled with false ratings and total admiration of each other between these "high profile" guys.

<rant>
What is it with all posters that spam all BS&T threads with ponzi-propaganda? This thread were about are you staying or leaving? Why do users that have never invested into BS&T spam this thread?
</rant>

I will stay, but I will wait to reinvest my weekly payment till I see what happens with the trust/ppt scheme.

Premised that I am exposed to pirate both by PPT.Xs and bitcoinmax for about 50% of my BTC capital (the other 50 in mining companies -where I already lost nicely with their valuation -and before that I lost with Goat's "bank"), I too can figure that even if is not a ponzi, 3000%+ yoy sounds mathematically not sustainable in the medium to long term. However, this says nothing about what will happen at some point about the return OF the capital of lenders. Pirate might disappear with the loot, or he could return the capital (in full or in part) to his lenders and say game over.
Since I don't know, and I am aware that I might lose my investment, for the moment I keep hoping that the party keeps going playing my BTC (which are play money, nothing that could change my life) with pirate knowing that it must be high risk.
I lost more than I can lose now when I bought BTCs at 20$ each, and then buying radeons not considering well electricity costs and the speed of difficulty increase, so one can screw up investing in anything -even in things sounding much more safe and sound.

And note how upcoming changes to mining scene were rather clearly signalled to you and others  by yours truly well in advance.



ohh and this too.



And chances are that those jalapeno's while being a great gift and probably having nice coolness factor, still will not have that great ROI over it's lifetime as many hope for.


Yep, people, do not "invest" your rent, food, and college money like that, pretty please.

same here ,)
50% of my btc invested in pirate - and they will stay there (but i moved from TYGGR-P to bitcoinmax)

and yes: i also did loose MUCH more when i bought at 26$ and my energy cost where "up through the roof" (but i stopped mining a while ago; waiting for my jalapeno to start again).

you all should only invest play money in btc. in the end of the day it could be that btc are only woth 0.01$ again (even without pirate)

btw. i think pirate is one of the reasons bitcoin prices are a little higher again. more people keep their btc to invest with pirate - instead of selling them.

Precisely, only those with a whole brain financially and economically literate do.

If you really believe that then I'm sure you've made a huge bet here: http://betsofbitco.in/item?id=433

Well, currently pirate's wallet size is [some numbers]3.76618902 and it's much [higher/lower] than you might think! I won't post numbers though until I did more analysis, also it could be expected that he doesn't have huge bitcoin holdings all the time - after all he claims to be trading with them! ;)

I opened a nice gold beer. Please, keep writing. This is so funny. :P

Let me remind you that none of you (including me) have no idea how Pirate is actually making money.

We had an exchange of PMs and on some thread about it months ago. It was when you started to unilaterally reduce the dividends more and more, and I was unable to sell them nowhere near the price that I paid them, since their price was crashing as a result. So in the end I sold all of my 240+ bonds to you at their nominal price.  But we are OT.

I beg to differ, some of us it seems have a very good idea about that, probabilistically at least. And Occam's Razor is on our side too.

thats what he said! ;)
but i do believe he is honest... i have my own idea of his "operation".

One thing I don't understand. Pirate doesn't want to publicize his business to avoid competition. Fine, sure.

But a lot of people around here seems to know pretty well what he does. My question is then, why haven't we another pirate? Why haven't we competitors? Some cool glbse bonds unrelated to pirate but with great profit like his?

Or am I again missing something here?

Yep, there is that magical secret biz model that "others" know exactly how it works and which is:
- not involving any ponzi either direct or by proxy, but demonstrates ALL the relevant red flags;
- having size of 20-50% of whole Bitcoin Economy by now; (any decent estimates BTW?)
- so magically profitable,
- but somehow it must involve hordes of pushers on forums and constant fight for new suckers;
- it must somehow involve many levels of intermediaries, that take their cut;
- cannot be financed by any traditional means of capital formation;
- must be operated anonymously;
- so much similar to confessions of EVE's Curring Trading;

Did I miss anything?

nice try

Hey, Goat. Stop being an asshole, OK?

Point to me which of my posts was an off-topic troll on Pirate's thread, please.

In fact I have the opposite opinion of Maged and BadBear, but I will not let any of you attack them for stating their own opinions, or else I'm opening the door for people to attack me and/or try and silence me just because there is a title of Staff under my username.

What you said just proves that you didn't even read any of my posts on Pirate's thread, and just assume I'm anti-Pirate because there is Staff written under my name.
Way to be blind, asshole.

+1

Exactly! If it walks like a ponzi, looks like a ponzi, quacks like a ponzi it very likely is a ponzi.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_taxonomy Here you go. Count enough "shared physical characteristics" and you have identification of species with a very high probability.

Your argument is proven to be a logical fallacy. Try again.

As i said in the other thread, Occam's Razor has another side. Given Pirates close proximity to the Mexican border, and considering that area is a major drug trafficking corridor, I suspect this isn't a Ponzi at all. Most likely it's simply conversion of drug money, plain and simple. That would easily explain the outrageous returns at least.

Interesting possibility. So you are saying that they are possibly doing "conversion of drug money" AKA money laundering of USD via BTC and somehow this involves borrowing large amount of BTC and paying 6-10% per week on this. (BTW very interesting biz for it's promoters and "others" to be involved in with full self confessed knowledge of it)

Walk me through please, how it works? What is a plausible biz model here? Sorry for being so slow.

ALL what you said above is obviously false. Try again.

I'm pretty sure you have more respect for me than the rest of the forum has respect for you.
Also, the one collecting money from others to invest in Pirate is you. All I have in there are my personal funds.

I'm still waiting for your lawsuit. I sent you my full name and address 6 months ago. Have go at it.
Put up or shut up.

reeses have you read my post here?: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=50822.msg1008302#msg1008302

BTW the poll results on the top of this thread are rather curious.

About 80% of respondents say "yay, we give him lots of money, gonna be rich soon"
About 20% of respondents say "are you damn brainless idiot?"

Now google "pareto principle", read, think.

Keep talking !

http://www.luxist.de/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/ansichtyacht.jpg

I've yet to figure out why Occam's razor says it must be a ponzi.

I'm guessing no one here has ever had a natural gas reserve or oil reserve found on their property. It has a stupid high amount of start up capital demands, pays stupidly well for a certain amount of time, then gradually fades out.  That doesn't make it a ponzi.

Right and it is absolutely impossible to rise equity capital or bank loan with interest rates at about 3 orders of magnitude lower annual interest.

Are you kidding?  Ask a bank for a loan, they'll ask what its for. You tell them and they'll say no.  Natural resource mining is actually a risky en devour and many banks won't touch it.  So then you're asking 3rd parties for VC and you better believe they'll want more than 3% a year.

ouch, you got me here. OK 2 orders of magnitude then.

Occam's Razor is about avoiding excessively complicated explanations if a simple and fitting one is at hand.

The explanations offered by the pro-BS&T statements are a convoluted mess, make no sense, and are extremely diverse: nobody has the same opinion.

However, there is exactly one simple explanation that works and is well-documented: a HYIP Ponzi.

Occam's razor picks the Ponzi. Anyone can check that by making a simple map of arguments or a model of what BS&T supposedly does.

Really?  Money Laundering fits perfectly well too.   Those types, once they find a source, want to flow more and more money through it.  How's that for occam's razor?

Right lets short bitcoin to get more of it. It might be simpler than ponzi, but it also needs to be plausible.

Explain the minimum investment in a money laundering context.

Have you seen how many times we were on an uptick in price and a wall showed up out of nowhere to kill it and bring us back down?

Its plausible.  Now who is being stubborn and refusing to accept the easiest solution?

The exponential curve. :)

Do entertain us and provide a simple explanation for your "money laundering" hypothesis, simple enough that we can understand.

It is not I am stubborn, it is you failing to argue your point concisely.

Is anyone with "pirate is definitely not a ponzi" stance capable of forming a
logical argument without a bunch of fallacies embedded in it?

Which one is that?

Also, include the reason for minimum investments and decreasing interest rates in a money laundering context. Good luck.

7% per week equal approximately 3,300% per year.

If he's laundering drug money, then why claim he can't divulge or competition would come and kill his margins? Because there's such a small barrier of entry to working for that market (laundering drug money), anyone who lives close to the border can do it...  ::)

Ok, let's play through a scenario..

