I recently invested with pirate (via a certain respectable pass-through). It's not magic that he gets money.

Also, I've noticed people keep whinging about "Currin Trading" and saying "Pirate is just like currin trading, just watch". Well, after digging through the main BS&T thread I found a link detailing what "Currin Trading" was and gave it a good read-through.

First, I think it's worthwhile to point out, if you really want people to take you seriously, maybe you should be referring to real life ponzi schemes rather than some no-name n00b scammer on some game probably 3/4 of the people here have never played. That's child shit.

Secondly, there are a number of obvious discrepancies between pirate and "Currin Trading" which have led me to discredit the "pirate is an obvious ponzi" terror talk.

For example:

-CT had to pay his large investor (which he only really had 1) less than what he paid his smaller investors, due to the fact that the paycheck for the former had to come from the latter. Pirate pays large investors more, which would be near impossible unless he was losing money by paying them out of pocket, or else if he had a real business of some sort.

-CT had to turn away (or delay) large investors in order to accumulate enough small investors to pay for them. Pirate, when running low on storage availability, turns down newer investors first, which is consistent with a lending business with finite capacity attempting to be fair to account holders in a simple fashion.

-CT never turned away small investors or new investors, as he needed them to continue the ponzi. Pirate made his service invite only and has in the past done forced withdrawals. A ponzi has no benefit to handing people their money back.

-CT had to make up a big publicity stunt in order to keep his ponzi floating for just a short while longer. Pirate, on the other hand, gets called a ponzi because of minor changes to his normal business even though he hasn't made any effort to attract attention.


In clarification of that last point, please allow me to point out the final and obvious reason why the ponzi whingers are morons who don't do any due diligence to back up their shit talk.

Pirate, ever since before making his service invite only, has more or less clearly stated that his reasons for changing his policy was to reduce the administrative overhead of dealing with many accounts (completely understandable). Making the service invite-only was not necessarily the best way of doing that, however at least the action was consistent with his stated goals.

His latest changes, however, are actually quite economically (and logistically) brilliant in terms of achieving his stated goal of less admin hassle.

-The lower rate and account limits on the new savings accounts prevent unauthorized people from making PPT programs, and make them unattractive to potential users who can just get a pirate account of their own now. (or use an authorized PPT for a higher rate)

-The flat interest rate on the standard savings also removes incentives to starting unauthorized PPT programs since there is no benefit to a larger account.

-The new "trust accounts" allow pirate to easily manage and authorize people to run PPT programs and do his admin work for him.

-The security deposit on trust accounts further disincentivizes PPT operators who might otherwise allow users to run wild and make admin work harder rather than easier.

Also, if it were a ponzi scheme, these policy changes would not have any advantages to the ponzi structure, and would be rather arbitrary. Ponzis are benefited by the ignorance of their users, and CT specifically used that ignorance to create unequal treatment between his "clients". CT also tried to make his business seem much older than it was (complete with fake users) prior to advertising. Pirate has not done any of those things; his advertisement was (and continues to be) very straightforward and his policies are very public and transparent (even if his business activities aren't).

Speculate away about what his business is or why he keeps it secret, but as far as being a ponzi, his actions are consistent with the intentions he has expressed.

Hashking used to pay 3.5%, however he's changed his terms considerably lately. He pays up to 1.5% weekly now, which is still considerable.

Also, this guy pays 2% weekly just on normal lending.

It varies over time, but the rates in the lending forum (that aren't pirate related) are generally between 1% and 4% per week with varying terms. Even at the low end rate of 1% that's potentially 67.8% per year if you don't touch it. Also, BTC lenders are reporting a very low default rate (in monetary terms) and besides BurtW (who lent his money and only his, and lost it due to his own poor due diligence) there haven't been any big failures. I haven't seen any big scams either in spite of the increase in the number of savings services.

I'll send a BTC your way in a day or so. I'd have probably donated more by now but I really had no idea how many retarded hoops I was going to have to jump through to buy BTC 

Well, calendar year would work fine .

10% per year is the low average for fiat money in actually solvent banks (singapore, georgia (the country), mongolia, etc). 15% is not unheard of.

That's beside the point, however, since most bitcoin lending businesses work on a rate similar to "payday loans" and still make yearly interest in the 100s of %s. Given an average of 3.5% per week (not an unusual rate), compounded weekly, that's


498.3% APR. So, by your definition, all bitcoin lenders are ponzis, yes?

