Is pirate considered a scammer by Bitcoin community*? Poll:vote/view results

[peasant]

I thought the deal with pirate was something like this.

Give me btc at 7% a week interest with no insurance or guarantee on your deposit. I won't tell you specifically what it's used for and if i default you lost your btc. Deal? Ok thanks.

Am i missing something? I don't see what all the uproar is about.

[BadBear]

I thought the deal with pirate was something like this.

Give me btc at 7% a week interest with no insurance or guarantee on your deposit. I won't tell you specifically what it's used for and if i default you lost your btc. Deal? Ok thanks.

Am i missing something? I don't see what all the uproar is about.

He said he had everyone's money, promised to pay back, then disappeared? Not hard to figure out why people are annoyed.

Read this and enlighten yourself, instead of making stuff up.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=101339.0

[DigitalHermit]

I thought the deal with pirate was something like this.

Give me btc at 7% a week interest with no insurance or guarantee on your deposit. I won't tell you specifically what it's used for and if i default you lost your btc. Deal? Ok thanks.

Am i missing something? I don't see what all the uproar is about.

Yes, by those terms he would not be a scammer. Anyone who makes an investment and isn't willing to at least consider and accept the very real possibility of default is entirely deluded. Of course, if Pirate made claims that there was no risk of default (I am unaware of any such claims and have not done a search), then he is either making those claims in a state of delusion or is making them deliberately with intent to extract money under false pretenses (in which case he is a scammer).

In my opinion the most damning evidence that he is a scammer came from his continued assurances after default had occurred that he would still pay people back. Liar = Scammer. Simple as that.

Something to consider for the future if you decide to enter into a peer-to-peer investment contract where no central legal authority is involved: It should be spelled out very clearly at the beginning what redress should be expected upon default (from loss of collateral up to and including the death penalty for the defaulting party). This is one area where organized crime does a much better job of making contract details crystal clear as well as performing "contract enforcement".

Bottom line: With no threat of consequences upon default, "scammers gonna scam".

[JoelKatz]

I thought the deal with pirate was something like this.

Give me btc at 7% a week interest with no insurance or guarantee on your deposit. I won't tell you specifically what it's used for and if i default you lost your btc. Deal? Ok thanks.

Am i missing something? I don't see what all the uproar is about.

That's not what Pirate said, it's what he meant. The essence of scamming is not saying what you mean.

[peasant]

What did he say then?

[JoelKatz]

What did he say then?

You can dig up the dozens of places where he claimed that the funds would be used for legitimate investments.

[peasant]

So we know he made illegitimate investments, or do we just not know?

[JoelKatz]

So we know he made illegitimate investments, or do we just not know?

There are no imaginable legitimate investments he could have made that would have explained his payouts. In any event, if he did in fact make legitimate investments, the burden is on him to justify his failure to make payouts on schedule.

If you have no particular reason to trust me but give me $100 to buy you groceries and I come back with no groceries and no $100, you can strongly suspect that I've just robbed you. But if you ask me what happened and I say, "No comment", then you can conclude that effectively you can act as though I've robbed you. Yes, it's possible that I got mugged. But if I did get mugged and lost your money, I have an absolute obligation to explain to you what happened. Otherwise, you absolutely should assume the worst.

This is even stronger than that because at least in the grocery example, we can imagine ways the money could have legitimately been lost. But Pirate didn't just lose money, he sustained a scheme where payouts were made as the profits from legitimate investments where no conceivable pattern of legitimate investments could explain those payouts. It's as if I said that aliens were going to give you not just ordinary groceries but the most delicious groceries imaginable, and then I took your $100 and never came back.

[peasant]

So we don't know. Thanks. 

[the_thing]

So we don't know. Thanks. 

We assume he didn't make any investments at all since it was a ponzi scheme.

[JoelKatz]

So we don't know. Thanks.  

Yes, we do know. You're playing "if the glove does not fit, you must acquit" where you stubbornly insist on focusing on the one thing you don't have while ignoring the many pieces of evidence you do have all the while sticking your fingers in your ears and shouting "LALALALALALALALA!".

What is the other possibility?

If you check your gas tank and it's low and then you check it the next day and it's full, how do you know someone put gas in it? Simple. Something must explain why there's more gas in now than before, and no explanation other than that someone put gas in it is plausible. Is it possible something else bizarre happened. Sure, maybe. I can't think of anything, but it's possible there might be some other way the gas in the tank seems to have filled it. Does that stop us from knowing that someone put gas in it? No. The standard for knowledge is reasonable and contextual, it doesn't require some kind of absolute metaphysical certainty.