Let's make an assumption that for every lender you have for your business, it eats 15 minutes of your time per week.  Sure some will be more because they're needy and ask a bunch of questions all the time, just like others will be less because they just want a 'set and forget'.  So, on average, you spend 15 minutes per lender per week.

My next assumption will be that we confine ourselves to a 9 hour working day, 6 days a week.  That gives us 54 working hours per week.  That gives us time for about 216 lenders.  Anything more than that, you're eating up your personal time.  We already made an assumption the person is working more than the traditional 'work week' and it pretty much factors out a 'day job'.  That leaves no time for other projects, like running CPUmax or your IT consulting business or the like.  It also leaves less than optimal time for a wife/husband and any kids.  Skip the hobbies, because you better believe there will be a honey-do list.  There can't be vacations because if you're not around for a day, people start labeling you a con artist because you didn't respond to your pm within 15 minutes or payments went out at 12:09 instead of 12:00.

Now imagine if you should shuffle some of the day to day to some of your more willing and able lenders.  Think of them like bundlers.  You don't want everyone to do it so you set some quantity limits, because otherwise every Tom, Dick, & Jane would want to be one and you've not reduced your time investment.  You figure out about how many coins you're using in your business, you divide that number by about how many people you'd like to interact with on a daily basis, and you base your numbers off that.  You've suddenly brought your time investment down from 50-60 hours a week to perhaps 10-20.  Certain people will feel uncomfortable with using a 3rd party for their savings, so you continue to offer them a plan with a rate that takes into account the cost for the amount of time they're likely to consume.

You're suddenly working less hours, dealing with more experienced people.   The pm's are now responded to more quickly because there's a team of people that are responding to them.  If people are dissatisfied with their bundler, they can move to a different one.  Hell, they can even use two or three at the same time because bundlerA offers free lunch and bundlerB offers free condoms.

So far we've not really changed anything, other than to whom the end user communicates.  We've not encouraging new deposits, we're simply encouraging consolidation.  We get more time with the wife.  We can spend more time on our other projects.  We can even go to our 10 year high school anniversary now without feeling guilty someone's going to complain.


1) How does any of the above not match with Pirate?
2) How is any of the above not reasonable?

Its not reasonable because there are no borrowers, only lenders. So nobody is paying the interest, just a bunch of lenders collecting.

The business.  Keeping capital around to do what you need to do.  ML, pimping, whatever it is.

Awesome, some reasonable post finaly. Thanks.

This could explain the many intermediaries thing, though it is still much cheaper to hire help than to sacrifice significant part of revenue.

Absence of "leaches" will also mean less fanatical forum coverage.

Unfortunately people don't know how to calculate compounding interest rates [ P(1+ R) to the power of T] and even if they did they don't know just how ridiculous the result at weekly 7% on an annual basis is of approx. 3400% is.

I'd like to have your opinions on when the bubble will burst.

My take is that a Ponzi operator shuts down and disappears with the money as soon as he feels that his money mountain is no longer growing fast or even begins to shrink. The latter happens when more money is withdrawn than new money is coming in.

As long as nobody withdraws, the scheme can run forever, but of course some people always withdraw, for various reasons, the most obvious being that they slowly realize that the Ponzi operator claims to have more than, say, 10 million bitcoins, while only 8 or 9 million bitcoins exist.

Assuming he has 100,000 BTC now, that would happen after a bit more than one year (at 7% a week = 3,300% a year), but then nobody believes that he can possibly get all existing bitcoins, so the ultimate time limit is probably less than a year, give or take a few months. Or would you believe than any single Ponzi scheme can hold 3 million BTC in 2012 or 2013?

Trouble is, if the "investors" get the outrageous idea to switch on their brains, they might withdraw much earlier, namely when they realize that only the first few will get their stash back with interest, while all latecomers will lose everything they "invested".

I think the time until it happens is a bit difficult to guess, but with all the obvious information and explanation out in the open right here, I think it can't be long.

So let's think about how many new "investors" he may be getting. I would say that, if all new "investors" read this thread first, he would get none. This would mean that the Ponzi scheme will shut down later this week. But then one should never underestimate stupidity.

hgmichna, exactly.

The name of the game is:

One, who pulls his money first, wins.

When people like Bob cry that I'm being disrespectful or others say I'm a fanboy, I take offense.

I really don't know much more than most people about Pirate.  I respect that people are trying to warn n00bs away from a potential scam.  I disagree with the methods.  If you really want to protect n00bs, you go to the n00b forum, make a well written posting and keep it bumped at the top.  Trolling the BS&T thread with "ponzi because occam said so" really doesn't accomplish much other than piss people off and create a wedge issue that only drives apart the community.

Now to get back OT.  The bundlers have quantity thresholds to maintain if they want to keep their rate.  The thresholds that have been set are a bit high, which probably means many of them won't actually get to keep their rate.  This is the catch-22.  People claim his rates are too high.  If he reduces them, people scream the end is near.  So he pretty much can't win unless we pays out everything right at this very moment.  If we can make the assumption that isn't a ponzi for a moment (just like people assume it is), if the business is still successful, why would you want to wind it down completely just because some people were bitchy?  I think the easing of rates downward is a good thing, regardless if its a ponzi or not because the rates aren't sustainable either way.   There is/will be an endgame.  It does suck for my pocketbook, I would absolutely love to get 7% a week forever.  So if he can consolidate the number of contact points AND reduce his rates ever so much, he's essentially getting *almost* free labor out of his bundlers and I think that's' why he doesn't actually hire someone as a salary position.

As to the fanatical coverage bit.. the defenders are fanatical just as much as the people crying wolf are fanatical.  Its bad on both sides.

@imsaguy, yes. Your post is reasonable.

But what are you responding to? Of course Pirateat uses the bonds and large accounts to keep down his work-load. So what? Every large Ponzi-operator does that. He need not even know anyone personally for it.

Oh, and:

"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function" -Albert A. Bartlett



Wait a second. imsaguy, I was just suspecting this, and dropped it with "nah" until that last post. If you are actually not in on the heist, we need a talk. I was convinced you are a sock puppet, but that post is... somewhat credible. If you have been somehow psycho-tricked into Pirateat40's side, we've been doing something wrong here. Well, I have, because I never tried to convince you with my answers to you, since I assumed you were well aware what's going on.

There is just a tiny little difference. Only one of the sides can be right.

I'm pretty good at math ;)  I know what exponential is.  I was asking if he meant Pirate's balance sheet was growing exponentially.  I know some of the largest investors and I know they're taking payouts so it'd be pretty hard for Pirate's total to be growing


I'm most certainly not in on it.  I am not a sock puppet.  I've traded with enough people in here and met enough people in here in person to prove that I am most certainly not Pirate.  I wasn't psycho tricked.  In fact, pirate's never really tried to convince me.  I've done a bunch of my own researching, thinking about things, talking to people and I've simply come to a different conclusion than you.  It pisses me off that just because I arrived at a different opinion than you or the other people convinced that it is a ponzi that I must be in on it.  I'm an adult with reasoning skills and I simply came to a different conclusion than you.

Just a moment. You state:

• You understand the exponential function.
• You assume that some people have their interest paid out, which I will take the liberty to translate into: Some other people will not have their interest paid out, but instead will try to accrue compound interest.
• You conclude that the total will not be growing significantly.

What gives?

The other question is: Somebody anonymous offers to take your money and accumulate 7% interest per week for you (i.e. 3,300% per year). It takes me half a second to conclude that this is a Ponzi scheme. You come to a different conclusion? Could you please confirm that you come to a different conclusion?

I'm not trying to attack you. I don't want to be your or any honest person's enemy. I just want to make sure we understand each other properly. I believe the things we are discussing here are actually pretty simple.

Yes yes, let's compare apples to oranges, a case where people ignore evidence(shiny plate installed on the moon off of which one can bounce a laser beam) applying Occam's razor to support their crazy ideas vs a case where there is no direct evidence.

It all depends on the standard of proof. If you trying to prove something on "beyond reasonable doubt" standard, then yes, Occam's razor sometimes can be disputed effectively. And there might be some magic underlying biz with humongous yield for which it is impossible to find any financing with less than say 1000% APR. It is just we, the lesser beings do not understand it. I would give intuitively 0.000000001% chance that this could be the case. You never know. Would this count as a reasonable doubt?

