Pirate accomplices

[bitlane]

Most of us already know what Pirate does, we have known for months. I did not go to unlocked the secrets of Pirate. He has been very open about what he does.

My personal funds will stay with pirate. I went to Vegas cuz I have never been and thought this would be an epic time to go.

It was legendary:)

So Goat... Not going to comment on THAT ?

[556j]

I already did.. Go to the thread and keep reading... Posting stuff out of context is well.. Silly...

It's not out of context it was the full quote linking to the thread.

It's like p4man already laid out, there is only two options.

Either you knew it was a ponzi, or pirate fooled you. No other way about it.

[DeathAndTaxes]

Sure thing. If I could read all the PMs...

Well not all PMs.

[unclescrooge]

Sure thing. If I could read all the PMs...

Well not all PMs.

Oh he can't? i was sure he could basically access everything

[drrussellshane]

Sure thing. If I could read all the PMs...

Well not all PMs.

Oh he can't? i was sure he could basically access everything

I think that they mean that he cannot read encrypted PMs.

[Bascule]

Even if you had a brain, I cant look in to yours. The issue here is not if I am sure, a more interesting question is if you are since you have been on the take and convinced countless people to deposit. So are you saying you scammed them knowingly or that you still stand behind pirate?

"On the take"? Care to back that up? 

You were either knowingly complicit in a Ponzi scheme, or full of shit. Which is it?
 
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=91252.msg1064948#msg1064948

Most of us already know what Pirate does, we have known for months. I did not go to unlocked the secrets of Pirate. He has been very open about what he does.

[P4man]

For the record, by "on the take" I mean goat profited from this scheme (at zero risk), as did all other PPT passthrough providers. There might have been incentives beyond that, but we dont know that.

As for there being 2 possibilities, there is a third, unlikely as it may seem; the OP is written with the explicit assumption it was a ponzi/scam. THis seems rather likely, but is not certain yet.

[dancingnancy]

If I was planning to scam millions of dollars, I'd put a bunch of work months or even a year ahead of time creating sock puppet accounts.

Good point.  This would be quite elaborate, but with a $5mm bankroll, I am sure you can find some social engineering experts looking to take up a challenge.  Hate to see anyone lose money though, hope you guys get it back.

[Coinoisseur]

Well, there have been a couple of forum members now who have claimed to have discovered his business model (with the inference it's not a ponzi). I couldn't find the older thread in my history, perhaps it was deleted. It had the phrase "open mind" while going through Pirateat40's forum posts revealed how he was legitimately generating consistent 7+% a week. But here is a fresher version, "That being said, read his post on this forum and on IRC and you will get an almost clear picture about his business.":

Trust is earned, not given. What did pirate do to earn trust?

Member of the community, gpumax, OTC rating, etc

Do people know who he is or where he lives?

People are way too lazy this day. Google him. Look at his facebook page. Look at the facebook page of his wife. Look at the pictures of his sons, dogs. Hell, we know more about him, than we know about the whole dev team combined. But in sharp contrast we trust the dev team with ALL our bitcoins.

Do they know how the money they give him is used to make those returns?

I guess sometimes the business model itself can be the trade secret. That being said, read his post on this forum and on IRC and you will get an almost clear picture about his business.

Do they know how much of the profits he keeps for himself?

Yes, he stated to make about 10%/week and gave his lenders about 7%.

Do they even know why he needs other people's money instead of just earning the 7% weekly return on his own money?

He did not have such huge funds, and those were necessary for him to make this profit.

But while all those are neat questions that can be answered easily, it still leaves the actual one unanswered:

I don't really follow the logical connection between "some people may have lost money to a bitcoin scam" and "it's time to panic sell!"

Why would anyone panic sell over this type of announcement? Is the assumption that pirate's was going to dump his btc holdings, causing the price to go down? If so, why would he bother announcing?

