Did you not read the OP of the bet, or the many discussions with him afterwards? He plainly stated that he was sick of "Team Ponzi" spreading FUD and attacking these HYIP businesses as ponzis without proof. The whole bet was "if you believe they are a ponzi, put your money where your mouth is," and at first, many of those who "bet" did so not to make a quick buck, but to make their point, which was that they believed BTCS&T was a scam. Maybe we were reading or understanding something differently *shrug*

To clarify, when I say evil, I meant intentionally trying to steal or cause harm. I fully believe his initial bet was real. What I meant was that I believe when things went south for him, he panicked, and tried to do something stupid to get out of it. JoelKatz, I agree with you completely. This was at the least an act of cowardice. I just can't see Matthew being so bad (evil) that we would set up a scam like this from the start. What dissipate said +1
And no, I'm anti-religious.

No. It wasn't. Not at first. If it's a trollish prank, it has cost Matthew hundreds in escrowed bets. Since you obviously weren't there, please stop commenting as if you know everything. Judging by the deep brown color of your ignore, I doubt anyone is listening anyway.


WTF?

1) He is an adult, I think in mid to late 20's, living on his own in Korea
2) He owns and is involved in many businesses, and has worked at a few high profile, non-bitcoin related businesses. It wouldn't be surprising for him to have $100,000 worth.
3) True. Although in this case his point was "Why can't you leave pirate alone?!"  
4) There was AT LEAST $400 worth of escrow, which Matt lost in the end.

This pretty much solidified for me that YOU HAVE NO FUCKING CLUE WHAT YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT.

Why would he pay out the fractions he is able to? Would it really improve your opinion of him if he paid you 1/1000th of what you bet, assuming all his money is distributed proportionally? To me his money won't matter. Only thing that will is the rest of his actions.
Maybe I'm just biased, but this whole incident looked to me as someone doing something stupid, not evil, even if it hurt people just the same. That's why I don't see a problem with him still being around. He got a massive kick in the pants for what he did, and I guess, for some reason, I still have faith in him. Not trust (aside from trusting he'll do something stupid again), just faith.

And Matthew was one of them, re. original intent of his bet. THAT'S why I have a problem with it.
Also, don't let someone off the hook for punching you in the face just because there are murderers in the Congo.

Can you please explain to me how siding with pirateat40, starting a bet to shut up all the people spreading FUD about ponzi's, and taking attention away from all the real scammers, betters the community? Please?

So far I've only seen two scammer tags thrown out, one for pirateat40, the other for Matthew. Who else is a part of this "everyone?"

Exactly. If the ratings system sucks, someone else can come up with a better one (use eBay ratings or something). If someone wants to borrow but doesn't provide reputable rating sources, they can pay higher interest rates. And if someone doesn't do their research and invests in only one risky person and loses all their money, oh well. It won't affect everyone else.
The well organized website can provide the service of sorting loan applicants based on their risk, assign them an interest rate if it's not done bidding style, make it easy to split your investment across a whole bunch of borrowers within your chosen categories, process and distribute payment receipts, and do collections of defaulted loans if needed.
This forum doesn't come close to any of that.

I wish we didn't even have these "banks." We don't need them. Bitcoins are already safely stored via private keys, so no need for safe vaults, and if you want to invest or earn money from others investing, just make a service like Lendingclub.com and take a percentage from that. If you are going to dump all the risks of your "bank" onto your users, at least let them chose the level of risk they are comfortable with. A bitcoin-based lendingclub will allow people to borrow none if needed, will allow people to invest if they want to, and will be A HECK of a lot more accurate at determining true rates of returns on loans. What we have now (the 2%+ per week) is wish full thinking, hiding behind insolvent banks and stressed out, shady bank operators.

I don't see why Matthew should have to leave or exit or whatever. His reputation is now well established, rightfully labeled, and he will be treated accordingly on this forum. So if he stays, time will pass, people will calm down, forget, or forgive, and he'll just have to rebuild his rep from scratch.

I'm not a CPA, as Micon was hoping for, but I do work in finance and understand banking (somewhat).
Real banks, like Patrick's thing here, are never solvent either. They typically only hold 10% or so on hand, investing the rest elsewhere. Typically, the central bank, although being called "the lender of last resort," never actually does any lending. Banks very often borrow from each other.
So the way Patrick can stay solvent and keep honoring other's withdrawals is by doing what real banks do: borrow that money from someone else (or even use his own), forgo any interest profits (or eat the losses), and hope whoever his money is tied up with will pay in time for him to repay his own loans. If the loans Patrick made are paying a high interest, maybe he can even borrow for a lower rate in the real world somewhere, and still keep some profits. And If he made too many risky loans, and can't repay his own lenders because of them, then he was running a bad bank and should liquidate.
Either way, that's how you run a bank: take the risks yourself instead of taking all the profits and dumping the risk on your customers. Having money to give back depositors, even if you borrow from someone else, will also instill confidence and prevent bank runs.