However, if the standard of proof is "on balance of probabilities", then Occam's razor is good enough.

I'm wondering anyway why one needs Occam's razor to understand that 7% per week, or 3,300% per year, or anything above 10% a year means Ponzi? You don't need Occam's razor to state the obvious.

Occam's Razor is to find the simplest solution that actually fits the case.

The other examples all do not fit the case at all. You don't need other peoples' money to sell anything. Even illegal activity knows exponential growth, Pirateat40 would not need an ever-increasing amount of funds if he can grow his own exponentially. Money laundering has been discussed in great detail, turns out the investors hardly ever help in movement of funds, so it's again pointless.

The difference in how well it matches is gigantic. The Ponzi matches perfectly, and the other explanations usually fail at the first comparison to what's actually happening.

I'm not saying Occam's Razor is always right. I'm not basing my accusation solely on this either. But Occam's Razor clearly yields that BS&T is a HYIP Ponzi. If it doesn't seem to, there has been some error in its application.

@Vandroiy

Let's say you have 135K USD right now.  I need you to buy Bitcoins without changing the Mt.Gox rate by 2%.  You have 3 days to do it, nah I'll give you 7 days.  GO!!!

Let me know how that works out for you.

I'll take this one.

Call bit-pay, private deal done in 10 minutes.

Next question?

Try it.  Call them up.  Ill buy them.

How much will bit-pay earn from that private deal?
Also, $135k? In their pocket, regularly? BFL isn't taking pre-orders all the time, remember?
The kind of volume they faced in those days was even press release worthy for them ::)

None of this explains how bitcoins are repurchased to pay back lenders without driving up the price anyway.

This is huge.

Ok I'll bite. What difference does it make if I buy bitcoins directly OTC or on various exchanges vs your selling me what you borrowed and then being forced to buy back what you sold me and then some to pay your "investors", please explain how the price isn't going to move almost exactly the same?

Also explain how come no one had any loses when you sold bitcoins before the recent exchange rate increase and had to buy them back and still meet your obligations. Did you foot the loses or did your "investors" and they are keeping quiet?

Oh, shit. GPUMAX??

Why would I want to call bitpay for ya? You can not be serious.

And chances are that right now you call in with 135k$ deal and they will sell you BTC (if they think you could be trusted counter party) at the spot price. Moving mtgox by exactly 0%.

As simple as that.

Repay lenders with coins bought at a premium from miners, a smaller premium than the cash buyers pay.

$135k right now all at once moves the price to $6.75, which is only 3%. A far cry from a compounding 7% every 7 days. See you at defcon! lol  ::)

Just brainstorming on my own over here.

I've answered your question, Pirate.

Now you answer mine please.

Is there any hard evidence of any value producing economic activity of your operation except taking deposits, paying "dividends" and converting BTC into USD?

i.e. marketing, PR and damage control do not count.


I think it is a simple and fair question that any legitimate business, even anonymous one, should be able to answer quickly and easily.

Just take this and run with it for a minute..,

Pirate borrows coins, sells to cash buyers, (somehow) puts cash into gpumax, repays lenders with fresh coins. Can anyone check the blockchain on that?

Nope.  If you watch the payments to bitcoin miners from gpumax, those coins are dirtier than a $2 hooker.

Edit: Not dirty as in scam dirty, dirty as in used.

LOL

That was priceless. Uhm, using average, yup. Pirateat, this is trivial.

Guys. This was a major screwup. A MAJOR SCREWEUP. He's fucked. Game over. There is ABSOLUTELY NO WAY PIRATEAT CAN EXPLAIN THIS FUCKUP!

Spread this post, we won!

A trader doing business at this profit would never ever make such a large mistake in guessing trade volumes. He's off by FAR. Actual volumes ALWAYS and MASSIVELY overdo the order book volume.

...

challenge : "try doing it without moving the price more than 2%"

"shows a way that moves the price more than 2%"

"VICTORY" ?

http://impiousdigest.com/bush-mission.jpg

This got buried... Thoughts?

This doesn't solve exp. growth, but it explains how the price wouldnt move and why gpumax exists in the first place.

Pirateat40 has made a post that implies he works on currency trading.

His post demonstrates he is completely clueless about currency trading.

One: You can do that easily in the active order book.
Two: Any trader doing BTCUSD knows the order book only shows a fraction of short-time volume.
Three: The 2% limit cannot yield 7% for his customers.

This is it. This is not just faint evidence. This is an absolutely enormous undeniable fuckup. Pirateat40 implies to be currency trading, but there is no way in hell a currency trader would make that post.

I'm doing a writeup. Game over, don't even try. Yes, I do currency trading, and you should see the other traders' faces when they read this.

Quoted for goodness sake.

If you don't understand that part, I can't help you.  RUN AWAY!

Vandroiy has made a post all in bold!   He has convinced himself he's right yet again and he clearly knows much better than all of us!



Look, all you wannabee crusaders.  We're all adults here.  What I choose to do with my own money is my own business.  I don't have anything invested I can't afford to lose.   It's lovely of you to be so concerned, but please, give it a rest.    I'll make up my own mind thanks very much.


Could we potentially lose all our coins?  Yes.

Could Bitcoin randomly drop to almost nothing tomorrow due to [insert reason here]?  Yes.

Could I get hit by a bus tomorrow and all this would have been pointless?  Yes.


Just..... relax.   If you don't have money invested, lovely.  Good for you.    If you do have money invested, lovey.  Good for you.

Just stop thinking you know better than everyone else and let people make their own decisions.

Sorry, I'm kinda a noob with trading shit.  But:
OH NO!  PIRATE WAS TIRED IN THE MORNING AND MADE A STUPID POST!

HE IS OBVIOUSLY A SCAMMER AND PONZI!

/troll off.

Pirate, see my last post? GPUMAX? Is that it?

Trading your tiny amounts of BTC has created a false perception of how you think this market works.  Just another reason why I don't enjoy swimming in this pool. :(

danieldaniel: Seriously, ask a trader.

You could wake me at 4am and play Rick roll for 10 hours nonstop and then hang me upside down to post, there's no way in hell I'd make that mistake.

It's the ESSENCE of his business. It's supposed to be what he is doing, the source of all the funds! This post is a killer.

Sorry, GPUMAX is not any part of BS&T's model.

Do it in 7 days.  Not with funds already in the system.  GO

Damnit, then I'm lost. I just don't see how it works...

I'll run away for now :(

(but I will keep listening)

It seems that some mod/s removed my innocuous post on the last page of the Bitcoin Savings and Trust thread, WTF it was mildly pro pirate & mildly humorous & totally non offensive, could whoever did this kindly own up to it & explain why as that thread is now locked - I doubt that I will participate in this forum going on otherwise, thanks

The post was that I would now have to master IRC & a disclaimer that I was a fully invested with pirate both directly & via pass-throughs

https://i.imgur.com/t1sNi.jpg

I would rather listen to the organ grinder than the monkeys in any case

....

Wow, this really needed censuring  :o  maybe I get banned now for daring to repeat it  :(

Buying $135k of coins right now in one trade would only increase the exchange rate by +3%, from $6.54 to $6.76 like others said: http://bitcoincharts.com/markets/mtgoxUSD_depth.html Therefore, it is easily doable in 7 days while keeping it way below 3%. But, even if you did that one trade costing you 3%, wouldn't it be more cost effective than borrowing coins from your "investors" at an insane 7%/week interest? ::)

You just let me prove so easily that what you are doing makes zero business sense.

Please, Todd T******, I implore you to stop your Ponzi scheme. You will make tons of people very angry when you default, putting yourself and your family under stress and danger. You will also devastate people who were irresponsible enough to invest their life savings into it. You will create another round of bad publicity for Bitcoin. I understand financial success, greed, etc makes it hard to stop, but you have to stop. Now.

Rickrolling does change people, so I don't know about that one.
/troll off
As I said as a disclaimer, I'm a noob at trading.  So, forgive me.

If I pulled all my influence on the market things would be much different.  Everyone assumes I'm always applying the brakes (ask walls) in the market but the door swings both ways.  I've been present in the market since day one.

