Which is why you must keep the ponzi+ considerably smaller than each original ponzi. The ponzi operator has an incentive to maximize his returns, keeping it running so long that he loses 90% of his potential profits by paying almost all of his deposits as coupons doesnt make much sense.  The investors in the ponzi have no influence over how long it runs.


Investors money would just sit there and slowly be depleted for as long as the ponzi runs to pay for coupons. It wouldnt earn interest obviously, but it would assure depositors  and would earn investors a lot more than any other credible investment if/when the ponzi collapses.


Thats why you have to limit its size to a small fraction of the original ponzi. Just dont issue more than x% bonds as the original ponzi. I suggested 10%.


You would need only as much capital as the amount of bonds your are selling to guarantee the buyback at face value if you lose your bet. The sale of the bonds themselves generates the rest, just like in the original ponzi.  In fact you would even need less if you assume you are betting against a rational ponzi operator, since he wouldnt pay out 100% of his bond sales back as coupons, but only a small fraction of it.

Thats why Im posting for comments. Since we would pay higher coupons and at least some guaranteed % of the principal, you could look at it as an insurance policy, no ?

Like many others, Im getting tired of all those ponzi's and I want to create a way to bet against them. Betsofbitcoin or even escrowed bets arent that useful, because believers (or gamblers) will think they make more by buying in to the ponzi than by betting against nay sayers. So I came up with this idea instead:

First, we set up an asset, lets call it ponzi plus,  where the naysayers can buy shares to gather working capital.  The funds raised will be used as collateral to issue bonds that will mimic other obvious ponzi's. For instance, lets say we detect a new blatantly obvious ponzi like "W Investment Technology Research Center" (link). A motion would be raised among Ponzi Plus shareholders to bet against it, and when it passes we create a new bond, "WITR+" which will pay out the same coupons as the original ponzi, plus a bonus for as long as the ponzi runs. I would even suggest we guarantee a minimum buy back price at 10% or so of face value. Then we promote this +bond among believers of the original ponzi as a lightly less disastrous alternative to the original ponzi. Once the original ponzi collapses, we stop coupon payments on our +bond too and pay out the rest as dividends to shareholders of ponzi plus.

Some pitfalls:

- One might argue we would be running a ponzi ourselves,  but I think not, since our dividends would be assured by our working capital, and not be dependent on  new investors. We would also have to provision a failsafe in case by some miracle the ponzi does not collapse or does not collapse fast enough, that we can issue a buy back before we run out of funds. This would cost the ponzi plus shareholders obviously as we would have lost the bet, but there would be nothing misleading about our offering.

- The ponzi operator could buy our bonds and use our coupon payments to pay his investors. To avoid this, we would have to make sure we issue significantly less bonds than the original ponzi operator, probably on the order of 10% or so.

Other thoughts or comments ?

Oh.. this could be good. Are you interested in doing an escrowed bet on your failure? Obviously the bet would have to be smaller than your ponzi, which isnt very big yet, but Im certainly game.

"Warning: Moderators do not remove likely scams" it says on top of this forum section. I can understand why, but I wonder if 100% certain scams like this shouldnt be removed.

Chaang, you should really stop pointing fingers and accusing everyone else of lying you big fat hypocrite. You sold fresh PPT bonds after Pirate defaulted:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=82573.msg1173216#msg1173216

Another win for the "trolls"

You were supposedly filing charges against Pirate, that didnt stop you from selling (and even creating fresh) pirate debt.

like your ppt?

Says the goat who claims he cant even afford a lawyer:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=108282.msg1177858#msg1177858
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=108282.msg1180896#msg1180896

I will wait in queue to lend you 1000s of BTCs for a multi year farming project that doesnt even produce a return in BTC, so you are shorting them.

Last time I checked, Pirate didnt have a registered company, didnt accept credit cards, didnt have a parole officer looking over his shoulder,  nor have I seen any shred of evidence of any real business activity. Even if there were, there would be no sensible explanation for why he would borrow at >3000% APR.  Pirate and BFL have nothing in common.

If you want to shout down scams on this forum, there are plenty to chose from, this isnt one.

I havent "been had" yet.  A dying breed in bitcoin land.
Common sense goes a long way.  It doesnt take genius to tell 5% per week "investment opportunities" are ponzi's, nor does it take a lot of faith to see BFL is actually producing state of the art products, making a shitload of money legitimately. There is also nothing unbelievable about them being able to produce asics, there are now 4 other companies claiming the same capability in roughly the same time frame and they all have far less resources and far less proven trackrecord.

Is it possible Sonny is running another con? Sure, but he would be an idiot to run off with your money with after already having spent 2 years in jail, a criminal record and with his name out in the open. Especially when he can make a crapload of money by just running his business as he has been doing.

TL'DR  It makes absolutely no sense to assume this is a scam.

Im gonna assume this story is mostly correct, and just wish to congratulate Sonny on his bounce-back.

Apologies for responding in English, I understand, but really cant write german.

Think it through; can you imagine smart990 actually had a secret way to generate >3000%  profits per  year and just sold this magic scheme? Then another known scammer buys it, and resells it to some russian? What would you do if you had a way to generate >3000% profit per year?

So of course its a ponzi. More specifically, its a clone of stock generation:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stock_Generation

(I cant find a german page describing it)

Its the exact same concept. The bad news: contrary to normal ponzi's, this might actually be legal, at least if they return the funds the in the "spar buche" and honor the minimum guaranteed buy back clauses for the other "projects". In that case, most investors would "only" lose 75-90% of their money.

The more I read, the more it seems usagi is smoking the same stuff Diablo is smoking. Neither can distinguish between revenue and profit, both misrepresent (to use a mild term) their numbers, both seem to think obsi's ponzi's are a sound investment. This cant end well.

The only point of the OP also seems to be to boost share price, and so far there is no evidence of any buyback; if EskimoBob numbers are right, its rather the contrary.

Pump and dump?

If you didnt overwrite that space, there is a very good chance of being able to recover it. Use testdisk:
http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk

I would also advice you to make a copy of the drive first. Not a regular copy of course, but using dd under linux so you copy "every bit" of the drive.
Boot linux and run

dd if=/dev/yourusbdrive of=backup.dat

That way if you mess up the undelete, nothing is lost and you can try again.

This isnt true for all their "projects". Read the first post, their so called bankbook was guaranteed. Most of the other projects have buyback guarantees. Of course, at much lower than face value so investors can still expect to lose most of their investment, but they should get  back more than zero.

Wow. Didnt see this coming. I guess this is the same guy:

http://ca.findacase.com/research/wfrmDocViewer.aspx/xq/fac.20100915_0004129.CCA.htm/qx

I dont think this proves BFL is a scam, particularly given their current track record of actually delivering (albeit late) state of the art miners,  but it sure would make me think twice about preordering their asics.

Id be more impressed if he was honest and open about the amount of money he is owed and how much of it is in default or deemed at risk.
Patrick rated himself AAA (later removed), the same credit rating Apple or the Swiss government has, but somehow I think he is not quite that solvent.

Current investors, particularly the ones waiting for their deposits to be returned should have the right to be able to make a judgment of starfish solvency, and thus of the value of their credit,  thats based on facts and numbers, and not just the number of "I love patrick" posts.

 
What makes you say that?