Bitcoin Forum

I got a personal message from user Vandroiy trying to discourage me from keeping my investment in Bitcoin Savings & Trust (Pirate).
Are other people getting PMs like this too?

people usually don't talk on forums  bout how much they invested in pirate  ;)

Vandroiy has a 5000BTC bet that pirate defaults, pirate having the funds to continue business means that Vandroiy loses 5000BTC, lol

ignore him and go on with business as usual

Well, until when does pirate have to default for this bet to become effective?
Anyways, please discuss that kind of stuff in Meta, srsly!

Vandroiy is entitled to his opinions, but spamming strangers seems to be pushing it a bit.

To answer the OP: no, you are the only person whom I messaged first about it since the bet. But since nobody will believe me...

I'll log out private conversations to users whom I actively contacted, and if I miss one, please point it out here. I believe I had two conversations of the type, and the other was with imsaguy. Chill out guys, this was some sort of stupid feeling because he's also German and seemed to run a nice site... was a stupid time-waster move.

Give me a moment to provide details on whom I actively communicated with and did not contact me first, so you can measure my activity.

What paranoia.

Edit from here

OUTGOING PMs, starting 2012-07-02. I really hope I hit "save in Outbox" for all of them. :-\

• One conversation with someone who wants to speculate on BS&T and contacted me first
• Answers to a number of people who contacted me actively about the BS&T discussion
• I apologized to Theymos about a deleted post which was easy to misunderstand as very pointless and insulting, it was actually directed at the OP here, Mageant. Sorry for that, too many people had been shouting at me that day. (AFAIK It is the only of my posts that was deleted from the discussions.)
• A discussion with Goat that started on IRC, but the first PM was from him. I'm listing it because he clearly did not agree on it and still names me a poor troll, so I better bring it up before anyone else does.
• Just before the conversation in question: Four REPLY messages
• Two messages to the OP here, Meagent, explicitly warning about BS&T, one of which was a reply. Two messages were sent each way.

IRC it's a hassle, I don't have logs everywhere, but I believe most activity was before the bet. What I remember:

• Open talking in #btcst. This should really not be fishy.
• An active query with imsaguy (This was mostly on Jul 4, some lines Jul 5. Bet was sealed Jul 6-7.)
• Responding to people and whatnot. Can't remember losing my nerves on people right now, maybe I'll find another when I search the query logs.

Easy, even if you just pm'd one user trying to discourage investment it shows just what a failed troll you are on this forum. Any bit of credibility just went deep down the poop train.

Its only a "stupid time-waster move" when you get caught, I bet your face is gloating red right now seeing someone outted you.

No, I just hate myself for making a tactical mistake by pitying a single person.

Hit me for it, I deserve it. What a fucking stupid move. Now people can discredit me for weeks, and the game is lengthened.

I'll edit data into the upper post once I have it.

TACTICAL ? So playing dirty is tactical by your definition?

Sadly fail.com is taken.

Edited the upper post.

Seriously, I never signed that the bet binds me to silence. I know this was Pirateat40's intention, and I see it's working out, but it's not part of any agreement.

But judge for yourself. Please, bring up any additions, it wasn't my intention to play shady. I'm scanning my BNC for queries right now.

Edit: didn't find any further ones where I actively started communication just to warn people. If anyone does, please bring them up ASAP. My logs aren't perfect, and that unchecked save in outbox button is just damn dangerous.

What a blunder. Pirateat40, come laugh at me for a bit, that was just retarded. If I missed a communication now, people will spam me with it forever.

Sometimes I think Vandroiy should add "Spanish Inquisition 200 years late" or something to his avatar.
He does not understand it, and therefor it must be the work of the devil and has to be exorcised. Like someone from the dark ages watching a modern airplane.

This has nothing to do with pirate and all about you.

No matter the situations the mere FACT that you ended up trying some dirty underhanded tactic like that even if it only went out to 1 person(I also doubt that part) just shows your credibility while you are on the hunt to deface the credibility of another member(pirateat40 in this case)

This goes beyond your claim of pirateat40 running a ponzi. This is purely a test of your own credibility and to a degree selfishness and no shame.

If you cant understand just how pathethic it is to actively try discourage people and that you think it matters that you didnt state you wont be doing it, then I really cant convince you otherwise.

If this is your question, yes you cannot convince me to point out that people are losing their money to a fraudulent investment scheme.

And while I see it was a tactical mistake, I don't think my message was morally wrong. I'm not betting whether BS&T has trouble with flamewars. I'm betting that it is a criminal operation. And I don't do that because I have a hunch, but because I am certain I know what I'm looking at.