You are insane. Did you not know I trade in my free time, for years, effectively, Bitcoin since the moment I registered?

Dude, you are so clueless what you are talking about, the Bitcoinica flash crash sheep would have beaten you. There's no way in hell you can keep your profit safe moving it anywhere, or have done much of that in the first place, apart from maybe blindly selling other peoples' money.

The whole calculation is crap from the start. I couldn't use it as an attack vector because you yourself never directly admitted to the theory, only made "lol close" troll posts.

But this one? Post as much as you want, I'll not shut up on it until more traders come up. How can you possibly talk your way out? One can say a lot of stupid things about me, but trying to tell me I don't understand trading is the worst card you can ever play.

Good luck talking yourself out of this one. To me, this is not another 99.9% hint. This is proof. Fuck it, not once in a thousand would I talk this bullshit, and you basically claim to be A LOT better than me.

I'm convinced you just like to hear yourself talk.

Not a shred of hard evidence, just some cheap rhetoric, unfortunately. I've been absent in the market since day two, so what?

Ok, so you're not buying them back from miners:


Where then do you get the coins + interest coins to pay back your "investors" so that you don't move the price you still haven't answered.

Who's Todd T******?

I still think being silk road's mixer would be pretty lucrative  :D

keep it up, you're winning you're WINNING!!!

It's the 4th of July and I have a bottle of whiskey.  I don't mind. :)

No answer to this ^ huh?

If you haven't noticed already, nothing you do will change WHAT I DO.  In the end you and a few others will "be caught with your pants down", but keep it up... you seem to get getting... nowhere. :)

cash back into bitcoin without moving price...

Let's flesh this out. If its not GPUMAX, then what? Let's brainstorm a bit here.

You want evidence? LOL, if you knew what I know, I'd be hounding you. :P

You're talking about your "lenders", not us. At least you admit there's an endgame!

See you at defcon! haha what a joke.

fixed the quotes for ya. np.

How mysterious. Still only cheap rhetoric, though.

let's be objective.

- plenty of evidence of taking "deposits"
- plenty of evidence of paying "dividends"
- no evidence whatsoever of any economic activity and no any viable hypothetical biz models even.
- ALL the signs of a ponzi scheme in abundance.

In any case, we will know everything soon, right, was it 27th of July?
It could fold quicker, though, some unexpected newsflow and change of market conditions could force the matter before that perhaps.

The tide will go out eventually.

Right it's a ponzi you WIN.  Take out all the money you have in my operation.  RUN FOR THE HILLS!!

You don't have a shred of evidence or even an idea of what I do.  I truly don't think I could think as slow as you if I tried.

Keep up your good will!!!! TEACH FEAR!

Um, I think this is the problem.

So stay away, don't trust me.  There is nothing else I can tell you.

lol, indeed. Captain Obvious has spoken.

Hmm.. I'm skeptical, but I'm still staying in it with "money" (Bitcoin itself is a scam, right?) that I can afford to lose.

Many proved scammers have claimed so in the past, it does not make it true at all.

Which is why I am.  I was skeptical at first but I'm now without a doubt. 

That settles it then.

No, bitcoin is sound money and fully transparent. Nobody here except scammers are promising returns over and above the market. But if you're playing to lose, it will be self-fulfilling. I know I'll be fine long after July 27th, pirate won't have one bitcent of mine.

Exactly.  All you whingers who don't want to invest.  Don't.

It's really as simple as that.

oh we don't invest, that is not a problem at all.

So shut the hell up and stop bothering people who do.

Skeptics provide a valuable service of "keeping the bastards honest". Irrational over-exuberance is never a good thing when combined with finance.

Yes, don't ask questions.  Just take your cut!  Hurry now, time is limited.

lol.  wow.

Stop promoting HYIP scams on the bicoin forums. Go back to LR HYIP forums, or do it on bitcoinhyipforum dot com.

If they do it here, I will exercise my equivalent right (granted by the mods) to "bother" such promoters.

Crying Ponzi over and over and over and over really helps though. 

You're doing a great job.  Where did all my coins go?

I would ask anyone with an opinion one what or the other to place you bets here:

http://betsofbitco.in/item?id=433

Put your money where your mouth is. Talk is cheap.

someone appears to have placed a very large bet on the agree side... :o

wouldn't anyone betting on the "no" side be way, WAY better off investing with pirate?

10% per year is the low average for fiat money in actually solvent banks (singapore, georgia (the country), mongolia, etc). 15% is not unheard of.

That's beside the point, however, since most bitcoin lending businesses work on a rate similar to "payday loans" and still make yearly interest in the 100s of %s. Given an average of 3.5% per week (not an unusual rate), compounded weekly, that's


498.3% APR. So, by your definition, all bitcoin lenders are ponzis, yes?

Also, from actually reading pirate's original thread, I can clearly see a period after he went invite only and before any of the pirate pass programs popped up, wherein the bitcoin price soared over $6 and people were withdrawing like crazy to trade for fiat while the price was good. Even after having paid 7% to many accounts, some of which are particularly huge, I don't see anyone complaining that they weren't able to get all their money. I note small delays at times, but never anyone who wasn't paid in full, and never any actual customers who complained.

Recently, one whole person decided to cash out their account because "they had a bad feeling" with no facts or justification, and now everyone is back to foaming at the mouth of how it's a ponzi. If it is a ponzi, I have to give mr.pirate good credit for keeping it going this long even against adverse conditions.

I don't know what pirate does, but I've never once seen any instance of an issue that would cause me to question his solvency. Nothing but rumors and foaming about how it has to be a ponzi because his rate is high.

Well guess who.

That's nothing. I'm serious, when will you people finally get it? Place more and I'll double, want more and I'll double again with a better third party. Increase the time limit and I will double yet again.

But! The Ponzi is so damn unrealistic that THIS:


happens! REALITY CHECK, PEOPLE!

This is actually the core of the problem. It's such a nonsensical game bond that financial instruments stop working. The speculation forum cannot put this nonsense into place, because the unrealistic yields break our tools!

How about this  (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=91661.msg1009558#msg1009558) as a way to put your money where pirate's mouth is?

3.5% per week is extremely unusual (except among ponzis). Most bitcoin lending businesses? Tell me where the bitcoin borrowers are. There are no borrowers, just a bunch of lenders soon-to-be bag-holders.

I have a bunch of lenders that I pay 3% a week to. Are you calling me a ponzi?

So they're your coins now? Have fun spending them in vegas at defcon. Take lots of pictures and post them! sleep well and see you there.

Obviously, you're just a passthrough. You don't generate returns, so yes its ponzi. Good luck with that after the 27th!

Lulz, so those pictures of the shitton of gpus I have running are photoshopped.

EIEIO is completely separate of pirate holdings. I only started the passthrough after the announcing of trust accounts.  Mining, if done correctly, is extremely profitable, even now.

Hashking used to pay 3.5%, however he's changed his terms considerably lately. He pays up to 1.5% weekly now, which is still considerable.

Also, this guy (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=87780.0) pays 2% weekly just on normal lending.

It varies over time, but the rates in the lending forum (that aren't pirate related) are generally between 1% and 4% per week with varying terms. Even at the low end rate of 1% that's potentially 67.8% per year if you don't touch it. Also, BTC lenders are reporting a very low default rate (in monetary terms) and besides BurtW (who lent his money and only his, and lost it due to his own poor due diligence) there haven't been any big failures. I haven't seen any big scams either in spite of the increase in the number of savings services.

What happens after the 27th?

Evidently my ponzi fails because all I am is a passthrough and my reduced rate prevents me from paying 3% a week.  or something...

Oh, I see.  Interesting, we should buy some RUM!

I just went through all 68 pages of your history and didn't see a single picture of your "farm" (saw a lot of GPUmax, pirate and shakaru stuff). Since there are no pictures, I guess nothing was photoshopped.



Taking GLBT ponzi-loans isn't mining.

While you were browsing all 68 pages of my history, did you happen to see all the people I've traded with?  I've only purchased hardware, never sold it.  Tell you what.. you pick hardware, anything that I've bought via the forums and I'll post a picture of it. 

I already saw pictures of pieces of hardware in your history.

