A more common outcome in nature is that once the aroma wafts around a bit, various of the more powerful class of scavengers drops by and gobbles down what's left while there is still a fair amount of nutritional value left in the corpse.  One could argue that we are starting to see that (in Jon Corzine as an example...)

It does seem to me that it would be a service to the community if there were a tag which indicated:

  "Cost people significant money due to negligence (or possibly worse.)"

That way it would be a no-brainier to pin useful tags on people like the three Intersango bozos among many others.  And do so in a timely enough manner to warn other community members.

I had you pegged for Atlas on the very first post of yours I happened across.  This one lend support to that supposition in my mind.

I've had at least three Linux boxen which would do this after between several months and several years of uptime (using the software raid implementation which RedRat includes in their installer.)  Happily I rarely get/got corruption which the journal cannot fix up.  And it induced me to be religious about remote access (the machines usually being so hosed that they required a power-cycle.)

Since I don't use software raid (on Linux) very often and my non-raid or hardware raid boxes never display this issue, I'm very inclined to fault the memory device drivers due to the laws or probability (if not the system logs...)

So they say.  I didn't run the (purported) escrow so I cannot know for sure.


Not in escrow is working as designed.  If it is, the money is taken which is quite different from 'giving it.'


This is probably true, but it is certainly possible that Matthew might have thought he knew something.  One interesting thing about the Pirate is that he seemed to have the same power that that old guy in the star wars movie had to influence the thought patterns of the weak minded.

It would also have been a shrewd move on Pirateat40's part to go ahead and pay some escrows for Matthew to get his scam/prank rocking as a diversion.  That's a long-shot hypothesis however and I don't put much stock in it (though things seem to have played out that way and some people did get burnt by the influence it had on the bond discounts...unbelievably to me...)  A contra-argument to this hypothesis is that there would be little reason why Pirateat40 would give a flying fuck about the bond discounts, attention, or much else associated with his Ponzi.  It was all wrapped up weeks ago from his perspective.

I base my speculation almost completely on my own theory of the value of such a solution (I think.)

Associated factors include

 - the likelihood of failure or supplantation of the solution.
 - the possible reactions (namely corp/gov) to the solution.
 - the potential trajectories of Bitcoin which could provoke failure or success.
 - the potential trajectories of fiat currency solutions which could provoke failure or success.

Like most of my speculative adventures, I'm not anticipating success for years (if at all) so I don't pay much attention to the routine things which pop up (e.g., thefts, scams, tv shows, etc.)  At least not for the purpose of modulating the magnitude of my speculative investment.  Some of them do lend (or reduce) strength the the various hypothesis I hold about factors effecting the chances of a particular outcome.  And a lot of these routine things are fairly amusing.

---

A completely unrelated factor in my interest in Bitcoin is political.  It is a good way to actively demonstrate my rejection of the USD, for instance.

I initially held that opinion to some extent, but some here have made some pretty compelling arguments that his initial actions seem to indicate that he started out with some hope of winning the bet.  The strongest of these is that he did some of the bets under escrow and what he lost here seems to be a larger amount of money than one would suspect if he were just trying to pull a prank.

If the escrow assertions are proven, it does seem to me that in Matthew's twisted mind he had some initial plans which shifted as the situation on the ground evolved.

I do wonder if in Matthew's position as the editor of that magazine he ever had any contact with Pirateat40 and thus may have thought he had some info that most people did not?

In point of fact, anyone who was planning to work some sort of a scam would probably be demonstrating as much righteous indignation about Matthew's thing (and others) as they could muster so as to develop a good reputation with the potential marks reading the forum.  The people publish unpopular counter-points are probably among the most trustworthy when it comes to their propensity to do the right thing in various kinds of transactions.

That said, I personally trust no-one any more than I have to and always look for other ways to develop confidence, though that's not saying much since I do basically zero economic activity in the network at this time.  Back when I did, however, I was very careful to use 'trust' only minimally.  My rule of thumb is to do even less with Bitcoin than what I would be willing to do with cash...and I've only been parted from the amount of Bitcoin which I completely expected to be.

For some reason I had developed a negative sense about you early on Loup, but I don't remember quite why.  In any event I've developed a respect for your work of the last few months at least and look forward to it.  This one is solid gold in my book...though it would surprise me very little if I were about the only one.