Right now the only person set to lose 5000BTC is you, the current motivation of PM'ing people have nothing to do with trying to save them from losing their money but alot more to do with you trying to win your pathetic bet.

If you feel motivated enough to PM people to try discourage them to deal with pirateat40 then Im sure you have a bunch of other underhanded shakedowns you wouldnt mind using, lying being a key part of it.

If Pirate is legit, having a bunch of people withdraw from BS&T wouldn't matter.

For the hopefully last time:

I don't want to win this if BS&T is legitimate and made a minor mistake or lacked a little bit of funds. I want to win this because they are a scam! If I win the bet in such a way, please re-start this discussion at any time!

And I'm not happy about the lying part. The core point of all this is lying to achieve things. Being aggressive is not the same as lying at all, and I do not see how you can make this connection.

I dont disagree with this but trying to cause panic for personal gain is not the way to go about it.



I went to a proper school and were brought up well and lying still remains lying no matter how you try and twist it.

I see that, but not how you can assume I lied or would lie to anyone. I wrote a pushy PM, yes. But where is the connection here?

Need a new "Spammer" tag on the forum  :)

This is the best part...

@ Vandroiy,

Look dude, certainty does not equate to knowledge.

I started a thread claiming I was 99.9% sure that what Pirate is doing is legitimate.  I also made sure to point out that 99.9% certainty is not 100% certainty, and I also made sure to point out that my belief should not be treated as investment advice.

Your ego is getting the better of you.  Does the information available suggest that Pirate's operation could be a ponzi?  Yes.  Does the information available also suggest that Pirate's operation could be a legitimate business?  YES.

Also think of a scenario in which it could be both.  In other words, think of a model that mimics characteristics of a ponzi scheme but in reality is a completely legitimate business operation. For example, a scenario in which lenders provide deposits that can be used to make a profit for both Pirate and the lenders (interest), leaving a greater sum of deposits which can then be used to make more profit and pay more interest, leaving an even greater sum of deposits which can then be used to make even greater profit and pay even more interest, etc.

Now, what would the inevitable conclusion of such an operation be?  After a while, the BTC supply in the market begins to decrease and the interest payment rate needs to be lowered, which is what is happening on August 1st.

If you give me $100, I promise you I can turn that into $107 in 1 week.
I also promise you I can turn $107 into $115 in another week.
I also promise you that I can turn $115 into $124 in another week.

But, if there are only $10.5 million in existence (representative of BTC), there will eventually come a point at which making 7% becomes impractical if not impossible, so the interest rate will need to drop.  Now, I couldn'tve made those profits without your money (characteristic of a ponzi), but the profits were completely legitimate.  

Only theymos can ban people :-\

*Mod hat on*
Anyway, since he only bothered one person, and it was because of a post that person made instead of being completely unsolicited, I don't see the problem with this.
*Mod hat off*

You guys do realize Ponzi's are funded by whales, right? Those poor suckers that always keep reinvesting the largest investments of money and never taking payment, even for just one interest period if only to make sure they're not dealing with a Ponzi.

If Vandroiy is correct in his assumption, and legitimately is concerned for the investors in a Ponzi, he'd be doing exactly the action he chose to take, get the whales to agree to not fund for just one week to make sure everything checks out.

You only miss out on what, one payout? If the top ten whales all agreed not to fund him for just one payout they'd all have the piece of mind of knowing for sure it wasn't a Ponzi. Plus, if just a handful of the top ten don't do it, and extract their money and it *does* turn out to be a Ponzi, it'd be a bad idea as a fellow whale to not to join in. Seems like a safe gamble to me, forgo participation for just one interest period to know for sure.

But hey, I guess I'm just one of those suckers that's losing money by not participating, right? I couldn't possibly provide any insightful comments, right?

I sent Vandroiy a pm first, but I don't consider that I spammed him.

We swapped some ideas and discussed a few things.  No problem.

Edit: As an afterthought - I have previously had people pm me telling me not to use Deepbit.

Bitcoin is a Ponzi!

lol, i was going to post "inb4 bitcoin is a ponzi" but thought better of the community, i was sorely mistaken











:p

I hereby apologize to Vandroiy.

I see now that he only had good intentions in trying to protect me and others from a scam.

Apology accepted.

I can take a little heat. ;) Though, please, all of you guys be more careful about promoting things to newbies in the future. We all know some got hit a little too hard. :-\