You just claimed there were pics of a "shitton of gpus". Post a picture of your farm, I dare you.

The trolls are the scammers getting caught in their lies. He said he's already shown pictures of his farm of "shitton of gpus". I'm not even asking that he includes an original sign, just to see what he said he'd already posted.

Who's the one trolling?

I can point you to pictures of at least 10GH worth of equipment that he purchased from me....though I am not sure what the argument is or how it was started or what this proves.

Just saying, he is a miner and has a farm of GPUs. I trust that the total amount of GH is what he represents. If not, it will be larger than he told you shortly. You can take my word for it.

In the show pictures of your mining rigs thread, I posted a picture of my 5830s.  There even replies to it.  I'd suggest you go and read that thread.   I can't take pictures of the 5850s, 5970s, 6950s or 7970s right now, it is a holiday and I don't feel like trucking to a DC just to prove some asshat wrong.

FTFY

Damn, if imsaguy can be a ponzi at 3%, I want to be a ponzi at 1.5%/week.  I have a thread, and don't limit deposits (much) and I'm tightening the interest rate.  So far that makes me spot on as I don't even care for mining much.

I only use GLBSE.  Is that your way of coming out of the closet?

Are you really going to Vegas? I think it would be interesting to have a meetup, regardless of our differences on pirateat40. I think it's also a lot easier to be civil in person than on a forum like this where everyone and his dog is screaming bloody murder.

You are Todd T****** from McKinney, Texas.

LOL, no I'm pretty sure people know exactly who I am.  Your google must be borked.

All this trolling is a great way to get some unrelated bad news swept under the rug.

Remember how Gary Condit was in the news 24x7 till September 11?

Ok, you're not as bad at this as I thought.

Here is the first picture of your rigs which I could swear was just linked (is gone now, dunno why): https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-wNqkX0cir-k/T_UV1y90GVI/AAAAAAAACLg/K4DbKMwOvVQ/s519/IMAG0085.jpg

And this is the one which was in the mining thread. its quoted in rjk's response (your original post seems to have been deleted, not sure why): https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-FK9VQ3OkDXo/T7SBSNrX82I/AAAAAAAACCw/E6raKULPFn8/s751/IMAG0052.jpg

Thanks for the low-rez pics.

Can you ever not bitch?  You double dog dared me for a picture, you got two.  That match. What's your issue?

Edit:  They were taken with the Evo 3D.  I could have posted it in 3D, but your computer wouldn't have done it justice.  I was lazy and used the autoupload of Google+.  Bitch to them about low quality pictures.

Coincidentally, I am planning to be near enough (UT) that I could swing by.

Jesus Christ !

This thread was barely 2 pages when I saw it last...LOL

Put the fucking pitchforks and torches away already.

WE ALL KNOW THE RISK

Isn't there another Soap-Box that needs standing/preaching on anywhere else on the Interweb ?

Jesus had nothing to do with it.

I believe that I have a solution that might work for BOTH sides of the so-called Coin....

Obviously people need to agree to dissagree on certain things, but at the end of the day, why don't both sides just concede and call it a...

PERPETUAL-Ponzi ;)

Everyone is happy. Both sides feel a little bit better and we can FUCKING MOVE ON ONCE AND FOR ALL.

Yes, that is possible. In theory anyway. Provided, nobody ever asks for his money back. Never mention the interest.

But what if the Ponzi scheme owes more than the number of existing bitcoins? This would happen in less than two years. Easy to calculate (for those who understand exponential growth).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQXuazYI_YU&t=100s

Well, after some of the clues pirate posted, having big influence at Mt.Gox or some other large exchange, he might be doing  Front running (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Front_running) which is extremely profitable. The only risk is when the bitcoin price goes up steeply, he runs out of bitcoins and BTC price continues to climb, so he's unable to make profit in BTC and pay his lenders. Front running is common practice at bitcoin exchanges, with large order you will never get market price, they will take their share of profit ;) He may even operate on many different smaller exchanges and take advantage of the information he has to increase his profits and lower the risks. So, does this theory fit? Pirate, the big market manipulator. The more bitcoins we give him, the more power he has to screw the market participants. 8)

Well, I'm staying.  Staying in a 5-star hotel with wife for drinks and a decent meal and breakfast on Saturday morning.  I know exactly who's paying - Thanks P@40!

Well, trace the coins from deposit addresses to MtGox and/or other exchanges then, if you can. ;)

Front-running that continuously yields several percent per week? Front-running with the help of Mt.Gox? Come on ...

If anybody could do some front-running, then that would be Mt.Gox themselves. But even they would not make several percent per week while staying inconspicuous.

So you withdrew your capital gains? Lucky you—you are one of the few who got their money back.

I for one don't have anything against greedy suckers losing their money per se. It's the constant stream of bad Bitcoin publicity caused by these careless idiots that I despise. Can't you just use one of those pointless altcoins for these schemes instead?

Someone already did  ;)

I can do several percent per week on trading at Mt. Gox + some other exchanges, though not very often and not on such scale as pirate does with his business (whatever it is). And yes I think he might have his stakes in Mt. Gox or in some other big exchange.

It doesn't make sense. How was he able to manipulate the market rates at the beginning, before he found investors? He offered 7% right from the get-go. Gox volume per day is 45,680 bitcoins roughly. Pirate did not have anywhere close to that amount invested in his Pirate-Pussy-Fund.

Approaches to business can change over time :)

That's the best you can think off as a response to this huge huge discrepancy in pirate's story?  ::)

Like this
http://screenshotuploader.com/i/00/2mIEqrQ4Soi.png

http://screenshotuploader.com/i/00/qER27Eq7ORd.png

O.o

You started out with 36k BTC? I don't think you understood R-'s point. Also, how come you weren't hit with huge problem with the Bitcoinca fiasco which should have froze your money in their wallet?

Huge discrepancy meaning that he changed how he does what he does over time? Yeah, that's a huge red flag. Nokia is a massive Ponzi scheme.

Like what? You show us the current account of coins you have. What about before you accumulated 30,000? Answer the original question please.

Thank you

I thought that he did answer your question - he used leverage in the early days.

Leveraging what? He didn't have anything in the beginning, why else would he need "investors"?

I think he was referring to Bitcoinica leveraging.

Edit: Nvm, I misinterpreted your post.

@Pirate: Sooner or later you're going to have to disclose your business model to quell the doubters.  Otherwise you're going to be losing more business to people pulling out than you would to other competitors adopting your same strategy.  Or, having 50% of your niche market is better than having 100% of nothing.

So I decided to pitch in with a view based on cold facts and logic. Then half way through writing the wall of text, explaining the various aspects and importance of:

• Information Security (information is potential power, power is subject to greed, greed is bad etc.)
• Sensible investing (meaning financial power you can spare without endangering the sustenance of your lifestyle)
• Risk Management (quite a few concerns here aren't necessarily a risk, they're more the fear(s) of an individual, one should not assess his/her risk based on speculation or the "what ifs")

, I decided (this sentence isn't very fluent) not to waste too much forum space. Those that are a bit sharper will maintain composure and those that aren't...will keep whining struggling.

I do hope that the most "vocal" will be put in their place, for those familiar with MMA;
http://oi48.tinypic.com/28i6s2g.jpg

To the OP's original question; as a "vote of confidence" I've just deposited a "sizeable" amount with pirate's BTCST. Not necessarily because I "trust", but because I am willing and able to do so. If things pan out nicely, I'll be happy. If things go awry, I'll not be so happy...for a few hours, then I'll move on to something else.

S. Omega

I have no doubt in what my business is and not a single worry about what the future holds.  Those that doubt what I do couldn't scratch the surface of my operation.     

The only scratching taking place is your support investors scratching your sweaty ballsack whenever you ask them to. Seriously though. Seriously.

That's 3.6k BTC leveraged 10:1 (5k btc / $30k deposited to account for the tradable balance). Or 7.2k BTC leveraged 5:1 (10k btc / $60k deposited). In mid-feb, before bitcoinica added the swap fee. Nice trade!

What does that mean? On average you are not even making 10% a year.

You may have been able to achieve such gains in the beginning, with luck. But now you can't, not on any longer-term average.

