Vladimir
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August 17, 2012, 01:19:04 AM |
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- Pass-through schemes are not ponzis ... they are very upfront about what they do. (That is, unless their issuer has a separate intention of disappearing/defaulting ... but if Pirate defaults, they are not Ponzis).
- Insured accounts are most likely not ponzis (some are less likely than others).
If BullShit & Trust, is a ponzi: PPT's are effectively all ponzies as well. They are all then proxies for a fraud (participants of a criminal enterprise, co-conspirators) with some lipstick put on the pig. Those people who operate effectively investment funds and "savings account", ought to know better and recognize where they are funneling other people's funds into. They are as guilty as the ponzi operator himself. Some of such PPT operators even pretend that they are acting ethically. The question is more like whether they are acting criminally. People who allow such ponzi promotion on their websites are to some degree complicit in fraud, marketplaces that allow trading of such instruments are to some significant degree complicit as well. People who have any kind of income derived from a fraud and who promote such fraud are complicit in perpetuation of the fraud. Even if the above is not true from point of view of some specific law in some specific jurisdiction, the above is certainly the case from point of view of anyone with even some modicum of Ethics.
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ripper234
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August 17, 2012, 04:59:16 AM Last edit: August 17, 2012, 07:43:59 AM by ripper234 |
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- Pass-through schemes are not ponzis ... they are very upfront about what they do. (That is, unless their issuer has a separate intention of disappearing/defaulting ... but if Pirate defaults, they are not Ponzis).
- Insured accounts are most likely not ponzis (some are less likely than others).
If BullShit & Trust, is a ponzi: PPT's are effectively all ponzies as well. Wrong. The definition of Ponzi include lying to your cusotmers. PPTs (I assume) don't lie. Rather, they're being very open about their default conditions. Proxy or no proxy, they are not Ponzis. If I invested with one of them and Pirate defaulted, I would be angry (+ press charges) at Pirate, not at the one selling me the PPT.
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Vladimir
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August 17, 2012, 07:13:07 AM |
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- Pass-through schemes are not ponzis ... they are very upfront about what they do. (That is, unless their issuer has a separate intention of disappearing/defaulting ... but if Pirate defaults, they are not Ponzis).
- Insured accounts are most likely not ponzis (some are less likely than others).
If BullShit & Trust, is a ponzi: PPT's are effectively all ponzies as well. Wrong.
The definition of Ponzi include lying to your cusotmers. PPTs (I assume) don't lie. Rather, they're being very open about their default conditions.
Proxy or no proxy, they are not Ponzis. If I invested with one of them and Pirate defaulted, I would be angry (+ press chargers) at Pirate, not at the one selling me the PPT.
Have you learned this little trick from Mavrodi?
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ripper234
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August 17, 2012, 07:44:13 AM |
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No.
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nrd525 (OP)
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August 17, 2012, 07:12:42 PM |
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I added the book recommendations.
I added Vladimir's resources (sorry I missed your thread when I posted mine!)
I didn't add the time period for calculating interest. Calculating interest on a monthly or weekly basis might just be the same root cause as having high interest rates and not its own cause. Most legitimate business is done using Annual Percentage Rate (APR). Payday loans are an exception.
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Digital Gold for Gamblers and True Believers
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ninjarobot
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August 18, 2012, 12:39:47 PM |
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I liked this recent NPR article on how to identify ponzi's: http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/07/30/157606305/four-signs-your-awesome-investment-may-actually-be-a-ponzi-scheme1. High return! Low risk! 2. Where does the money come from? It's complicated. 3. It's illegal, but it's safe. 4. They don't even want your money. Snippet: Ponzi schemers often feign reluctance to take an investor's money, which can defuse any suspicions. They also invoke safe-sounding words, like "bank," "securities exchange," "voucher, "guarantee," or "full faith and credit," and call their investments "trusts" or "trust units." Many foster friendships and even romantic relationships with their marks, and market their investments through the houses of worship they attend themselves.
