Well guess who.

That's nothing. I'm serious, when will you people finally get it? Place more and I'll double, want more and I'll double again with a better third party. Increase the time limit and I will double yet again.

But! The Ponzi is so damn unrealistic that THIS:


happens! REALITY CHECK, PEOPLE!

This is actually the core of the problem. It's such a nonsensical game bond that financial instruments stop working. The speculation forum cannot put this nonsense into place, because the unrealistic yields break our tools!

rjk, I firmly believe that this guy is a scammer! Are you seriously saying that I should shut up and let him steal everyone's money?

Also, betting with someone about when he himself will choose to default? Bad idea in general, though it can work on Ponzis with reasonable boundary conditions.

I can do four-digit BTC, against you, right here. We need to get some mod we both respect to hold the funds, and that's that. Betting on this does not scare me at all, I'm not just trolling for the heck of it. On the contrary, this is exactly what I want.

Give me financial instruments to go against these types of operations, and I will crush them with precision every time and make a killing off it. The only thing is that time-scales must be conservative now because it is public, and thus Pirateat40 can just play as some other account.

What, look at the odds of that thing!

jk, that was me just now. I don't know whether I want to trust the site with more than 250 BTC, it's some anonymous whatever. But odds are quite green for now.

In fact, my total bets on the topic are already four-digit BTC. I'm fucking certain, and I mean it.

It's pretty simple... "BS&T will be known as a scam until *some time limit*."

Most people only offer ridiculously short time-limits. Put one well into next year, and you're far beyond any expected Ponzi run-time. I can't yet tell how much I can put up exactly, but I sure as hell want to put up some money to this!

(What's the point with the USD hedge, this is the Bitcoin forum. Let's just bet in Bitcoins, it's not like they go bad like fiat.)

This reminds me, the odds on betsofbitco.in were pro-Pirate. Brb, changing that.

Of course I'll put up! This is a bet, one which I will win. We need a trusted third party, of course, in the case I am a scammer.

I'm totally aware of what you are offering and I mean exactly that by heaven, because this is a bet with the best odds ever.

This is heaven. I love you. Whose money can I take? How much BTC pay-back security do I have to sign with?

This is gonna be awesome. You're paying me for white-knighting.

If HE traded with investor funds, he won't get them back for you. If he really was so stupid as to do that, he is forced to wish for luck in the Bitcoin price.

But Pirateat40 is not stupid. He just sucks at a trader, because he used all his training for running Ponzi schemes. For all I can tell, he is perfectly educated on that, and follows every single rule of running a professional Ponzi.

I have been joining this forum for two things: enthusiasm for Bitcoin and currency trading. For most of the time Bitcoin existed, it has an insanely volatile market which kept me tied on it a lot.

You all know I have been accusing Pirateat40 of running a Ponzi scheme for some time now. The reasons for that are manyfold, and discussed in other threads, but there's also the fact that my indicators never showed any footprints of him doing anything besides maybe a rare sell on Gox. No volume bloat to sell for millions, no indicators for extra demand, just silence. But this is not much of an argument for the average forum user.

There have been numerous theories on what Pirateat40 does. He had already encouraged posts that involve currency trading, namely dark pool sales to big investors. He had been leading people on to use this to fabricate explanations how his business might work, but never gave anything explicit before.

I'd like to emphasize here that even aside the trading techniques, the theories all make no sense. Arbitrage to what market? Volume is just insufficient. Arbitrage to dark pools? He would move the price when buying back, I don't see that. Plus he would be effectively shorting Bitcoin on every trade, putting his customers' funds at a heavy risk.

He was always so smart to not put too much emphasis on any theory. Until today.