All the people here, "I am making 1% per day", "I am making 5% per day". FFS do you think we are all idiots here? Nobody care who made how many percent per day. The only thing that counts is how much one can make sustainably.

Chances are all these geniuses make 5% one day just to lose 10% another and be completely wiped out on a margin call the third day.

If you can make 10% per year consistently on a decent volume then you should be already in the list of top 100  hedge fund managers in the world and command salary measured in tens of millions dollars per year. Do you want us to believe that we have on this very board such a collection of stars whose reasonable annual salary well surpasses whole damn Bitcoin's market cap. Yea right.

What a kindergarden.

I'll tell you one thing for sure, and that is that all the noisy assholes that have been bashing pirate have been pushing me closer to investing, just out of spite for their windy and non-logical posts. I'm sure I'm not the only one that's feeling this way, so be careful that you don't overdo it and get the opposite effect to what you are are trying to achieve, capisce?

Well if you put if you put it this way, then you just go ahead and do it. Evolution will take care of the rest. I am not going to try to stop ya,

Reading your message, I really think you should invest all your bitcoins in the pirate fund. As clever as you are, you probably own a fair amount.

Just imagine, on 7% they will double in a little over 10 weeks. Wouldn't that be wonderful? In a few years you could be a millionaire. You wouldn't have to work any more. Another year, and you could buy a big yacht and a business jet. Go for it!

Then GTFO this thread idiot.

I thought we don't need pirate for that?  ???

Another one with impeccable logic and high value post. What a kindergarden. It seems you guys are suckers for reverse psychology.

Specifically for you here is a recipe for success: take all your money, delay paying your bills, borrow from mom and pop, get cash advances on your credit cards (if they give those these days to  17 year olds)  then go and invest it all into pirates business which is obviously by 2-3 orders of magnitude more profitable than any other company out there. In just 2-3 years you will have 22 millions of bitcoins. Sounds as a good plan.

Goodbye for now. Off to ignore you go.

OFC not, this is Bitcoin. Anyone using Bitcoin makes at LEAST a 3300% return each year.

Haven't followed the entire thread but a 3300% ROI per year from some guy named pirate? Sounds legit to me! Where do I sign up?


Welcome to bitcoinland kiddo! I've got a bridge to sell you.

All those suckers using Bitcoin are going to be a laughing stock of the internet over this before long.

leaving?

I'm doubling down!

Like a boss, brosef.

Unbelievable arrogance, even for vlad.

Why is this guy, the single biggest detractor of bitcoin, tolerated here?

Because just like you or me, he is another person who chooses to be here in this community.

I don't think he is so much a Bitcoin detractor as he is a detractor of certain aspects of Bitcoin users.

He's clearly anti-bitcoin, as anyone that has seen the cover of bitcoin magazine can attest.

Just so everyone else can actually read it.

Who murdered troll reeses and replaced him with cogent reeses? We need troll reeses back.

People who ignore others are just that - ignorant ;)

haha, I see what ya did dar. ;p

By that last bit of reasoning, Reeses, would it not be prudent then to just ignore everyone? But then who would be left to quote?

edit; can we really see how many people are ignoring us?

Thanks for the tip, I did not know that the forum had this feature :)

Ah, a valuable bit of information. Or is it disinformation? Should we ask him where he's got it from?

You make it too easy for us to tell stupid propaganda from useful information. Invent something better.

This is actually quite funny.  I've always had my account on payout rather than reinvest.

Yes, I'm spending some coins, about a day's worth.  And given my history around here and my risk profile, being called "lucky" from someone new is, as I said, amusing.

Thanks for clarifying.

I recently invested with pirate (via a certain respectable pass-through). It's not magic that he gets money.

Also, I've noticed people keep whinging about "Currin Trading" and saying "Pirate is just like currin trading, just watch". Well, after digging through the main BS&T thread I found a link detailing what "Currin Trading" was and gave it a good read-through.

First, I think it's worthwhile to point out, if you really want people to take you seriously, maybe you should be referring to real life ponzi schemes rather than some no-name n00b scammer on some game probably 3/4 of the people here have never played. That's child shit.

Secondly, there are a number of obvious discrepancies between pirate and "Currin Trading" which have led me to discredit the "pirate is an obvious ponzi" terror talk.

For example:

-CT had to pay his large investor (which he only really had 1) less than what he paid his smaller investors, due to the fact that the paycheck for the former had to come from the latter. Pirate pays large investors more, which would be near impossible unless he was losing money by paying them out of pocket, or else if he had a real business of some sort.

-CT had to turn away (or delay) large investors in order to accumulate enough small investors to pay for them. Pirate, when running low on storage availability, turns down newer investors first, which is consistent with a lending business with finite capacity attempting to be fair to account holders in a simple fashion.

-CT never turned away small investors or new investors, as he needed them to continue the ponzi. Pirate made his service invite only and has in the past done forced withdrawals. A ponzi has no benefit to handing people their money back.

-CT had to make up a big publicity stunt in order to keep his ponzi floating for just a short while longer. Pirate, on the other hand, gets called a ponzi because of minor changes to his normal business even though he hasn't made any effort to attract attention.


In clarification of that last point, please allow me to point out the final and obvious reason why the ponzi whingers are morons who don't do any due diligence to back up their shit talk.

Pirate, ever since before making his service invite only, has more or less clearly stated that his reasons for changing his policy was to reduce the administrative overhead of dealing with many accounts (completely understandable). Making the service invite-only was not necessarily the best way of doing that, however at least the action was consistent with his stated goals.

His latest changes, however, are actually quite economically (and logistically) brilliant in terms of achieving his stated goal of less admin hassle.

-The lower rate and account limits on the new savings accounts prevent unauthorized people from making PPT programs, and make them unattractive to potential users who can just get a pirate account of their own now. (or use an authorized PPT for a higher rate)

-The flat interest rate on the standard savings also removes incentives to starting unauthorized PPT programs since there is no benefit to a larger account.

-The new "trust accounts" allow pirate to easily manage and authorize people to run PPT programs and do his admin work for him.

-The security deposit on trust accounts further disincentivizes PPT operators who might otherwise allow users to run wild and make admin work harder rather than easier.

Also, if it were a ponzi scheme, these policy changes would not have any advantages to the ponzi structure, and would be rather arbitrary. Ponzis are benefited by the ignorance of their users, and CT specifically used that ignorance to create unequal treatment between his "clients". CT also tried to make his business seem much older than it was (complete with fake users) prior to advertising. Pirate has not done any of those things; his advertisement was (and continues to be) very straightforward and his policies are very public and transparent (even if his business activities aren't).

Speculate away about what his business is or why he keeps it secret, but as far as being a ponzi, his actions are consistent with the intentions he has expressed.

+1 well put

Have you actually read the second part of the story as well, or only the first one? ::)

Pirateat40 has always done what he has said he would do. Actions, in my book, are way more important than words.

He is one of the best in Bitcoin. (even if we are the same person...)

Dun dun dun...

Who knows, and who cares.  Just put him on ignore.

Lol. You're right, I only read the first part. Now I'm kinda pissed that the link at the end of the story doesn't work. However, the second half still doesn't change anything I've already said.

And some things I forgot to mention.

Including:
-CT never had to deal with a bank run. Even a mild bank run can be a challenge for a solvent financial institution, and it's absolutely indemnifying for a ponzi. Pirate passes the bank run test. (I did mention this)

-CT set things up so that his 'investors' were all paid on different days. This was necessary in order to keep the revolving door going. Pirate pays everyone on the same day, and not all people choose to reinvest their interest. It wouldn't be impossible to run a ponzi under pirate's policies, I think, but it certainly wouldn't make it easier. (but I forgot this)

----------------
Ok I found the second part of the story (telling of the actual #1 scammer on eve), and it seems that the #1 scammer had a policy of never directly paying out interest or principle unless the 'investors' directly requested it. Again, yet another case where a ponzi scheme has significant differences with pirate, and where it is obvious how a different policy would make it easier to run a ponzi undetected. Again, if pirate is running a ponzi, he's doing it in a way that would make it awful difficult for himself.

One of the interesting facts about pirate is that he pays very large interest payments every Monday.  15 weeks would be enough to bankrupt him if deposits stall (if BTCST is a ponzi). 

