It appears you will be defiant & insulting to the end. If this is all a scam you realize I was trying to help you guys out all along, right?
And if/when its wrong and pirate does pay people back and you've actively encouraged a bunch of people to call other people scammers, liars, shills, etc, (as well as doing the same yourself) then what? "Ooops, my bad. I was just trying to protect you." I have agreed to make a video wearing a straw hat praising pirate / burtw if Pirate is not a ponzi (it's a page or 2 back there). Will you agree to make a video in a straw hat in 2 weeks time when everything is like I say it is? I will agree to make a video while wearing a straw hat, just because someone will watch it. |
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Trust is earned, not given. What did pirate do to earn trust?
Member of the community, gpumax, OTC rating, etc Do people know who he is or where he lives?
People are way too lazy this day. Google him. Look at his facebook page. Look at the facebook page of his wife. Look at the pictures of his sons, dogs. Hell, we know more about him, than we know about the whole dev team combined. But in sharp contrast we trust the dev team with ALL our bitcoins. Do they know how the money they give him is used to make those returns?
I guess sometimes the business model itself can be the trade secret. That being said, read his post on this forum and on IRC and you will get an almost clear picture about his business. Do they know how much of the profits he keeps for himself?
Yes, he stated to make about 10%/week and gave his lenders about 7%. Do they even know why he needs other people's money instead of just earning the 7% weekly return on his own money?
He did not have such huge funds, and those were necessary for him to make this profit. But while all those are neat questions that can be answered easily, it still leaves the actual one unanswered: I don't really follow the logical connection between "some people may have lost money to a bitcoin scam" and "it's time to panic sell!"
Why would anyone panic sell over this type of announcement? Is the assumption that pirate's was going to dump his btc holdings, causing the price to go down? If so, why would he bother announcing?
Call me an eternal sucker, but the above viewpoints ring louder than any "HE MUST BE A PONZI BECAUSE _____" claims. Disclaimer: I have never "invested" in Pirate or any derivative thereof and do not plan to as I find it highly risky and lacking much needed transparency. I think DeathAndTaxes nailed it in another thread. ...Another way to look at it is IF you run a business that is 100% legit but it utterly indistinguishable from a ponzi scheme then guess what .... the risk that it will be confused with a ponzi scheme and you may suffer a lack of liquidity as a result is a business risk. A risk that both the operator of the business and the investors should have considered. Lets assume Pirate operation was 100% legit. Could he have done anything to mitigate that risk? Transparency? Delayed withdrawals? Working with a smaller pool of high net worth investors? Since he chose NOT to take steps to mitigate that risk factor and the "investors" decided to ignore that risk factor any losses are solely the fault of the operator and investors.
That's of course true, but opening yourself up to criticisms and not caring much doesn't make you a ponzi automatically either. Wait until Monday. |
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Frankly speaking, I see no future where anonymity reigns.
How many people who have contributed something "world-changing" in history did it anonymously? All the scientific discoveries, the conquests with the super-leaders, the great thinkers, they all have their name attached to their lifes-work. Dont worry about the "rant", you made a good point. A great many, and also: No. Take a look at Stigler's Law of Eponymy. For almost all of these great scientific discoveries, conquests, thinkers, whose names you are thinking of, there are others you haven't heard of who really did it first or did the grunt work. Yep. I don't necessarily agree that your name must be attached to some work for it to be taken seriously. We're talking about purposely hiding and masking your identity while operating in a financial marketplace. Big difference. Not taking credit for something happens all the time. Unfortunately, so does not taking credit for thefts. |
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I can't speak for other magazines, but all-in-all Bitcoin Magazine has a pretty good attitude towards Bitcoin.  |
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At the heart of all of this is a split movement in Bitcoin, both supporting it equally-- hackers and crackers. Hackers want transparency and information to be shared. They want government for it's power to change and control, but they want to be a part of the change and take away control from the evil forces. Crackers just want personal gain and are mostly against government, crave anonymity, etc.
In the Bitcoin community it is easy to see the split between those who outright refuse to give even their name (why?) and those who don't care if their name is plastered on a billboard along with their private bank transactions for 10 years. The difference is a philosophical one as best as I can tell. Some people believe the world is full of good natured people who let too many bad natured people take control of it, and that things need to be balanced. Others feel that any control is bad and chaos is beautiful, because we only live once anyway.
People who support bitcoin, support it because it enables something. What it enables for them is different from person to person, but if what it enables for you is to be able to steal from others more easily, then you will have a large majority of hackers constantly going up against you. If what it enables you is to track thieves easier, then you will have crackers constantly up against you, spreading lies and creating sock puppets.