In the end, Frankel writes, "con artists remind us of honest people. They are similar to entrepreneurs, eternally and unshakably optimistic, and they act like (and are) gifted salespeople."
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zyk
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August 18, 2012, 09:57:44 PM |
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oh my ![Grin](https://bitcointalk.org/Smileys/default/grin.gif) is this all breathtaking....decision time is near....9 days pirate said....still...Vladimir and Vandroi disappeared from the scenery Is everything still dissolvable without destroying OTC Ratings.....pirate still stands up to his word...is this even possible? @Vandroi, Vladimir-----where are you? right now shouting ![Shocked](https://bitcointalk.org/Smileys/default/shocked.gif) i told you so ![Shocked](https://bitcointalk.org/Smileys/default/shocked.gif) would be so much appreciated as a further drawing of the disolution scenario could make you the oracle heros! Cheers Zyk
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Vladimir
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August 18, 2012, 10:05:21 PM |
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I am just waiting for the culmination and climax. I, personally, hope that I was wrong all along, but know that chances of that are slim to none, unfortunately.
Whatever the pirate said means nothing but that we will know better soon.
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Vandroiy
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August 18, 2012, 11:24:48 PM |
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zyk: I'm here, but just reading because there's nothing to do at this point. Lock is down, clock is ticking for days already.
If you ask me for a guess for the most likely case, we'll just see "delays" until the end of the month, then it's marked as defaulted and the story is over. So unless something strange happens, there won't be much of a show from here on.
I might not be online much when it's concluded, I'm going to be travelling at the time. I'll show up early September to settle the bets, and maybe occasionally in between.
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zyk
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August 18, 2012, 11:30:30 PM |
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Come on, don´t dive down in your modestity ![Wink](https://bitcointalk.org/Smileys/default/wink.gif) ----you went so far out on a limp that it would amaze me if you felt comfortable when pirate is proven a hero who only has been hindered in establishing a new world reserve currency by FUD and Bitlane ( do you know what he tackled?) If you don´t, i´ll come up with a gravedigger:-) Nor has he clarified from what kind of buiseness he made a profit of about 3300 % just as he got to nearly a year now, neither did he come up with a story to explain why its reasonable for the community and the puplic as a whole to transfer bitcoins and with them a good junk of power into his hands. Given that, its unbelievable that all lenders will be made whole. Still i find the man and his words very straightforward and in any discussion with Vandroi the one who took the crown and so he was rightfully the captain of bitcoinworld for this time. Taking that into account, i don´t think he backs all up by himself with his famous actor abilities, there is a ploy involved ,where some of the fat cats nearer to him as the crowd are conspiring to unequally divide the loot. All will be enveloped in some kind of force majeure..... There seem to be heros who can´t await being gang raped i see ![Wink](https://bitcointalk.org/Smileys/default/wink.gif) If there is some community spirit left, as it always should be, can´t we just work together and make at least a 3 % weekly growth of bitcoin usage possible......? Which in my view is easily possible when promoting the bitcoin not as a ponzi scheme ( unluckily all interest bearing currencies are ponzi schemes ), a speculation realm, a drug buying commodity or a mean to buy Butterflies in puppiestadium.....but as the one and only solution to take the power out of the hands of the Rothschild Federal Reserve -crony- cartel - anarchy.....make them stop extorting the working poeple the whole world over. "The banks all gonna close if you don´t give us another billion to suck out of your children" Bitcoin is free from all those schenanigans, can be transfered from cameroon ,to chile, to Afghanistan, to hollywood and to Somalia...without being taxed, comissioned, corrupted or diluted.. That is a worthwhile ponzi scheme to grow and where 3 % weekly profit is deserved for the poeple who put exchanges in place in all those places....... to be continued:-) Cheers Zyk
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zyk
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August 18, 2012, 11:57:37 PM |
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Come on.......was ment as response to Vladimir of course ![Wink](https://bitcointalk.org/Smileys/default/wink.gif) @Vandroi are you german as well? not anxious that pirate really earned a 8 % weekly profit on his borrowed capital? if i work as whatever buying and selling stuff ( veterinarien medicaments in my case) which at the time always appreciated , of course markups of 30 % for a transaction are possible...don´t you think so? suspicion of course is that he was so involved in BCST and vegas trips that i don´t know in what time he should have earned the 8 % ROI that you can go travelling with this bet in the back amzing as i can barely leave my comp. and bitcoin quotations:-) Have a nice trip... If you win the bet you should just form a new BCST ...this time run without Bitlane and as an at least 100 years enduring proper ponzi ![Wink](https://bitcointalk.org/Smileys/default/wink.gif) Have a nice trip Cheers Zyk
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nrd525 (OP)
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August 19, 2012, 03:08:29 AM |
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I'd appreciate it if people stayed on topic and didn't get into speculation about Pirate on this thread.