Example (Jun 18 2012 payments)
http://blockchain.info/tx-index/9782336/11bd062981e13d6e20f765b1a9770f3dd89493f09f9b4f8da15ff523ecfabe53
http://blockchain.info/tx-index/9782978/f11b9e1e61b56762f0370c38fd9ad4c4fdfa6b825f332dbce410b3ade439a30e

Subtract the largest address (change) -> still 10000 BTC of payments, and these are partial.  It may be as high as 20000... or 30000...

Let's assume Pirate runs when deposits stall.  This means that he takes in 5 digits worth of *new* coins (minus withdrawals) every week on average to keep it going (since he hasn't run away yet).  Is this feasible?  I don't know, it seems borderline impossible to me. 

Your math looks about the same as mine. 15-30 weeks or so, maybe slightly longer at best depending on the actual distribution of people taking all their payments and varying interest rates. Technically sending everyone to PPT accounts that all pay 7% would push it towards the lower end of the scale.

Haplo, thank you for writing your reasoning in such detail. It helps me understand how, and what, pro-Pirate people think. This better understanding helps me present counterpoints, and hopefully change your mind and save your money.

Firstly, you want to read about a great Ponzi scheme? Read the original one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Ponzi

Secondly, Currin Trading demonstrated that a Ponzi scheme with 1 investor disproportionately larger than the others puts the whole scheme at risk (if this investor pulls out, the scheme collapses.) This is precisely why Pirate limits the investment amount to 5k BTC per account.

Thirdly, this is also the reason why Pirate has done forced withdrawals. Because the big investors letting the interest compound over and over would become disproportionately larger than the others, and would put the Ponzi scheme at risk if they withdraw.

Fourthly, like Currin Trading, Pirate is making great efforts to keep his Ponzi floating. He locked down his BTCS&T forum thread to silence the critics. He announced he will show up in person at DEFCON in Las Vegas to drive buzz. He gave away 50 BTC as a surprise prize to some random guy who noticed Pirate's avatar image was being rotated every day (very much like CT trying to re-inforce their "good guys" image with the lottery.)

Fifthly, the reason Pirate is planning to lower his interest rate is to keep his scheme alive longer. For example, compare Charles Ponzi to Madoff. The first ran his scheme for only 8 months because he was doubling the investors' money every 45 days or so. The second was able to run his for almost 20 years because he was doubling the money only every 6 years. The lower the rates, the longer the scheme goes on.

Sixthly, the "security deposit" is nothing more than one more way to take money from depositors to pay those who withdraw (the very essence of a Ponzi scheme.)

Seventhly, you say that policy changes like having "trust accounts" to reduce admin hassle add "no advantage to the Ponzi structure". Well of course they do: they reduce the admin hassles of running the scheme!

Eightly, Pirate, of all the people, should be the one the most confident in his insanely profitable investments. Logically he should have offered his friends and family the opportunity to invest. But in reality, I believe that none of them, not even Pirate himself, have invested personal money... because he knows this is a scam.

Lastly, you attempt to explain why BTCS&T may be a legitimate business, but you don't acknowledge the numerous "red flags" indicating it is a Ponzi. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has a list of such red flags: http://www.sec.gov/answers/ponzi.htm  Pirate's actions raise almost all of them: overly consistent returns, unregistered investments, secretive and/or complex strategies, etc. (The only red flag not occuring is "difficulty receiving payment" because the scheme has yet to collapse...)

I will conclude by saying to those who invested in BTCS&T: don't tell the critics to shut up. I am not arguing for the sake of arguing. I hate debates as much as you do. I am simply and genuinely trying to save you from losing money!

Can you explain why you have suddenly decided to invest your time in saving the poor, simple minded folk in this forum from ourselves? Seems a happy coincidence that so many other like minded internet heroes arrived simultaneously to froth and foam about the same subject  ::).

Crawl back under your bridge, troll.

Pirate has not yet limited account size. He's been running 7 months without doing so (and 8 before he does). Also, PPTs still generally have no limits and pay higher interest. Most of his customers are moving or have moved over to PPT programs for these reasons (including myself, although I was not previously a pirate customer). As a result he'll probably be paying 7% to a larger group of people, and may already be doing so through outside interest in the programs. Why would a ponzi seek to give the majority of its clients a raise?


Except that forced withdrawals were not done on an account-size basis, but rather by seniority. Basically every lender on the lending forum has a limit to how much capital they can move in a week. Pirate's method of handling that is simply more flexible than others.


His thread got like 25 pages of spam in a week, mostly idiots with "proof" that him changing his account policy is a sure sign that he's a ponzi scheme. I would have done the same thing.


The SEC is an organization which oversees the largest ponzi scheme in history, they ought to know (funny though, cause their rates are shit). However, I've already mentioned most all of the ways in which pirate's organization differs significantly from the mechanics which would support a ponzi. Next, I think I'll try out that cool "ignore" button everyone's been raving about.

Lol, you don't know what you are talking about  ;)

You guys are like a bunch of old women at the market. Nothing important to say but mouths (fingers) are moving at maximum speed.
For frack sake! Stop whining about BFL and Pirate. Spend this energy on finding out, who prints those damn chips for BFL and at what price. Report back, when you actually have something valuable to say. If not, send your yapping to /dev/null

15 pages of useless and utterly pointless ego stoking verbal diarrhea. If you can not shut up, sit on your fat grabby fingers and count to 99 000.
You guys make the bitcoin community look like a bunch of retards with keyboards.

And now, STFU and go help your mom do your laundry.

FTFY

There is no limitation to 5000- thats only for the "smaller accounts" that get miniumum %


The forced withdraws were mostly from the smaller newer accounts and NOT the old BIG  accounts


or he just likes to have some fun now and again ....


He hasnt really lowered the rates - most investors will move to the trust funds which gets top % just like before.

I beg your pardon? Why are here in the first place if you don't even believe in bitcoins? What a waste of time

That's the kind of thing that will drag even more people to pirate's thing, whatever it is. Because we're mostly here because we trust bitcoin to be a sound and good investment.

You are probably relatively new here, you look at that statement of mine slightly out of content (long term).

I indeed do "know" you since a few days, so I'm maybe wrong. My bad if i'm wrong :)

Vlad's tongue and his cheek are good friends. You're not the first to have failed at tongue-in-cheek detection, and you won't be the last. Damn this internet! People never know when I'm joking either.

meh...
Just get used to it.
One guy writes one sentence and all of the sudden everyone and its dog detects some emotion that just wasn't there, or fails to detect one that was. The former happens more than the latter ;)

Wow, this isn't getting off topic or anything.

If you go that route, 90% of the thread is off-topic.
The topic is "Are you staying or leaving?", and despite that you have an army debating "Should you leave or leave?"... Take your pick.

Props to Haplo and Mrb for having a (mostly) civil discussion.

Like a lot of other people on this forum, I have my suspicions about the investment, but I still invest in a PPT. There seems to be this unsaid assumption that the only two options are to invest "nothing" or "everything". I would consider those extremes. Where is the conversation about how much people are willing to invest? Everyone has some lower limit they feel comfortable just throwing away for fun, right? I'm somewhat fortunate that I don't think twice about spending $50-100 on a nice dinner or a new pair of shoes if I'm in the mood for that. If I lose that much money on a bad investment, I can do without that fancy dinner for a week, no big deal. On the other end, I wouldn't sleep well at night if I had $10K+ invested in something risky as Pirate because losing that would cause some pretty long term financial harm.

Also, the amount of entertainment I've gotten out of investing in Pirate has been easily worth a few movie tickets or a trip to the amusement park. (Perhaps I'm just a geek like that)

Personally, I'm reducing my risk down to ~100 BTC because of the recent changes. It can't be much worse than the poor investment choice I made in Sirius XM Radio stock. I don't ever expect to get my principal back on that one. Plus, most of what I have invested are dividends anyhow.

Check the Kelly Criterion (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelly_criterion).

@Rygon: I agree, although I don't believe the recent changes are cause for suspicion. I suggest checking out the lending forum (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=65.0). There are a good number of lenders which take deposits and are very transparent about their operations. They pay quite well, too, although not as high as pirate.