Um, the people who took on the stupid risks, such as investing into HYIPs, or selling CDS for something as flaky and unpredictable as Matthew's bet, would be the ones "taking the final risk." 0 interest policy and QE means the risk is disbursed among the entire nation's population, either through inflation, or through higher taxes later on. Why should everyone have to pay for the risks they didn't take, just because some numbskulls decided to gamble with their money or sell overly risky CDS products?

I "gambled" that I would not risk anything, and likely not get anything. Knowing what the outcome will be isn't exactly gambling.
No I didn't lose any money. Just time, and my respect for Matthew's trolling skills. For someone with so much imagination and talent, he really disappointed.


You sound like an SA goon. They tend to pick out the stupidest and loudest in the crowd, point fingers, accuse the whole crowd of that behavior, and laugh smugly about their own superiority (see SA vs anime, furry, Bitcoin, etc). I'm fairly certain most people didn't put money into any of the scamy HYIPs here. Pretty sure most people didn't lose any money from betting on Matthew, either. We're not stupid. Just upset when someone else does something stupid. From the looks of it, most people here just lurk. Thanks for trying to look out for the "Bitcoin community," but considering the whole reason Matthew's bet was started in the first place (he was annoyed at how vocal the community was when it was telling stupid members to stop supporting ponzi scams) I think we'll be fine without it.

I was actually thinking about something like a cheap device running Armory in offline mode, which would be great if there was easy to use user interface, easy to understand security features, and good looking packaging, but wasn't sure if I should mention it. Thanks for bringing it up.

I was under the impression that GPUMax was owned and operated solely by pirate, and thus GPUMax = BTCS&T in a way. Is that wrong?

Согласен, но Мат тоже потратил очень много других людей времени. Мы все ожидали как он выкрутится, думая что будет  что то круто, хитро, или хотя бы забавно, а оказалось какая та дуратская шутка которую только он понял. Это как будто он всех пригласил на грандиозный салют, все поменяли планы что бы приехать и посмотреть, а когда приехали, только увидели как он бутылку с молотовским коктелем бросает в верх. Даже когда эта бутылка в конце упала ему на голову, то и то не очень интересно

+1 

People betting against Matthew weren't "gambling." I placed a bet, and I never gamble. They were, as Matthew said, "putting their money where their mouth is" about their belief that pirateat40 and other HYIP's were likely ponzis and scams. Considering what was happening with BTCS&T at the time, the "gambling" here was about as much "gambling" as betting that you can punch a baby in the face an steal it's candy. There were no risks involved, and most of the bets were statements that BTCS&T was nothing but a scam.
It's too bad that Matthew decided to take the other side of that bet.
It was only much later that trolls, who saw a very obvious one-sided bet (pirateat40 had already defaulted), swarmed in and started betting like crazy. Even then, when your odds are 100% to 0% that you will win the bet, that's not exactly gambling any more.

If that's the case, then I think you may have thoroughly misunderstood what happened here. While yes, Matthew is not, and likely can never, sink to the level of that kind of evil, Matt's intent in this bet was to teach those people who were crying "Ponzi" a lesson; to shut them up, because he believed they were hurting these ridiculously-high-interest HYIPs with their FUD, when Matt thought they were legitimate businesses. He actually believed that people crying "Ponzi" were in the wrong, and dared them that, if they believe these businesses are so wrong and such scams, to "put their money where their mouths are." The people who bet (initially) were not those who "already lost good." The bettors were those who wouldn't even think of investing with BTCS&T, and were vocally horrified to see how many others were falling for those scams. Matthew seems to have been defending pirate and HYIPs, so they bet to, I guess, prove their convictions about believing that Pirateat40 was a scammer. They also bet because they thought that Matthew was totally wrong about believing that Pirateat40 was running anything but a scam.
Things only got way worse when those who did lose money on BCTS&T decided to use Matthew's bet as a hedge. Luckily, they were the minorty of the bets apparently. Most of those who bet have not lost any money in any of these scams, and so were not "chasing after more bad money."
I never lost any money to any scams, or crashes, or hacks (luckily). I personally bet because I thought Matthew was wrong to defend Pirate, since I also believed he was running a ponzi. Matthew not paying me anything did not hurt me in any way, but I still think it was a shitty thing for him to do (the whole bet and weaseling out of it the way he did, not the not paying me, since even if he did, I'd have returned the money). ESPECIALLY since he took attention away from both Pirateat40 AND all the other HYIPs out there for three whole weeks, when people should've been putting the pressure on those bastards.

LoupGaroux, you said, quote, "We have serious issues in our little funhouse, and serious bad people stealing serious amounts of money. Pirate, the intersango gango, Zhou Tong, Notorious Relic Dealer Chen, bitscalper and the like should be strung up by their thumbs and ritually abused by angry koalas until they repay the good people they have fleeced."

THEN you said, "Matt just pointed out how stupid we all look chasing after these phantoms"

So, which is it? Should we keep pursuing people like "Pirate, the intersango gango, Zhou Tong, Notorious Relic Dealer Chen, bitscalper and the like," and string them up by their thumbs, or at leask kick them out of the forums and maybe the Bitcoin community?
Or should we, as the intent of Matt's bet stated, shut up, stop screaming Ponzi whenever such obvious scams come up, and stop "chasing after these phantoms?"