I left what I thought to be the most interesting part in the quoted text above.  I believe that it would be better for the Bitcoin project generally if more people take a more realistic view of the solution, warts and all.  The solution is, to me, a fascinating start and has the potential to be quite a powerful development as humanity marches forward.  But at this point your description is pretty accurate.  The more starry-eyed the community, the more fertile the ground for 'bad shit' to germinate and grow to maturity.

Lamentably true.  I may have to take back my defense.  He could, I suppose try to argue that that was just to get people trusting him, but I don't think I'd be buying it.  That would ad up to a fair amount of money just to 'help the community learn a lesson.'  And a lesson which most of us don't need much help learning anyway.

Just hit the preview button.  8000+ posts and you've not figured that out?  Waddaya got...a hole in your head?

That's pretty man of you...considering you had no choice...

Thanks Dust, RoloTonyBrownTown, and Themos, for demonstrating how to do bets in Bitcoin-land if betting on this and that is your thing.

I dunno.  He came back from his scam-ish 'bitmole' days to become forum staff.  I think I've only followed this forum for 16 months or so, so it didn't take any longer than that.  Matthew seems to be sort of one of those 'come-back kid' types in Bitcoin-land.  I'm not ready to count him out just yet...and neither closer nor farther away from having any dealings with him.  Maybe if he brings back the 'Bitcoin Better Business Bureau' it could drag him out of the hole he dug :^)

This is a fairly solid post with some convincing research.  You've managed to sway my possition more than is typical.  It would be interesting to see if Matthew has any responses to these statements at this point and if so, what they would be.  If his goal really was to 'educate' the community, this would be a good chance to do so...and probably a better use of time than slitting his wrists.

I have to admit that I was wrong.  About several things:

 - nobody would put actual money on such a thing

 - conspirosphere.tk seems like a pretty together sort of person.

My personal belief is that there is probably a 20% chance that Matthew would have exploited things for personal gain if he had the opportunity and about a 1% chance that he ever had any hopes of having such an opportunity.  But I have nothing but gut feelings to rely on here and these are worth very little.  I was wholly chumped by Bruce back in the day in terms of gauging his disposition though I never lost any money to him and the MyBitcoin scam nor was I even close due to how I conceptualize Bitcoin itself and handle my own financial matters.

And I'll grant that a negative outcome was at least not a multiplicative function of two very very low probability events (that is, Pirate paying and Matt paying.)  This was my mistake when I formulated the text.

I do hold, however, that the only reason to give Pirate any of your money in the first place would be in hopes of being in early enough in his Ponzi to come out in the black.  And if that didn't pay off, the appropriate response would be to consider it a sunk cost and not try to remedy the situation by getting involved with Matt's fairly obvious scam.  And to hope to capitalize on things by jumping into the fray by picking up discounted Pirate dept after the fact would be silly beyond belief.

Of course it make sense to take Matt's bet with the intent if reneging in the unlikely event that it turns against one.  Makes sense in a numbers kind of way but not ethically (to me.)  Anyone who entered any of this idiocy with that intent deserves scorn...and loss of money if possible.

I don't think that anyone could be _that_ dense and would actually put their own money on such a chain of unlikely outcomes.  But I could be wrong.  Anyone want to step up and claim this mode of harm?

No one but Matthew knows what his motivations where at what points in time.

As for why we are here, we each have our own motivations.  I, for instance, am perfectly happy to joke about damn near anything and money is a particularly rich hunting ground when it comes to seeking entertainment value.

In defense of Mathew:

All but the most retarded here assumed near zero chance the Pirate would legitimately pay up.  That includes Mathew.  So there was no way that Mathew was going to make any money on this and equally importantly, his 'victims' were not going to lose anything (unless they were such dolts that they planned on him paying and took out a second mortgage on their home or whatever.)

Ergo, his game although silly and mostly (but not totally) pointless does not approach the magnitude of the more typical scams and was not effected for the purpose of transferring money from other people's pocket to his own.

He also gave us a funny list of forum users who were chumped whenever we need a chuckle.  And the list has some surprising names on it.  So I guess some people lost a little bit of their dignity, but I still argue that it's much worse to lose actual money as well.

I'm actually a bit surprised that you've not had these consultations proactively.  This train-wreck was fairly anticipatable it seem to me.

Relatedly, one of the old timers who has some credibility asked Mathew earlier something like "you still don't see the danger do you?"  to which Mathew responded negative.  I guess he does now.