If you're not going to respond to me, please don't pretend to.

I explained what my problem is. Here it is again in case you missed it even though you quoted it:


If you have a rational response to that argument, I'd love to hear it.

How is that abusive exactly? I'm not saying he is an idiot. I'm saying that argument boils down to arguing that he's an idiot. Obviously, it's an argument I don't accept.

What is abusive, however, is calling other people abusive to shut them up or make them feel or look bad. And telling people you're reporting them to the mods to silence a view you disagree with is bullying. I don't think anyone finds your feigned fragility convincing.

Why would he care what the financial state of the lenders are? He's not trying to work out the right timing to invest in a Ponzi scheme and pull it before it fails. He's not interest in when they collapse.

I can know that someone who promises exorbitant interest rates, promises low risk, doesn't explain his business model, has no apparent business, makes regular payments at a constant rate, and requires an ever-increasing supply of borrowed money at these exorbitant rates is almost certainly operating a Ponzi scheme (or similar scam). This is so regardless of their financial state.

Pirate appeared to be in a very good financial state (and perhaps actually was) when he decided to stop making payments. If he stopped because he was broke, it was not obvious. Knowing Pirate's financial state would, at most, have allowed you to predict roughly when he would default.

I'm not being argumentative. I'm only repeating the same argument because I have yet to get any rational response to it. My point has nothing to do with his personal information or recourse. People had Madoff's personal information and he appeared to have large assets that would provide recourse. All of that is just not relevant. People think that someone can't be a criminal just because they know them. Well, guess what, criminals don't live in cement cages they do not leave, at least not before they're caught. Scammers know how to convince people they are ordinary, trustworthy folks. And many criminals don't care to hide their identity -- especially since nobody has yet been prosecuted for a Bitcoin-related theft.

But more importantly, my point is that there is no known explanation for how he could be doing what he claims to be doing other than that it's a scam. And there is no imaginable other explanation for why he would need or want a constantly increasing supply of other people's money at exorbitant interest rates.

There is simply no way a rational businessman would take all this risk and pay such high rates unless he was making a significant profit. And the first thing a rational businessman would do when making a significant profit is pay off his absurdly-high interest debts. And if the risk is high and he nevertheless had the funds to cover losses, the most rational think to do with those funds would be to loan them and thereby get rid of his high-interest debt. No rational person would have $50,000 in a bank account and still borrow the equivalent of $50,000 in BTC at exorbitant rates.

The only known explanation is that it's a scam.

Do you have some kind of response to this argument? Or are you trolling?

So now the theory is that he is doing all of this work and taking all of this risk, and all he's getting for it is miniscule profits? This again boils down to him being an idiot.

In other words, you take all the risk but keep only a sliver of the profits. If you have the money to guarantee deposits, why wouldn't you just use the guarantee money instead of paying usurious interest rates? It would be like somebody having $50,000 in a safe while they carry $50,000 on their credit cards. There are two possibilities:

1) You are lying about this, in which case nobody should trust you with their money because you are a liar.

2) You are telling the truth about this, in which case nobody should trust you with their money because your financials decisions are idiotic.

If he has some source of money that's so amazing that he can afford to pay 1% a week interest and still make money, why doesn't he use the money he is making to pay off his debt? Nobody has ever explained why such a scheme would require a constant flow of other people's money other than that it's a scam. Any rational businessman who was making a ton of money would make paying off his high-interest debt his number one priority. There is exactly one known explanation that perfectly explains all the observed facts -- it's a scam.

You seriously believe that Patrick is so smart that he is the first person to figure out a way to reliably make ultra-high profits at low risk and is simultaneously so dumb that he borrows more and more money at *way* above market rates? How do you manage to pull that off?

Please show how you can use that logic to show that I'm a scammer.

If you think it's a silly stance then you should have no problem showing me what's incorrect about it. The world is not an unhappy place, but it would be much happier if it wasn't polluted by ponzi schemes.

Fraud is not at all like gambling. If you love investing in Ponzis, then you love paying people to steal things and give them to you.

Was it obvious all along that Pirate would one day have to default and be unable to repay principles deposited with him? If your answer is yes, why is it not equally obvious with you? If your answer is no,  why would it matter whether I could or couldn't find someone you scammed? You couldn't find anyone Pirate had scammed until the day he stopped making payments.

Matthew has a reputation that wasn't built by running a Ponzi scheme.