[thebaron]

Well, there have been a couple of forum members now who have claimed to have discovered his business model (with the inference it's not a ponzi). I couldn't find the older thread in my history, perhaps it was deleted. I

It seems to only survive as a quote from another poster:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=50822.msg607752#msg607752

(I can't quote it properly since the thread is locked)

"Quote from: pirateat40 on November 03, 2011, 07:14:09 PM
The Business:
Over the last few months I have been selling BTC to a group of local people.  Now this is a don't ask don't tell group of people so I can't tell you exactly where and to whom the coins ultimately end up with but so far its been pretty painless.   During this last week I maxed out my available coins both personally and "leased" from other members and they needed a lot more.  Up until now, I have dealt with my core group of friends and been able to handle the requests, but they seem to be getting larger and more frequent.  So now I'm looking into other methods for keeping a consistent storage or on-demand availability of coins.  I have two plans available for those sitting on coins.

On-Demand
When an order comes in that is over what I have available I'll send out a request to users in this plan requesting the total needed.  The first to respond gets the deal and the transfer is made.  These coins will be tide up for 1 business day to give me enough time to settle the transaction and acquire the coins to return. This plan pays a flat 3.5%.

Storage
This plan works as an ongoing commitment.  You would send coins anytime to the address provided and you would earn interest on a daily basis.  You can withdraw your balance at anytime, but I do request that you give me a couple hours to insure I have coverage for the next order.  Interest payments are paid out ever 3 days until either you withdraw the funds or my local dealings dry up and I can no longer be profitable. This plan pays 1% per day.

Now I would hope to have enough people on the storage plan that I wouldn't have a need for the on-demand but I'll see how it goes.  I ultimately want the ability to provide coins at anytime and any amount for these guys and we can all share in the profits.

I've created my own custom management software that I've built to monitor deposits, withdraws and interest payments.  As this gets bigger I'll build a front end for it so users can view and manage there account and maybe putting that domain btclending.com to good use.   

For more information send me a PM or just ask below.  You can check out my OTC ratings in my signature.

Edit: I forgot to mention that dealing with anything less than 50BTC is more work than its worth so I've made that the minimum on both plans.

Thanks"


So, it seems like...money laundering!

[LoupGaroux]

...snip...

I agree. If it turns out to be a Ponzi, the people who met him in real life and agreed to run passthrus etc should be looked at more closely.

No my friend, I don't believe you go far enough. Once this is finally determined to be a fraud, those who were his willing accomplices should be far more that "looked at more closely", they should be held accountable for their profiteering and their participation in whatever criminal enterprise was going on. That accountability should include full restitution to all victims of their participation in the fraud, immediate and permanent banning from all commercial activities in this community, and lengthy jail sentences, where they can enjoy being on the receiving end of a raping similar to the one they have all been giving to everyone else involved in this disaster from the word go.

Every shill, every mouthpiece, every pass-thru pimp, every die hard sockpuppet should be destroyed financially, forced into receivership to make good on every centime that they gained by taking part in the Rape of Bitcoin, beaten severely, lose all online access for life, be branded across the forehead with INTERNET SCAMMER, and forced to become the fucktoy of a diseased, angry, and horny White Supremacist convict in the hardest Federal Vacation spot available.

Because these, brothers and sisters, are the very rotten maggots eating away at the heart of this movement, stealing and defrauding for their own gain, and killing any chance this alt-currency will ever have to be accepted as a legitimate means of exchange by the world at large, and keep it the private playground of the bleeding edge technorati and the criminals who are learning to prey upon them.

Stake a few of them up on the border of the Internet pour encourager les autres, just as they did with a previous generation of pirates at the entrance to Port Royal.

[P4man]

Where can you show that Theymos or myself said we did not think it was a ponzi? You fail man....

Am i reading this right? SO now you say you knew it was a ponzi all along? Woha, some people are going to have a field day digging up quotes from you Im sure.