I think that's a bit overcomplicated. I also don't buy the whole "Warren Buffet uses this" deal, either. I've read Buffet, and his decisions are based solely on the solvency, competitiveness, and quality of management of the businesses he surveys. He most definitely does not treat investment as a sort of gambling and the amount of money he invests in a company depends on what % of that company he decides he wants to own (based on size and individual merit).

I don't know what Buffett thinks about, but if he is usually running in to a limit of what % of this company do I want instead of what % of my assets do I want in this company then it doesn't really apply to him. It would be like a millionaire playing penny poker. If the limit is lower than Kelly would recommend anyway then it doesn't matter. But every small competent investor at least makes an intuitive approximation of Kelly Criterion. I'm by no means a trader, but I do have assets and I don't put -all- of them in the one thing I expect to preform the best.

Note the requirements.  This typically means more than you think by orders of magnitude.

Eh, Peter Lynch has a pretty good system for it, although it certainly isn't a science. My point is that treating financial investments the same as gambling is the wrong idea. Whether a company does well or not, or whether a bank is solvent and can pay your interest or not are much more predictable than, say, whether a particular horse wins a race or whether a marble lands on red or black. In both cases, though you don't get any "well this company has x% chance of doing well" sort of figures to work by, so the equations used in the Kelly Criteria can't apply.

@Patrick: Yes, sort of, but the math and considerations that go into investments (as opposed to gambling) are very different.

exactly.
the other reason this cannot be applied to stocks, bonds, etc. Is because there are no set in stone payouts for stocks and bonds. The Kelly Bet relies on the payouts always being the same since you need them to plug into the formula. Granted you could recalculte any time there is a change in the stocks and bonds but it would not be true Kelly Bet.

Maybe I misunderstood, but I took it as that is what he was getting at.

I was actually observing the "all or nothing" approach being challenged by the Kelly reference as to why you might not want to do that.  In simple optimisation problems (multdimensional linear/binary/non-linear) and point in an interior space is sub-optimal and that's why the simplex method for LP is so easy (it traces the n-dimensional space to an optimum provided the Kuhn-Tucker conditions are met - typically a concave space).

The other aspect of investing/gambling is expected payoff versus average payoffs and that is why people typically diversify their portfolios.  Putting 1000 BTC on a horse to win might have a 100k BTC return, and might have a higher expected return than a BS&T account or a 1% deposit account, but getting enough horse races to get that return becomes unlikely.

As for the difference between gambling and investing, what is your subtle difference between these? 

In gambling the outcomes are random or near it. In investment you can see a company's earnings (to a point, although it's also possible to learn to recognize fraud), you can call them and ask them what they're doing to improve their business, you can see what tangible saleable assets they have (which may not relate to their main business), you can see how often they've paid dividends (if any) and if they've raised them or not. Etc etc.

Investing properly is like appraising a farm for sale. You already know more or less what productivity to expect out of the land, which you can verify by checking various soil features (assuming you know about farming) and determine whether the price you're being offered is low, fair, or too much. In other words, you get a big advantage by having specialist knowledge into the business you're investing in, whereas in gambling the only advantage you might glean is purely mathematical.

Investing is often gambling.  So often there are confounding variables that give an incomplete picture, even when using all due diligence in the world.  Invest in a farm and then two years down the road, subsidies change or whatever. 

Investing returns are random within a range based on what you know of the underlying asset/business/investment.  Sounds like gambling.

Blackjack (as an example) is not random, but again returns are within a range based on the rules of the game.

Both involve some skill, as opposed to a simple game of chance.  Even BS&T allows some skill to be applied, such as due diligence on different aspects of the business.

Blackjack is not random?

Not if you do it the right um  wrong way: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Card_counting (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Card_counting)

Even if you get an edge the outcome of each hand is random. And even if you are talking about the long run to the point where you are sure to win your exact result will vary widely.

I'm gonna risk patrick slapping me with one of those brain hurting responses again and say what I think he was implying by 'not random'.

I believe he was refering to the payouts for blackjak, not the hands.

edit; which if you could apply the formula of placing a bet n^ your previous bet for each losing hand you would eventually win. Catch is the casinos are too smart for that and limit the maximum bet. ;p

The outcome of each hand is governed by a particular probability. If you can skew that then over a number of hands, you can come out ahead. But it's not a random probability, in any case.

/OT

Nah, apparently I've annoyed Vladimir quite effectively https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=91643.msg1014104#msg1014104

And discussing complex number theory and statistics is less interesting than my beer and the steak I'm going to be having soon.

Anyway, my personal expectation is that BS&T might run another six months, so I'm set until Christmas, so I'm in the staying camp.  (I also know who Mr P is, and have various other bits of information that provide me confidence that my funds are as safe with him as many other places.  I am not "all in", and happy to be receiving less than the top tier of interest from 1 August because others are keen to run low margin pass-throughs.)

Kelly Criterion (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelly_criterion) for dummies  :)

For those who don't feel like digging through the Kelly formula, here is a strongly simplified explanation. It boils down to the old saying: "Never put all your eggs in one basket."

The idea behind it is that, if you make investments that (usually) involve some risk, if you always bet all your money, you run a high risk to eventually lose it all.

When I apply the Kelly Criterion (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelly_criterion) to typical bitcoin investments and speculation, the result is often that I should invest or bet no more than 10% to 20% of my entire wealth.

Of course this applies to your entire wealth, not only bitcoins. You have to include your assets and income. For example, if you have a monthly income of $5,000 and can save $1,000 of these each month, then it may not matter all that much if you put all your 1,000 bitcoins into one risky investment. If you lose them, you buy another 1,000 bitcoins half a year later.

If, on the other hand, you have saved 20,000 BTC to bring your pension up to par, you should not put all of these into any risky investment. You should limit your exposure to each single risk to, say, 2,000 BTC, so the likelihood of losing your entire stash remains sufficiently small.

That's the essence of the Kelly Criterion.

You play a bunch of hands, you come out ahead, how much? You dunno, it's random.

/OT

Read the link I posted. Plus, I'm saying the probabilities involved are not random. If the game was truly random you'd need a set of an infinite number of cards.

/OT /OT

Proper card counting, which doesnt really exist anymore in casinos, is not random and I used to do it full time along with partners at a bunch of casinos all over the country between 1999-2003, it was by far the most predictable way of earning income by gambling. Sure the next card is purely based on probability but with proper card counting you can narrow the stats down to a huge favourite over the house and when you have the "house edge" its a guaranteed win.

In 2004 the casinos got up to gear and removed every hand shuffling 6+ deck with atleast 60% penetration which turned cardcounting into a losing game.

Long story short, its very predictable. :)

Did you know those guys from MIT that they made a movie about? If so, cool!

Correct, Trendon S******. If many know your identity, it is one more reason to stop your Ponzi scheme now...

or just keep doing what he's doing since it isn't a ponzi?

So, in recap:

 "I know who you are. You are x."
 "I am not x."
 "Correct, y. You are y."

Its funny you bring up a razor.  I was just having a friend tell me how he's got a hairy bung hole.  Perhaps he should meet Mr. Ockham?

Brother Occam never practised what he preached. He was a theologian and he asserts that the simplest explanation is the more likely? Hah! I wonder how he fitted religion into that concept. Bloody monks. Never useful.

I think one of the alternate names on wikipedia is better: the law of parsimony.

 

Lol! ;)

"God did it."
Three words, very simple.

Of course, if you apply Occam's razor mathematically (http://lesswrong.com/lw/jp/occams_razor/), things become a lot different…

+1

+10

Umm.... I'm leaving now, lol

Still think it was not a Ponzi? ::)

imsaguy, farfiman, Haplo, and anybody else who argued against me that it wasn't a Ponzi: I would like you to re-read this thread and try to understand where your logic or psychology prevented you from seeing the reality of the clear signs of a Ponzi scheme that I was explaining. You will thank me later if you learn something and are able to avoid future Ponzi schemes.

As I said in another thread, the reason I participated in Pirateat40 threads was to genuinely prevent people from losing their money.

Not everybody who argued for the pirate was clueless. The most ardent pirate evangelists benefitted from the Ponzi scheme, for example by running feeder funds or simply by being bribed. Everybody who has followed the relevant threads knows who these people are.

The more intelligent ones are now fairly quiet. That does not make them less evil though. Quite to the contrary …

They are just counting their gains and preparing the next sucker play.