I responded to that argument at least five times now. When you realize it's basically, "I borrow money at 100% APR just to short bitcoins with zero leverage" it kind of falls apart.

Well, if I want to ship my soda only in gold-plated trucks, my soda is going to be very expensive too. But that's why very few people ship soda in gold-plated trucks.

I don't trust you. If Bitcoins triple in price, how will you buy the coins to pay me back? But if that issue was resolved, that would be a great offer. I know quite a few people who are long on Bitcoins for the long term who would be quite interested in something like that if they could trust you.

That would be a good response if anyone was arguing that companies would necessarily do everything significantly better than governments.

I don't agree. Bank runs caused by liquidity issues are a solved problem. Bank runs caused by insufficient equity (say due to bad loans) cannot be solved.

All you do is increase the interest rate if a liquidity crisis makes you unable to meet payment demands. Since you have the equity, your debts will be worth at least face value (because the interest rate is above market rate and you have the equity to pay). So your customers who don't want to wait can just sell the for more than they could withdraw for. You take a loss due to the above market interest you have to pay, but you don't harm your customers. (Of course, they have to know and agree to this up front.)

This doesn't help, of course, if you don't have the equity to back your debt. So it solves the problem of everyone withdrawing at once. But it doesn't solve the problem of too many of your loans going bad. (Like the mortgage crisis.)

But there's a point in pretending to?

That's a good one! In case you run short of witty retorts, you may want to add "Says who? and "That's what you think!" to your repertoire.


I don't know if you're a shill or you've been duped, but there are arguments on the other side that you refuse to either acknowledge of respond to. You simply keep insisting on a position not only in the absence of evidence but against the weight of all evidence.

Do you know why your husband needs to borrow other people's money at outrageously high interest rates even though he supposedly has some sure fire way to turn massive profits? Or are you taking his word for it? All logic and reason suggests that someone who had a source of extraordinary wealth would make paying off usurious loans their top priority.

I find your behavior extremely bizarre. If you're attempting to vouch for your husband, you need to respond to the substance of the complaints.

I don't think so. I'm not sure, but I don't think so. Here's why:

For Matthew to win his bet, Pirate has to settle with everyone. For people who insist on 100% payout, the only way Pirate can settle is to pay 100%. Because some people think Matthew knows something they don't, they're much less likely to take a low settlement. This is especially true for people who took Matthew's bet to hedge. If they take a partial payment, they may lose their bet with Matthew. If they refuse, they are guaranteed either 100% payment or they'll win their bet.

So Matthew's bet almost certainly made it much more expensive for Pirate to settle. I suspect by at least 40,000 BTC. (Weirdly, this means that if Matthew loses, most of that money may wind up indirectly going to Pirate since Pirate benefits from the higher value of his debt because he can sell it for more.)

I think you fail to appreciate the difference between an opinion unsupported by any argument and a reasoned argument. It's not okay to respond to a reasoned argument with a bare opinion and pretend that this in any way invalidates the argument.

Do you have any explanation for why, other than it being a scam, your husband is making so much money he can pay unbelievable interest rates yet doesn't have enough money to pay off his own ultra-high interest rate debt? Because the only reason the rest of us can think of is that he's scamming. If there's some other explanation, we don't know it. And all other such schemes in the past have turned out to be scams.

Not profitable compared to not paying out such an amount.

Please show me something that we know is not a Ponzi scheme that has consistently paid out 1%/week or more at low risk.

It's not just that it's possible, no other explanation is known.

Can you explain why a person with the incredible financial wisdom needed to make that much money would nevertheless be idiotic enough to borrow money at about the highest imaginable rates? The only known explanation for needing so much of other people's money is a Ponzi scheme.

I agree that  the recent discourse is far from healthy criticism. If you have any better ideas, I'm willing to listen. But I fear nothing will work and people will invest in obvious scams no matter what anyone says.

I don't understand how. If you mean the bond is due presently and they're not paying it, then they're in default. I agree that buying your own debt when you are in default is a problem. You should be using those funds to make proportional payments. But PPT operators are not in default and there is no actual conflict of interest.

There were a lot of things missing from the PPT contracts. It's not clear what we should assume to fill in the gaps in many places. Since this is win/win though, I can't see any sensible reason to prohibit it. (And that's not typical. Normally, you can buy your own debt. So far as I know, there's no prohibition on insider trading that would cover this absent actual inside information.)