Frankly speaking, I see no future where anonymity reigns. Then again, no one matters in the end and names and faces are just representations of initiative and intentions. Bitcoin is a tool. We use it to transfer value. GLBSE, Pirate, you name it, these are all intentions of individuals. As a diverse community of Bitcoin, we should always allow questioning of intentions from individuals, and encourage transparency. There is not a single thing I wouldn't share about my own personal life if it served a purpose of betterment. The problem is that the forces of crackers, dishonest businessmen, and chaos lovers is inherently loud in these forums given their greatest weapon is sockpuppetry and simulating public opinion in their favor.
Ask Pirate what he's doing, if he tells you he refuses to explain anything, don't put money into him, warn others in an honest manner what he said to you, nothing more. When news sources ask you your opinion on certain things, tell them the facts. We will only ever be looked at as a "bad" currency so long as the people in the community keep showing emotion where logic should be shown instead. This forum is a comedic venture and it's full of daily drama from Dank trying to convince people that he's trustworthy for a loan while refusing to explain anything, to loganschrye trying to convince people that buying popcorn should be on the first of the to-do list for starting a movie theatre with other people's money. This place is a proving ground for economics, philosophy and basically serves as an experimentation ground for ideas, horribly ill-thought out ones especially. Pirate is part of the experiment. So was Bitcoinica. So was Bitmunchies. So is SilkRoad. Everything is just an experiment and everything here is new. We're all part of this experiment. It's currently high risk just to be involved in something this new as protocols, adoption and value can change at any moment. That said, the forums are not Bitcoin. Everyone knows this. Real bitcoin business and movements happen outside the forums. The very reason it is the busiest network of bitcoiners is directly due to its nurturing moderation in favor of anonymity, deniability, etc.
I'm not convinced that's a good policy, but the best I can say is-- if you don't like it, start another one.
P.S. Sorry for the rant.
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If anyone decides to sue me, I have evidence that not only did Pirate not lose anything because of Team Ponzi, but he may have actually gained more investment. This closure was entirely because of the rise in price along with the lowering of the interest rates increasing the amount of withdrawals.
Madoff was also never actually caught running a ponzi, despite the almost-irrefutable evidence against him. His ponzi collapsed entirely because of the economic downturn.
It really sucks that we warned all these people and didn't save anybody.
If Pirate actually is running a ponzi, I'm sure the lynch mob community here will find a way to make him walk the plank. As for the future, I think I'll look into the Bitcoin Magazine doing a risk assessment of the monthly GLBSE scams. I wonder if it'd be legal in the UK to even -mention- them in comparison without being shut down for "promoting" them. |
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Bitcoin Forum > Economy > Economics > Speculation Are we speculating that his wife left him? |
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A while back my girlfriend and I met Roger Ver and his girlfriend at the time, here in Seoul for dinner. While Roger was teaching me some things about economics, both my girlfriend and Roger's were talking about how they didn't understand how we could spend all of dinner talking about Bitcoin. In their defense, they love bitcoin too, just don't have a passion for the technical parts of it. Surprise, surprise. Girls don't want to talk about nerdy stuff. |
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Are you related to Vince?
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Still waiting on the list of conditions. More FUD isn't going to get me to answer anything that is inherently none of anyone else's business. Also, try asking "please". Hmm, that would be nice. Having the country name before "Staff", so you can read "Korea Staff" or "Spain Staff" etc. I would pledge a few coins for this feature if anyone else is interested.
Me too. Go start a thread about it. Ask theymos to remove the Staff title and leave only the Moderator title on the forums on which it should be visible. He removed my Staff title. Now I'm only a Hero Member outside the Newbies and Portuguese boards. If not for more at least to avoid most of this type of threads. Did you ask him to remove it or did he just remove it? |
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Still waiting on the list of conditions. The burden of proof for accusations is on the accuser. I have yet to see anything warranting a response as none of the speculative claims are legitimate and only reflect how little the accusers actually know. As for other members, FUD isn't going to get me to answer anything that is inherently none of anyone else's business. Also, try asking "please" if there is something you want to know. Hmm, that would be nice. Having the country name before "Staff", so you can read "Korea Staff" or "Spain Staff" etc. I would pledge a few coins for this feature if anyone else is interested.
Me too. Go start a thread about it. |
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If once all the dust settles it turns out that MNW has done no wrong in this whole fubared mess I'll be the first to offer a public apology.