Referring to Pirate's operation is on-topic if you are using it to identify common variables shared with other ponzis or non-ponzis.
Thanks!
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Digital Gold for Gamblers and True Believers
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Herodes
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August 20, 2012, 10:39:45 PM |
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[... snip ...]
A few rules to live by: - If it sounds too good to be true, it usually is. - Also, no serious business would hesitate giving you information you need while doing some serious dd. - Don't invest more than you can stand to lose.
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nibor
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August 21, 2012, 01:50:09 PM |
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- Pass-through schemes are not ponzis ... they are very upfront about what they do. (That is, unless their issuer has a separate intention of disappearing/defaulting ... but if Pirate defaults, they are not Ponzis).
- Insured accounts are most likely not ponzis (some are less likely than others).
If BullShit & Trust, is a ponzi: PPT's are effectively all ponzies as well. Wrong. The definition of Ponzi include lying to your cusotmers. PPTs (I assume) don't lie. Rather, they're being very open about their default conditions. Proxy or no proxy, they are not Ponzis. If I invested with one of them and Pirate defaulted, I would be angry (+ press charges) at Pirate, not at the one selling me the PPT. I expect that some of the PPT's never had an account with Pirate. They were just paying the dividends out of the investors cash. So will now claim not have received any cash from him and pocket the remaining BTC's.
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gene
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August 21, 2012, 03:10:16 PM |
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This may be of interest. Please repost where appropriate: http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/08/20/examining-the-ponzi-scheme-through-the-mind-of-the-con-artist/?pagewanted=printAugust 20, 2012, 5:13 pm Examining the Ponzi Scheme Through the Mind of the Con Artist By DIANA B. HENRIQUES
Maybe "Ponzi scheme" should have its own spot in the Dewey Decimal System. Along with biographies of the schemers, a growing stack of scholarly references, legal tomes and articles aims to collect knowledge about this age-old crime.
But the latest entry in the category, "The Ponzi Scheme Puzzle: A History and Analysis of Con Artists and Victims" by Tamar Frankel, takes a different approach. While Professor Frankel is a legal scholar who has been on the faculty of the Boston University Law School since 1968, her book explores the psychology of the financial criminals and what makes them tick. She was inspired by a colleague who referred to them as "those mimics of trustworthiness: con artists."
She spent more than a decade researching the book, analyzing more than a hundred Ponzi schemes. Among them: the Caritas scandal in Romania, an early 1990s fraud whose victims saw the mastermind as a saint in Robin Hood guise; the currency fraud run by J. David Dominelli, which collapsed in the mid-1980s and stung a host of San Diego's elite; and the Madoff scandal, history's largest Ponzi scheme, with paper losses of $64.8 billion and thousands of victims around the world.
Professor Frankel talked about the mind-set of the con artist, as well as the role that victims and society play. Her conclusions will not comfort Ponzi victims; she faults them for their gullibility and failing to "do their homework." She finds, too, that society has a profound ambivalence toward con artists despite the vicious nature of their crimes - which, she notes, on rare occasions have even included murder.