Now, for those of you not trading currencies, I will have a very hard time explaining just how stupid this is. Some points are:

• Even with his insanely close 2% limit, I can fulfill the feat immediately, using average price for a 135k USD buy on the order book of Mt. Gox! If the person would care for peak price (why care?) then it takes a moment longer, boo-hoo. The exercise is trivial, everyone can do it -- unless the order book is too shallow, but then Pirateat will have the identical problem buying back.
• Why care about a short-term relative movement? His investors are supposedly moving very large sums, the whole type of problem is irrelevant to these people since their large movements will affect mid-term price anyway. Pirateat40 himself should notice that when buying back.
• 2% per trade? This constraint is tiny against the weekly returns to investors. Remember that these percentages do not compare to weekly returns, it's the percentage for an individual trade. His volume is roughly frequency of trades times something on the order of Pirateat40's deposits. The frequency required to require such tight limits would mean that Pirateat40 sells so many Bitcoins, the price would have to be blown into the heavens by him buying back.
• His time limits are super long! Anyone trading BTCUSD should know that most of the volume only changes a small fraction of the order book, as it refills to dampen movements. This has been especially strong in the last months. Three days is plenty, especially after I've shown it can be done in roughly a second using the order book at the time.

What does this mean?

• Pirateat40 pretty much implied he is trading BTCUSD with his "investors'" money in large volumes.
• He has not the faintest clue what he is talking about. There is no way he can safely operate such sums. He didn't even correct his mistake, even after it was pointed out twice!
• This is not a mistake due to sloppiness. Traders must be hardcore-trained to double-check their estimates, or else they do way too many mistakes. Any educated trader should be able to confirm that this guy is incompetent.

Now go and talk to a BTCUSD trader of your choice, so he can confirm without second thoughts that Pirateat40 is a scammer and Ponzi scheme operator, and this is the mistake that ends it.

Basically, I'm asking the mods to find a competent BTCUSD trader, do some talk of the kind and then remove Pirateat40, all his pass-throughs, and all the other crap he has been shitting onto the Bitcointalk.org forums. If that is not possible, I expect that in due time people will use their heads, the bonds will crash and the Ponzi end. Either way, I really can't think of any way to talk or flame out of this one.

Edit: I expect flame- and derailing-attacks on this, so I may have to edit points into this post.

We can now measure the IQ of the Bitcoin forum with the speed at which the bonds crash.

You are insane. Did you not know I trade in my free time, for years, effectively, Bitcoin since the moment I registered?

Dude, you are so clueless what you are talking about, the Bitcoinica flash crash sheep would have beaten you. There's no way in hell you can keep your profit safe moving it anywhere, or have done much of that in the first place, apart from maybe blindly selling other peoples' money.

The whole calculation is crap from the start. I couldn't use it as an attack vector because you yourself never directly admitted to the theory, only made "lol close" troll posts.

But this one? Post as much as you want, I'll not shut up on it until more traders come up. How can you possibly talk your way out? One can say a lot of stupid things about me, but trying to tell me I don't understand trading is the worst card you can ever play.

Good luck talking yourself out of this one. To me, this is not another 99.9% hint. This is proof. Fuck it, not once in a thousand would I talk this bullshit, and you basically claim to be A LOT better than me.

danieldaniel: Seriously, ask a trader.

You could wake me at 4am and play Rick roll for 10 hours nonstop and then hang me upside down to post, there's no way in hell I'd make that mistake.

It's the ESSENCE of his business. It's supposed to be what he is doing, the source of all the funds! This post is a killer.

Pirateat40 has made a post that implies he works on currency trading.

His post demonstrates he is completely clueless about currency trading.

One: You can do that easily in the active order book.
Two: Any trader doing BTCUSD knows the order book only shows a fraction of short-time volume.
Three: The 2% limit cannot yield 7% for his customers.

This is it. This is not just faint evidence. This is an absolutely enormous undeniable fuckup. Pirateat40 implies to be currency trading, but there is no way in hell a currency trader would make that post.

I'm doing a writeup. Game over, don't even try. Yes, I do currency trading, and you should see the other traders' faces when they read this.

LOL

That was priceless. Uhm, using average, yup. Pirateat, this is trivial.

Guys. This was a major screwup. A MAJOR SCREWEUP. He's fucked. Game over. There is ABSOLUTELY NO WAY PIRATEAT CAN EXPLAIN THIS FUCKUP!

Spread this post, we won!

A trader doing business at this profit would never ever make such a large mistake in guessing trade volumes. He's off by FAR. Actual volumes ALWAYS and MASSIVELY overdo the order book volume.

Mh. You'll get a mild apology if you pay the insurance when Pirate did default and your investors still stand. It'll still have looked pretty insane.

