"Long-term offers" - gonna have to tackle this 1 eventually

[bg002h]

Is this why you took part in pirate's ponzi scheme? Because you thought it would be fun? Did you "earn" any "interest" from it?

It was fun, and still is! I have several bets and other deals related to the final outcome, which I'm excited to see resolved (hopefully in my favor). Ponzi schemes are a much more fun way of gambling than Satoshi's Dice, that's for sure.

I did win some BTC, which is rightfully mine. Pirateat40 is guilty of lying about the rules of the game, but the players are innocent. If a casino rigs a game, you wouldn't blame those players who made a profit (even if they may have guessed that the game was rigged) -- you blame the casino.

I never promoted BS&T, and I posted several times that I thought it was a Ponzi.

I won some BTC at this game...a little over BTC2.  I had a good feeling it was a ponzi and will be nearly convinced it was if Matthew loses his bet (to be completely convinced, I'd need to look at a balance sheet and see incoming deposits being sent out as interest payment).  I don't feel morally entitled to the BTC2 that I "earned" in "interest."  I am grown up enough to see that when a story sounds too good to be true, it is. I had a decent hunch I was being lied to when I made my deposit, although the revolutionary nature of Bitcoin does blur the lines between plausible and crazy just enough to keep one second guessing oneself. 

I think it would be best for the community if those who profited on this scheme helped make restitution in some way...although I doubt anyone profited enough to make much of a dent in the losses.

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[stochastic]

Just leave everything the way it currently is.

[saddambitcoin]

I support theymos.  Sorry, bitcoin gods. 

[Raize]

I've actually considered doing objective-based evaluations on various topics for every single Bitcoin business and offering them the opportunity to explain via Skype, phone, or email their responses then offering a rating because of it. I've only made a partial list and I'll just put two of them here:
If they store Bitcoin, do they have an exit address?
If they provide two-factor authentication, is the third party service/hardware sound?

The problem is that not all of these questions would be universally-applicable and it would be a huge under-taking to do it for free. Also, there are some businesses that would not want to share certain things publicly out of a somewhat legitimate fear of losing competitive advantage. I tend to lean more on the detractor side of this, however. If a business isn't willing to explain how it makes you money, it is very likely the way it makes money is you.

I think a community effort for coming up with objective-based ratings might help get us started, but it could be that we would need multiple people offering this sort of service along with newsletters and "consumer reports"-style review.

To be honest though, we probably needed this a year or more ago. There will be a lot of people claiming we are going on witchhunts or "in cahoots" if we would just up and do it now. It'd honestly be a lot of unforgiving work and the community would be similarly unforgiving if a business went up and disappeared.

[Severian]

If a business isn't willing to explain how it makes you money, it is very likely the way it makes money is you.

This should be in banner bold at the top of the "Long Term Offers" section.