Q. Do you now feel that you better understand Ponzi schemes and the "mimics" of honesty who run them?
A. Yes. Especially, I understand better the impact of culture - a culture of risk-taking, the hope of making money, an insatiable appetite for more. These are all part of the culture in which Ponzi schemes arise and flourish.
Q. And yet, as you know, those traits are also part of the culture in which capitalism thrives and economies flourish. If no one trusted anyone, modern commerce - indeed, modern life - would be impossible. So where should we draw the line between trust and suspicion?
A. It's not so much a continuum as it is the proverbial slippery slope. It's very easy to slip down a slippery slope - and very hard to climb back up again. When people start doing one little wrong, it gets a little easier to do one more wrong.
Q. Will people buy that? That one step off the straight and narrow leads to corruption?
A. If you look at the history of successful human societies, two things are clear. One, you must have trust. Without it, society cannot succeed. At the same time, you must also be trustworthy.
Q. But it's not so simple, is it? Some victims of Mr. Madoff feel they justifiably placed their trust in a respected market veteran who knew far more about markets than they did. If I'm asked to vet a Madoff story, I know what to look for. But if my car mechanic tells me I need a new frambulator, I don't know enough about cars to assess his honesty; I'll have to trust him. So where is the line between justified trust and unreasonable gullibility? And won't it be different for different people?
A. Gullibility is the tendency to believe without reasonable evidence. Every culture draws a line between trust and gullibility. And in the financial arena, the line between trust and gullibility may have to be more tightly drawn. For example, as I note in my book, many con artists make it seem that they are limiting access to their investments, making them available only to a select few. Now, rationally, why would a money manager do that? Look around you and you see hedge funds, mutual funds, private equity funds and advisers all salivating for more clients. Yet, there are those who believe that the more unique and hard to get an investment is, the more valuable it is. That's gullibility - because it is not rational to believe that.
Q. Of course, Madoff had a seemingly plausible explanation for that: He managed money only as a sideline and he didn't want word to get around because he'd have to turn people away and that would cause hard feelings.
A. And Madoff was a well-known broker - in other words, it was his business. He was an expert trader. He said, "I have a secret way of doing something," and it may have seemed plausible that he did. You're quite right that he's different.
Q. Nor did Madoff promise sky-high returns - he just offered steady consistency. A fraud analyst named Pat Huddleston says of successful Ponzi schemers: "If it sounds too good to be true, you're dealing with an amateur." Don't you think future Ponzi schemers will take a page from Madoff's playbook and keep their returns relatively modest to avoid raising red flags?
A. I doubt it. People certainly are more concerned about risk than they were before the financial crisis. But con artists do not adjust their stories to the current culture and public feeling but rather focus on their potential targeted audiences. For example, a con artist who operated a charitable organization appealed to similar organizations with a story that an anonymous donor would match their investments. This story was convincing because the managers of charitable institutions have donors who seek to remain anonymous.
Q. Some critics may argue that your analysis of people who fall prey to Ponzi schemes skirts pretty close to "blaming the victim." Do you think Ponzi victims are responsible for their own fate?
A. That's a very difficult issue. "Blame" means an "assignment of responsibility for a fault or a wrong or an error." I think we would agree that a person who suffers from heart disease after years of overeating and smoking may bear some responsibility for his or her illness. I empathize with victims and I feel for them, even as I assign some responsibility to them.
Diana B. Henriques is author of "The Wizard of Lies: Bernie Madoff and the Death of Trust."
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*processing payment* *error 404 : funds not found* Do you want to complain on the forum just to fall for another scam a few days later? | YES | YES |
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Gavin Andresen
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August 22, 2012, 03:21:57 AM |
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From this very relevant article: "Megan McArdle on Arbitrage and Why We Love Being Conned"We are most vulnerable to Ponzi schemes and other confidence tricks when we start to believe that we can cheat the universe—that we can get something for nothing. The best con men succeed mostly because we are so desperate to believe them.