I honestly can't tell whether you're evil or just doing something crazy. But if you want to insure, people need a trail to you. One that can't be faked easily, so they know where the door to knock on is. Give a personal profile, something credible and consistent.

Provide that, and I'll keep it at "you're crazy to insure a Ponzi". But if you don't, then there's really no reason to get angry about me suspecting you. I'm not a magician, there's only this thread I can read and a few links from it, and these look like you could just run.

It's also strange that you don't try to persuade me to make yourself more credible. As if you are not talking to me to settle a misunderstanding, but just making a show of things and labeling me an enemy from the start. That might be the biggest red flag of them all, because who are the people who never make friends with anti-scam maniacs?

Moreover! An insurance company that doesn't like risk discussions? On something that concerns them directly, namely BS&T? That's the wrong way around! The insurance should be interested in the insured object being as sound as possible! But this thread calls to stop the accusations.

This is just so screwed up, yes, I don't really see an apology in order. It's like running into a bank with an AK-47 and then accusing people of misunderstanding how peaceful you are. Either that or you're just one more in the scamming troops. How should I know?

Oh, what happened? Someone placed money against it?

That's strange, wouldn't Pirateat yield more? Anyway, time to make an account there!

Edit: tx underway. Bring it on, I'll face more than just even odds until I can't trust the site with more! Sadly, with a young anonymous site it's not that much but people are unlikely to bet anyway.

If more people get a trustworthy third party for this bet, I can raise more!

Occam's Razor is to find the simplest solution that actually fits the case.

The other examples all do not fit the case at all. You don't need other peoples' money to sell anything. Even illegal activity knows exponential growth, Pirateat40 would not need an ever-increasing amount of funds if he can grow his own exponentially. Money laundering has been discussed in great detail, turns out the investors hardly ever help in movement of funds, so it's again pointless.

The difference in how well it matches is gigantic. The Ponzi matches perfectly, and the other explanations usually fail at the first comparison to what's actually happening.

I'm not saying Occam's Razor is always right. I'm not basing my accusation solely on this either. But Occam's Razor clearly yields that BS&T is a HYIP Ponzi. If it doesn't seem to, there has been some error in its application.

@imsaguy, yes. Your post is reasonable.

But what are you responding to? Of course Pirateat uses the bonds and large accounts to keep down his work-load. So what? Every large Ponzi-operator does that. He need not even know anyone personally for it.

Oh, and:

"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function" -Albert A. Bartlett



Wait a second. imsaguy, I was just suspecting this, and dropped it with "nah" until that last post. If you are actually not in on the heist, we need a talk. I was convinced you are a sock puppet, but that post is... somewhat credible. If you have been somehow psycho-tricked into Pirateat40's side, we've been doing something wrong here. Well, I have, because I never tried to convince you with my answers to you, since I assumed you were well aware what's going on.

Yea @hazek. Look at the quote inception, and it still makes no sense. Occam's Razor is on a killing spree.

Serge, try to take Pirateat's place. You're making this excessively complicated by trying to look from the outside. If he ever needs investors for such operations, then only for a short time. The actual BS&T wants exponentially more investors, even though its own assets should grow exponentially!

Once you're done with a 5-page explanation as to why it could work in theory, I'll just say it again: hedging against risk is much cheaper than 7% a week. And the whole card-house comes tumbling down, no matter how neat its theories.

Occam's Razor is about avoiding excessively complicated explanations if a simple and fitting one is at hand.

The explanations offered by the pro-BS&T statements are a convoluted mess, make no sense, and are extremely diverse: nobody has the same opinion.

However, there is exactly one simple explanation that works and is well-documented: a HYIP Ponzi.

Occam's razor picks the Ponzi. Anyone can check that by making a simple map of arguments or a model of what BS&T supposedly does.

When a scammer asks you to leave his thread, ignore it.

We're not here to be nice. People are convinced the topic in question here is stealing peoples' money, and trying to stop that discussion by telling people to go away is absurd.

I, for one, am ready to face the consequences if I'm wrong. I wouldn't be doing this if I had any doubt I'm seeing a textbook HYIP scam.

Of course I posted it because of the extreme analogies to "Bitcoin Savings and Trust". This is very relevant to Bitcoin right now.