Also, from actually reading pirate's original thread, I can clearly see a period after he went invite only and before any of the pirate pass programs popped up, wherein the bitcoin price soared over $6 and people were withdrawing like crazy to trade for fiat while the price was good. Even after having paid 7% to many accounts, some of which are particularly huge, I don't see anyone complaining that they weren't able to get all their money. I note small delays at times, but never anyone who wasn't paid in full, and never any actual customers who complained.

Recently, one whole person decided to cash out their account because "they had a bad feeling" with no facts or justification, and now everyone is back to foaming at the mouth of how it's a ponzi. If it is a ponzi, I have to give mr.pirate good credit for keeping it going this long even against adverse conditions.

I don't know what pirate does, but I've never once seen any instance of an issue that would cause me to question his solvency. Nothing but rumors and foaming about how it has to be a ponzi because his rate is high.

Thank payb.tc!

Also, before going off trying to do compounding backflips, how bout https? I think that's a little more important   .

And, FY stats for the acct history page would also be nice (for taxes).

Erm.. all of sudden I can't connect to any electrum servers. It keeps saying

Not connected
poking
Not connected
poking
Not connected
poking
Not connected
poking
Not connected
poking
Not connected
poking
Not connected
poking
Not connected
poking

and does nothing  .

At first I thought it was because of old client, but upgrading to .59 or .60 doesn't change anything 

Personally I think that would be unnecessarily complex. The important thing is to make certain to keep all emails/passwords secure and in very limited (and trusted) hands. Also, creating a credit rating system that makes sense (unlike the crap used on the fraudulent world financial markets) would be a big step toward better lending reliability. If all borrowers are required to create an account, they could be tracked pretty easily and lenders can get a good idea of who is higher or lower risk.

Where's the short button on this nonsense? >_< (or put options?)

zzz. $6 bitcoin is lame.

Zzzz bastard. I saw this news article pop up on facebook and it looked like it was saying that customs were searching for actual bitcoins now or something. I thought they were working on capital controls -_-;

Ooh no, just some romanians who got a kick out of bitcoin magazine -_-

True, LETS isn't backed by anything. It's not really an advantage in that case, either.


Mutual credit = mutual inflation. There is no practical limit to the positive and negative balances that can be accrued under such a system. As a result, the fact that all balances "zero out" on paper is of no consequence.


So I have to dig through that garbage and point out all the glaringly obvious quotes I'm referring to, eh? Fine, but that will take time.

I repeat, there is no such thing as a generic "unskilled labor hour". Herding geese, painting houses, moving boxes, and digging holes are all "unskilled labor", but they certainly are not all worth the same amount of money. Nor is the quality of work the same between laborers or companies for all of those jobs. Also, your "they're trying to avoid inflation" argument is 100% invalid as virtually every community currency operating in the US is backed by USD. A few "have plans" to back their currency with stupid things like firewood, but I haven't seen it happen yet and I can already tell you how that will work out. How many tons of firewood does it take to exchange the same value as one ounce of gold? Which is more expensive to store? Which will rot and become more or less useless if it gets wet?


There are two major fallacies in Gessel's work. The first is the idea that interest is an unfair charge against workers (and business owners, who Gessel would rather see eliminated) for capital. The second is the idea that workers should receive "all of the fruits of their labor". He specifically mentions salespeople as being more or less superfluous middlemen that steal potential "fruits" from the "laborers".


Unless those community currencies are saving the hidden costs of minimum wage, which would be illegal AFAIK, then no. Bitcoin started at zero value, whereas LETS and similar schemes start bankrupt. The berkshares site even specifically says "merchants give a ~2% discount as an incentive to use berkshares". Also, the article I read was pushing LETS as a great socialist panacea, it was my own conclusion that they are ponzi schemes, based on the fact that they begin bankrupt and run on debt.


I have read Gessel's work, in his (translated) words for myself. I always do so in regards to any subject that interests me even slightly, and that I might argue about. I'm quite familiar with Gessel, and when I first read his work I even thought it was a good idea.