Theymos claims he made 50  BTC from this...  Why does p4man hate the free market? Is he jelly of what Theymos made?

p4man? What are you doing again? If you are trying to stop people like Theymos from gambling with pirate you need a time machine... Crying wont help:(

No Goat, In fact I did exactly what Theymos did. But there is a difference between saying something is almost certainly a ponzi yet gambling some of  your own money on being able to extract your coins in time, as compared to what  you did. IF nothing else, one is a criminal offence in most places, the other isnt.

[P4man]

You lack the ability to read?

I can even quote, go figure:

Where can you show that Theymos or myself said we did not think it was a ponzi?

And stop hiding behind Theymos.

[Vladimir]

Where can you show that Theymos or myself said we did not think it was a ponzi?

And stop hiding behind Theymos.

Based on that thread, it seems all Theymos possibly needs to do is to apologize to the community for his short-sightedness and disgorge ill-gotten profits, perhaps by making a donation to a worthwhile cause.

While all the shills likely shall face criminal investigation or worse and face the consequences of their actions.

[Lethos]

Those who did the pass-thru-bonds;

I'm not defending them, in fact with hindsight I'm sure even themselves think what they did was pretty bad decision. One could say stupid.
Hindsight is like that though, it's not kind to you when you did something that _could_ really turn around and bit you in the ass.
Pirate himself should of done these kind of bonds on GLBSE, got to ask why he did not. They got used.

They got caught with their hands in the cookie jar, but the problem is it had a false bottom, pirate's already taken the cookies.
They are the ones left behind trying to explain they didn't steal the cookies.

Best to calm down, for those who lost big, do your best to make a legal case against pirate, their seems to be enough info floating around about him now.

[P4man]

Based on that thread, it seems all Theymos possibly needs to do is to apologize to the community for his short-sightedness and disgorge ill-gotten profits,

Perhaps he did bitcoin a favour by making this blow up faster. Either way, Theymos clearly stated he assumed it to be a ponzi, and most importantly, he gambled with his own money.

[bitlane]

I wish you guys would SSSsshhhhhh.......or we will never get paid 

I love you Pirate ! Please send money for Granny's hip replacement soon.

Love Always,
Your Dear Friend,
bitlane.

[theymos]

I've repeatedly said it was probably a Ponzi.

This looks exactly like a HYIP to me; I'd be pretty surprised if it turns out to be legitimate. I have purchased some PPT bonds, though. With the extra insurance, the odds of winning seems reasonable.

The "savings trust" is a Ponzi scheme. I'm not talking about "oh, but maybe the poor fella will default" or something on that level. Everything from the cheap building of trust, the friendly update messages and the time-scale of the thing is nothing but textbook fraudster routine. The funds are hardly flowing enough for good money laundering, there are cheaper means to do that anyway, and even if it were to work there's simply no reason to still pay out this sort of interest to lenders. Ever heard of "There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch"?

I completely agree. I'm not at all worried about BTCST's failure hurting the community, though. A lot of shady assets will fail and a few individuals will lose a lot of money, but I don't think there will be any long-term damage.

I do tend to think it's a Ponzi scheme, so I view it as a form of gambling. Hopefully no one else is gambling more than they can afford to lose.

This might not be completely accurate, but here's what I've seemed to find in this thread:


Ponzi:
nrd525
MarketNeutral
terrytibbs
Maged
theymos
JoelKatz
Matthew N. Wright
P4man
curious
Sukrim

Not a ponzi:
bitlane
ineededausername
PatrickHarnett
coin_toss
reeses
exahash
Otoh
psy
Tomatocage
sadpandatech

Neutral:
Meni Rosenfeld
jcpham
cytokine

Unknown (leaning towards not a ponzi):
hashking
BurtW
imsaguy
znort987
splatster
johnthedong
farfiman
miscreanity
ShadowAlexey
Chaang Noi (Goat) ช้างน้อย

Unknown (leaning towards ponzi):
pekv2


So, out of the people that had some kind of opinion, approximately 30.5% of posters here believe that it is a ponzi, 61.1% think it's not, and 8.3% are neutral.

