Pirate reality A: He is ponzi.
Pirate reality B: He caused this crash by selling btcst holdings, anticipating further crash and then buying back btcst holdings, and returning funds at profit.
Pirate reality C: He simply dissolved btcst and other btc holders sold to cause this crash.

If (further) panic selling occurs: Price will fall to 10 area. If he doesn't return funds within week, then (A) is confirmed and price will actually rise slightly as btcst losers will grudgingly dig into pockets to rebuild some bitcoin savings (gamblers gonna gamble). Counterbalanced by a bit of selling from safe btc players with low/zero btcst exposure who expect lessened btc demand with loss of bitcoin's #1 investment, and general loss of confidence. Price will stay in high singles or low doubles for a bit, then resume rise on heels of overall strength/SR growth/dev stability. If he does return funds, then (C) is likely true, we will see a hesitant rise from general relief that btcst was legitimate, counterbalanced by profit taking.

If price rebounds and ONLY THEN does he begin to return funds then (B) is likely true, and we will see a slight decrease in price as profit taking occurs, counterbalanced by relief that btcst was actually legitimate this whole time. Pirate profits, everyone wins except those who sold into his trap.

If price rebounds from present point (12.5ish), and he doesn't return funds, (A) is confirmed and we see rapid buy-up as btcst losers panic buy and btcst abstainers see that bitcoin is so strong that the dissolution of its #1 investment opportunity isn't enough to cause sustained crash. If he does return full funds, then (C) is true, rapid buy-up occurs for same reasons as above, but counterbalanced by profit taking. If he returns partial funds, then we know (B) is true, and the result is a buy-up with slight profit taking counterbalance.

General problem however, is that if he is legitimate, why stop? Some people have suggested that recent price run-up has made his secret operations unprofitable, but what possible operation benefits from low bitcoin price? I have always held the position that it is just as likely that pirate is running a ponzi as he is running a very profitable money laundering business, positions that would certainly explain his secrecy. However, now that he has stopped, it makes me think it more likely it was just a well orchestrated ponzi, because I cannot think of a reason why he would stop otherwise.

Thoughts?

People think the general public will use bitcoin. Most people cant even understand copy an paste or saving to the network file server and somehow they will understand backing up wallets and recovering transactions. These are the same people who hit print 20 times because their document didn't print.

STOP and look at BTC as a basic computer user would and its overwhelming. One mistake and all you BTC are lost and unrecoverable, it is enough for most to avoid it. The PC as a wallet/bank is also a joke. So many people don't even know their AV has expired YEARS ago and don't install updates because they are to dumb to read the messages about the update on the screen in front of them.

The other choice is to use the system in place now that allows Fraud protections, the recovery of cash through charge backs and FDIC and Europes Deposit Insurance Funds etc.....  

The BTC community is full of techies, crypto folks, programmers and the like. This is why it thrives.
The average joe/jane doesn't get it and doesn't care to becasue he/she is too busy trying to keep his/her house and feed his/her kids..

How many of you would continue if your country made it illegal to create and use BTC and would sieze your assets if you were caught? I bet almost none of you would risk it. I certainly wont.

Note the sarcasm eyes.

The funny thing is:

If he can actually return all his debts next week (and we should know by Monday) price goes down because 200k-500k BTC are back in the hands of investors and the only way they can take from there is being converted back to USD. Maybe not all of them but at least some 10%.
If he defaults/runs off/gets hacked (lol), bitcoin price goes up, because those funds will be held some time before they are dumped on the market by whom ever (probably pirate) some month/years in the future. Meanwhile they are not available on the market for supply. Duped investors may want to restock on BTC and pirate may even try to buy more BTC in order to serve some of his liabilities.

When will I get my coins?
Starting Monday I’ll begin systematically closing and withdrawing accounts as coins are transferred.  I don't expect the entire process to last longer than a week. The moment your account is closed you’ll receive your coins plus any interest accrued up to the hour it was sent.

Me neither. Its just a panic attack.

There is even the chance that the whole world economy "pops" at once before the BTC price. Anyway the banksters have the same expectations of all the BTC bulls here:

From: http://www.golemxiv.co.uk/2012/08/a-waiting-game/ :

"I don’t think the banks will lend in to the real economy because they calculate that such a socially useful strategy gives low returns to them. Should they ‘defect’ from this generous strategy and chose instead the selfish strategy of ‘hoard and wait’ then they could make not just a large return but an epic one. They could emerge as owners of everything people will need in order to rebuild their lives. Water, power, rail, hospitals, you name it.

This is what the banks are waiting for. And our politicians are giving them our money so they can."

Your poll corresponds with only a fairly static trading strategy, dear friend.
I have for example sold and bought many times since 5$. Maybe you should adjust the answering options?

They're measuring wildly different kinds of computation - real number (floating point) calculations for weather simulations, weapons simulations, etc etc (for which "flops" [floating point operations per second] makes sense) vs. endlessly repeated integer-based hashing (for which "flops" has not the slightest relevance).

STATEMENT BANDIED ABOUT IN LOTS OF PLACES (on this forum and elsewhere): "No way can anyone ever mount a 51% attack, because the Bitcoin network is far more powerful than all the world's supercomputers combined." (or variant wordings with greater or lesser degrees of hyperbole)

TRANSLATION TO REALITY: It's a few thousand graphics cards. A mere footnote in the budget of any bank or government that wanted to outpace it. We do need to worry about how to stand up to 51% attacks, 90% attacks... the full gamut. Let's start thinking and worrying now!

(My own thoughts: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Proof_of_blockchain_fair_sharing. And yes, I'll say it before anyone else does, these thoughts are still hopelessly unfinished - barely more than started - but I've published them in unfinished form because I want to get as many people thinking about this as possible!)

I don't get it. What would he be successful in?

LOL, Adam are you now really hoping that pirate will crash the price for you, so that you can buy back below your low selling price?

I feel this will set a bad legal precedent if it goes through. Bitcoin so far has been able to avoid any regulation, because it is deemed "play money" If there is a court case that recognized Bitcoin as a currency, prepare for incoming regulation.

Yeah, "NAFTA" is complete bullshit.

I don't think it's EMS fault since the Danish import service thingy or whatever they are called has valued the package to 47 USD instead of 29.99.

Imma call 'em.

Which company did they use to send the package?