However, I have also read "Human Action" cover to cover, and after comparing Gessel's arguments to von Mises', I can only conclude that Gessel's arguments, and not Mises', are invalid. Do I also need to rub it in your face that Gessel served as the economic Tzar under a communist state (albeit for a short time)? Gessel says that he is an anarchist and supports freedom, but the sort of freedom he wants is the freedom to do whatever you want on anyone else's property. His "freeland" idea was nothing short of pan-communism, and his obsession with worker ownership was obviously pinko. Gessel's "Robinson Crusoe" argument was especially convincing, but when you take away the moral assertions and examine it from a pure economic standpoint, it completely fails to make sense anymore. An economy where you grow everything yourself and the only trade is barter in perishable goods, then it's true no interest is possible, however no economic specialization is possible either so it's a moot point- you can't have economics without a real economy.

Also, Switzerland is currently a bankrupt hole working on becoming a third world country. Wir hasn't worked any economic miracles for them, although it has produced a lot of superfluous low quality housing. It's merely a less extreme version of the colossal ghost towns built by the communist Chinese government.

Are you saying bitcoin doesn't create diversity and interconnectedness? Do community currencies even create diversity or interconnectedness? I would think a currency that is only accepted in a small region would create more separation than anything.

There is no such thing as a "generic unskilled labor hour", and I don't have to prove that Keynes was wrong in order to say that Gessel's depreciating money is crap when Gessel himself was full of crap.

The stated purpose of LETS and every other ponzi scheme like it is "to provide an alternative (or adjunct) to state money, and to create jobs in the community". In every case, people get some sort of discount; either in the form of a markdown on goods or else (extremely) cheap labor. I remember an article about it once, noting some old lady getting her house painted for less than half of what it would cost her in dollars.

The system overall is basically the same stuff the NGOs shove down poor developing countries' throats: shame based credit money. They claim by offering either zero interest or artificially low interest you can stimulate business, but all real business runs on capital, the holders of which demand interest and for good reason. The incentive of interest ensures that money is spent on the most efficient businesses rather than socialist bridges to nowhere. By taking away interest and economic responsibility through their arbitrary credit materialization, they invert economic control from consumers to producers and eliminate any chance of getting capital influx or developing any real business.

If you want to be a "good person" and paint some old lady's house for free, then volunteer and do it for free. Don't use some retarded socialist ponzi brainwashing scam. LETS, Berkshares, and all their crony companions are pure blooded communists, and the results of communism are always the same no matter what shade of red you paint it.

LETS is a socialist price fixing scheme. It cannot work in the long term. If LETS credits were actually traded against currency, the price advantage of LETS would disappear, and it would have all the disadvantages of every other arbitrary fiat.

Economies can't run on charity, that's just not how reality works.

As I said, C is not the best language for memory management x.x.

Ah I think I get it now. As long as you always copy pointers when passing values into functions, then you get the same effect as refcounting. I would definitely like to see a test showing that that has lower overhead than dealloc/refcounting o.0. It looks to me like you'd be doing the same work as with refcounting, except without any explicit calls to dealloc.

I don't know about scope, but letting pointers fall out of scope is bad form anyway .

Well, reference counting does have one advantage. After reading through that link I sent you I realized that for C you still have to set your pointers to null in order to tell the GC that your pointer is dead. In terms of assuring correctness you'd still need reference counting to avoid dangling pointers x.x.

Weak types = no automatic GC. I'd suggest another language but most languages suck .

Declarative languages are strange compared to imperative languages like C. By default, prolog (and its derivatives like mercury) use what they call a WAM, which basically means everything is allocated to the stack. However, mercury also has the option to use a Boehm collector, and does allocate things to the heap. I don't know everything about how that works in mercury, and unfortunately as awesome a language as it is, it isn't well documented (and I haven't gotten around to digging through the installed examples yet).

Also, declarative languages using a WAM can generally end up with poor memory usage due to the FILO nature of stacks, and thus started using garbage collectors to collect memory on the stack o.0.

I'm not sure if there are collectors available for C besides the boehm. I did, however, find a nifty article on using the boehm library and getting good mileage from it: from linuxjournal.

EDIT: And they get better performance out of the Boehm than they do from malloc/dealloc.. which really surprises me. The only consideration is that you'll want to make sure to disable any compiler optimizations that mess with pointers in your build. The Boehm library is also pretty configurable, so you can make it do whatever you need it to do (ie for embedded systems).