Trust accounts will probably still get ~7%, but I believe that the additional limitations on withdrawing funds indicate that the Ponzi is about to collapse. I've withdrawn all of the BTC I had in Pirate funds.

It's probably a Ponzi. It's almost certainly not legitimate.

It seems to have a lot of growth, so I'd guess that it'll last at least a few more months. I'm gambling a small amount of money in it.

Based on that thread, it seems all Theymos possibly needs to do is to apologize to the community for his short-sightedness and disgorge ill-gotten profits, perhaps by making a donation to a worthwhile cause.

No way. All BS&T investors should have known the risks before investing. A 7% weekly interest rate is obviously incredibly risky, even if the interest is generated legitimately. I gambled and, though I was prepared to lose it all, I was lucky enough to win. Others who were not so lucky have no right to complain to me.

[BadBear]

Well, there have been a couple of forum members now who have claimed to have discovered his business model (with the inference it's not a ponzi). I couldn't find the older thread in my history, perhaps it was deleted. I

It seems to only survive as a quote from another poster:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=50822.msg607752#msg607752

(I can't quote it properly since the thread is locked)
...
So, it seems like...money laundering!

The Business:
Over the last few months I have been selling BTC to a group of local people.  Now this is a don't ask don't tell group of people so I can't tell you exactly where and to whom the coins ultimately end up with but so far its been pretty painless.   During this last week I maxed out my available coins both personally and "leased" from other members and they needed a lot more.  Up until now, I have dealt with my core group of friends and been able to handle the requests, but they seem to be getting larger and more frequent.  So now I'm looking into other methods for keeping a consistent storage or on-demand availability of coins.  I have two plans available for those sitting on coins.

On-Demand
When an order comes in that is over what I have available I'll send out a request to users in this plan requesting the total needed.  The first to respond gets the deal and the transfer is made.  These coins will be tide up for 1 business day to give me enough time to settle the transaction and acquire the coins to return. This plan pays a flat 3.5%.

Storage
This plan works as an ongoing commitment.  You would send coins anytime to the address provided and you would earn interest on a daily basis.  You can withdraw your balance at anytime, but I do request that you give me a couple hours to insure I have coverage for the next order.  Interest payments are paid out ever 3 days until either you withdraw the funds or my local dealings dry up and I can no longer be profitable. This plan pays 1% per day.

Now I would hope to have enough people on the storage plan that I wouldn't have a need for the on-demand but I'll see how it goes.  I ultimately want the ability to provide coins at anytime and any amount for these guys and we can all share in the profits.

I've created my own custom management software that I've built to monitor deposits, withdraws and interest payments.  As this gets bigger I'll build a front end for it so users can view and manage there account and maybe putting that domain btclending.com to good use.  

For more information send me a PM or just ask below.  You can check out my OTC ratings in my signature.

Edit: I forgot to mention that dealing with anything less than 50BTC is more work than its worth so I've made that the minimum on both plans.

Thanks

I can, so here it is for posterity.

[P4man]

You lack the ability to read?

I can even quote, go figure:

Where can you show that Theymos or myself said we did not think it was a ponzi?

And stop hiding behind Theymos.

To answer your question; I cant be bothered to  search through all your drivel, so these quotes will have to do:

I have a lot of coin (for me) with Pirate and I was thinking about placing money on the pirate fails side, not cuz I do not trust pirate but just to hedge (things can go wrong, no I do not think it is a ponzi). I would always know I would get some coin either way no matter what happened. However because of the spirit of the bet I will not be placing any coin.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=91661.msg1012605#msg1012605

Yeah, i take about .2% of all I pass though (minus costs). people know what they are investing in and what they get back. But yeah I don't know what pirate is doing, but it really does not seem to me to be a ponzi.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=91661.msg1030188#msg1030188

Im sure others will find more juicy ones, there must be a bazillion posts where you insult anyone questioning Pirate or BST, but these should be enough to make you crawl back under your rock.