Okay. Can you make a list here for conditions of "no wrong" having been done so that I can know if it's even worth my time responding to you? It seems you've already made up your mind and are only interested in the ad hominem is all. It would be useful to change the "Staff" title to something like "Subforum Moderator". This has confused me before when subforum janitors go on power trips in other forums.
I am totally for this. I would even go one step beyond that and have a Korean title so that only Koreans would even care to know my involvement and everyone else would just assume me a regular member. ^_^ |
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It is my impression that every time bitcoin is mentioned on Slashdot, it receives a lot of negative comments.
This surprises me a little, as when there's political issues presented, there are usually a lot of insightful and interesting comments, and a lot of them is kind of libertarian.
So not sure about the hostile attitude towards bitcoin from the slashdot community.
Anyone got a theory about it ?
I told a senior Linux system administrator at my work about Bitcoin (thinking he would be really interested in it), but he was actually really turned off by it. I think in order to for someone to be interested in Bitcoin and not be repelled by it, they have to have some kind of economic understanding of the potential, and they have to be a bit more open minded than most. It is not just a technical understanding that is necessary, that's for sure. If you don't have the economic understanding of Bitcoin's potential, it will just seem like another scheme. I see a lot of people dismiss things immediately when they are told about it, and don't even bother to check it up. Personally I'm always open minded and tries to learn about new things when I hear about it. Not bitcoin related, but in life I have done some experiences, and I often have some tips for people that I know are good tips, but very often, people do not even listen, but just continue on in their miserable ways. Some people even prefer to use their ineffective methods of solving things, when they are presented with more efficient ways of doing something. So I realized, it's not for me to try to convince or try to better the lifes of others, I tell people about something once. And if they don't react to it, I won't push it on them. I've seen lots of this in real life where people freeze up at opportunities. They need things dictated to them. They need habits. Everyone would be using Bitcoin in 10 years if we kept at this rate of adoption, so I guess we should just start building for the future and using it now. |
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I originally heard about bitcoin from slashdot, so it doesn't piss off everyone. When you say slashdot effect are you talking about the number of hits to your website from slashdot? thanks.
In old days, various websites regularly went down once mentioned on front page of slashdot.org due rather significant and sudden increase of visitors/hits. This was called "slashdot effect" i.e. many links on slashdot being dead because the websites referred could not handle the load. (probably because poorly configured apache on weak servers when handling explosive load). perhaps better explanation is here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slashdot_effect (I did not read it) I remember on ZDTV (back when it existed) on the Screen Savers with Leo Laporte, he would frequently tell callers that they would add an address to the show notes and email a copy to them because if they mentioned it on the air, the site would probably go down. Hehe. Good old days. |
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A few hours ago I requested to have coins sent to my bitcoin address. After depositing funds i recieved an email with a Mt Gox coupon. I did not want a coupon i wanted them sent to my address. I emailed support with no reply. I tried calling customer service and went to voicemail. I even tried calling trustcash and they didnt even know what i was talking about. If a bitinstant representative reads this can you please reply with help. Thank You
Problems like these happen once in a while. Hang in there, I'm sure Charlie will get ahold of you. There are plenty of threads like yours and Charlie usually flies in and saves the day. Cue bigpiggy in 3...2.... |
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@Topic:
we asked Max Keiser what he meant during an interview with him this week. We'll publish the results in issue #4 (October) of the Bitcoin Magazine.
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Oh hey, that's a much better link. I was searching for "jered kenna" and just picked the top results. @OP: Jered Kenna lives at 20mission and he is -easily- reached by phone. Most of the people in the bitcoin community who run businesses and who are in the SF area could go knock on his bedroom doorway and just say "Hey, this dude on the internet wants you to pay his friend.", but I bet it's better to send an email to info@tradehill.com. |
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Assuming it survives making it illegal, the government would then be pointless & powerless.
Please don't tell me you meant this as you wrote it. |
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I remind you that I'm not asking anyone to pay my friend anything without evidence; I'm asking people for help to contact Jered so that evidence can be given to him.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=73686.0It appears that jered kenna has stolen my 100 bitcoins that I had in my account at his company tradehill. I would appreciate any info there is on this guy. He seems to be less than honarble! His lack of response leaves me no choice but to assume this. I think everyone involved in the bit coin world should know this about him.
\ You're not the first to come here for the same purpose. I would like everyone to know that Jered Kenna of trade hill has trasfered the bit coins in my trade hill account to my new account. I kind of owe him an apology. I really thought he was scamming me, and posted it on here. He's a stand up guy!
And people have all been paid out who have asked as far as I can tell. See this thread as well https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=73579.0And this one: Have you tried contacting him at info@tradehill.com? He's processing payouts through there fairly quickly. |
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