[peasant]

It's that you don't know, but you keep saying you know. That's all the question was. I was never questioning that your theory was wrong or right. In all honesty i don't really care. For the people that foolishly deposited coins with pirate. They should be seeking evidence not theories, if they care enough to get something back.

[JoelKatz]

It's that you don't know, but you keep saying you know. That's all the question was. I was never questioning that your theory was wrong or right. In all honesty i don't really care. For the people that foolishly deposited coins with pirate. They should be seeking evidence not theories, if they care enough to get something back.

I do know. You keep saying I don't. I explained how I know. You don't disagree with my reasoning, yet you refuse to accept its conclusion. I'm baffled. Either I'm misunderstanding you or you seem to have stuck in your head that there's only one way you can know something and if you can think of one way you could know something that isn't the way you do know it, then you don't know it.

[peasant]

Your explanation describes a theory. If i wasn't clear enough before, i'm asking does any have any real facts, or are we still just guessing? Something like real documented evidence that shows where coins went and didn't go. Does anyone even know who he is, and any of that evidence. The reality is that no one seems to know from what i have seen. It's all theories. Evidence does exist, but no one has put enough of an effort to gather it, didn't try at all to gather it, or just isn't posting it. You could have simply answered with "no i don't know" to my orignal post, "but i'm pretty sure something like this and this happened". End of story.

[JoelKatz]

Your explanation describes a theory.

Yes, like evolution and gravity. I analyze a set of facts and conclude that only one explanation for those facts is reasonably possible.

If i wasn't clear enough before, i'm asking does any have any real facts, or are we still just guessing? Something like real documented evidence that shows where coins went and didn't go.

That's what I presented, real facts. They're just not the particular facts you want, and therefore you feel like you can ignore the conclusion they inescapably lead to.

The amount of money he took is a real fact. The return rate he promised is a real fact. That no business model is known that can provide those returns is a real fact. That he stopped making payouts with no explanation is a real fact. These real facts (and others) lead to one and only one conclusion.

If you have some alternate conclusion consistent with these facts, please share them with the group. But there are a large set of known facts and there is only one explanation consistent with them., No other explanation is known or reasonably imaginable. That is how you reason from facts and reach conclusions. There is no other way to do it.

That there are specific facts that we could have, don't have, and that could be helpful does not in any mean that we cannot be confident in the conclusions we've reached from the facts we do have. Can you set out any set of plausible additional facts that would change the conclusion? I'm pretty sure you can't.

[peasant]

Nothing in that theory explains where the coin was invested, if it even was invested, where it went, and most importantly where it is now. I think you have answered my question by refusing to answer it. Thanks again.

Hopefully someone with more intimate knowledge of pirates operation can help get some closure to the drama. Good luck.

[JoelKatz]

Nothing in that theory explains where the coin was invested, if it even was invested, where it went, and most importantly where it is now.

Correct. But that wasn't the question.

I think you have answered my question by refusing to answer it. Thanks again.

I think you lost the context of this conversation. The question was whether we know that he didn't put the money into legitimate investments as he claimed he would. And the answer is that we know he didn't because there are not, and cannot be, any legitimate investments that meet the necessary criteria.

Your original question was:

I thought the deal with pirate was something like this.

Give me btc at 7% a week interest with no insurance or guarantee on your deposit. I won't tell you specifically what it's used for and if i default you lost your btc. Deal? Ok thanks.

Am i missing something? I don't see what all the uproar is about.

And the answer is that the uproar is that he claimed the money would be used for legitimate investments and we know they were not because there do not exist any legitimate investments that can pay 7%/week interest. (There's also other evidence, it's not just that. See the rest of the thread.)

[Yolocoin]

Bump, because I still haven't heard any actual movement re: Pirate

[bitcoinbear]

Bump, because I still haven't heard any actual movement re: Pirate

Everybody has forgotten about pirate, now we are talking about the GLBSE fiasco.

[novusordo]

Bump, because I still haven't heard any actual movement re: Pirate

Everybody has forgotten about pirate, now we are talking about the GLBSE fiasco.

Nobody has forgotten about pirate, nor will they.

Pirate's tale of plunder (not really plunder, people willingly gave him coins) will be inscribed upon stone (or in the blockchain) and passed down through generations upon generations of future Bitcoinauts.