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How often do you get the chance to work on a potentially world-changing project?
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Micon
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September 02, 2012, 11:17:50 PM |
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AndrewBUD
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September 03, 2012, 01:01:32 PM |
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I just noticed this at the top of each thread....
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| 365 | TM | | | | EZ365 is a digital ecosystem that combines the best aspects of online gaming, cryptocurrency trading and blockchain education. ▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀ | | ..WHITEPAPER.. ..INVESTOR PITCH..
| | | | .'M████▀▀██ ██ W█Ws'V██ ██▄▄███▀▀█ i█████m.~M████▀▀██ ███ d███████Ws'V██ ██████ ****M██████m.~███f~~__mW█ ██▀▀▀████████= Y██▀▀██W ,gm███████ g█████▄▄▄██ █A~`_WW Y█ ██!,████████ g▀▀▀███ ████▀▀`_m████i!████P W███ ██ _███▄▄▄██▀▀▀███Af`_m███ █W ███A ]███ ██ __ ~~~▀▀▀▀▄▄▄█*f_m██████ ██i!██!i███████ Y█████▄▄▄▄__. i██▀▀▀██████████ █!,██████ 8█ █▀▀█████.!██ ██████████i! █████ '█ █ █ █W M█▄▄▄██████ ██ !██ !███▄▄█ ██i'██████████ ██ Y███████████.]██████████████ █ ███████b ███ ██████ Y █ █▀▀█i!██ ████ V███ █ █W Y█████ ~~▀███▄▄▄█['███ ~~*██ | | Play | | | | │ │ ███ │ ███ │ ███ │ │ ███ ███ │ ███ ███ ███ ███ │ ███ ███ ███ ███ ███ ███ ███ ███ ███ │ │ ███ ███ │ │ │ │ │ | | Trade | | | | __▄▄████▄▄ __▄▄███████████████▄▄▄ _▄▄█████████▀▀~`,▄████████████▄▄▄ ~▀▀████▀▀~`,_▄▄███████████████▀▀▀ d█~ =▀███████████████▀▀ ]█! m▄▄ '~▀▀▀████▀▀~~ ,_▄▄ ,W█. *████▄▄__ ' __▄▄█████ !██P █████████████████████ W█. - ██████████████████▀ i██[ ~ ▀▀█████████▀▀▀ g███! Y███ | | Learn |
[/tabl
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JoelKatz
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September 03, 2012, 01:14:03 PM |
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The definition of Ponzi include lying to your cusotmers. Correct. PPTs (I assume) don't lie. It doesn't matter who does the lying, so long as the people whose money is used to make the interest payments have been lied to. Rather, they're being very open about their default conditions. That's not the point. If someone hires me to find a hitman to kill their wife, and I do so, I'm still just as responsible for the murder as the hitman is. This is true even if I find the best and most reliable hitman and fully keep my agreement with the person who hired me. Proxy or no proxy, they are not Ponzis. If I invested with one of them and Pirate defaulted, I would be angry (+ press charges) at Pirate, not at the one selling me the PPT. They are Ponzis. The "interest payments" they make are actually the result of fraudulent transfers from other investors. If you invested in a PPT, you hired the PPT operator to make you the recipient of fraudulent transfers of money Pirate collected from "investors", just as people who invested directly in Pirate did.
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I am an employee of Ripple. Follow me on Twitter @JoelKatz 1Joe1Katzci1rFcsr9HH7SLuHVnDy2aihZ BM-NBM3FRExVJSJJamV9ccgyWvQfratUHgN
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nrd525 (OP)
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September 03, 2012, 08:15:50 PM |
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Ponzis do not have to lie, though most of them mislead. The MMM (Russian) ponzi was honest about its ponzi identity.
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Digital Gold for Gamblers and True Believers
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