Did pirate hurt the bitcoin economy?

[Seal]

A lot of opinions I'd have to agree with. Feels like a very Darwinian approach of survival of the fittest.

At this stage, any news whether good or bad will help spread the word of bitcoin. I'd rather better than worse though.

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[bg002h]

Can the future bitcoiners learn from the mistakes of others? Maybe if we can help educate them.

I think this is a valid point.

I think the scammer tag is a super way to educate.

[isis]

Can the future bitcoiners learn from the mistakes of others? Maybe if we can help educate them.

I think this is a valid point.

I think the scammer tag is a super way to educate.

It's an arms race though.  Future scammers will also learn from the mistakes of others.  Thus making it harder and harder to detect.

Furthermore, where does one draw the line between a scam and some business that was legitimate but failed no matter how spectacularly?  In my mind the only difference is the original intent, which is both impossible to prove and irrelevant because the final outcome is the same.

The best course to take is to research who the heck you're giving your money to very thoroughly.  Why do they want it?  What are they doing with it?  Why couldn't you do the same thing?

In otherwords, "Trust but verify!"

[kokojie]

Pirate didn’t hurt the economy he hurt people. Bitcoin is a little too big now to be hurt by a single criminal (or idiot).

I was always afraid that he was laundering money and a bunch of innocent greedy fools were helping him do it. Most people think “drug money” is all that is involved in money laundering. In reality, if you are laundering money without knowing why it could just as easily be proceeds from child prostitution or murder. People could probably rationalize it for drug money but I doubt they would for murder. If all these buccaneers lost was money and it was just a ponzi scheme - that’s a good thing.

There's no activity in the world can stably/sustainably produce weekly 7%, not even drugs. It's a simple matter of mathematics.

[paulie_w]

This is just a personal view, but I noticed like maybe 5 months there were a lot of jobs and things that can be done for bitcoins now I notice there are hardly any. I feel like this will hurt new people coming into the community. 

Yes.  Despite that I think his involvement had something to do with the price going up over the past several months, I think the project and community as a whole are worse off from his involvement in at least the sense that his shenanigans adds to an unfortunate and growing list of scams and hacks that lots of people who might otherwise investigate bitcoin will negatively associate with it and either delay taking it seriously or write it off altogether.

Yupp, that's why  I think we need some 'policing' on this forum. Players like Pirateat40 should not be allowed to promote their business. Perhaps there should be some 'board of directors' or whatever, based on votes from the forum members, and then these could look into and give advice as to whether some business should be allowed to operate on these forums or not. If a business seems shady, there should be hard questions, and if they can't be answered, such businesses should not be allowed to advertise their services.

I know a lot of people are against policying, but I think most communities does need a minimum amount of policying, otherwise it's anarchy and that's not beneficial.

The policing needs to be done by the individuals who think handing their bitcoins to just about anyone on the internet is a good idea.

Oh yeah, who is going to pay for the policing? You?

People trading off their personal responsibility to others for a fee is what leads to this kind of behavior in the first place. They no longer know how to protect themselves.

In my opinion, Anarchy is exactly what we need. People need to wake up and stop relying on third parties to provide them with their morality and responsibility.

+1

[im3w1l]

Pirate didn’t hurt the economy he hurt people. Bitcoin is a little too big now to be hurt by a single criminal (or idiot).

I was always afraid that he was laundering money and a bunch of innocent greedy fools were helping him do it. Most people think “drug money” is all that is involved in money laundering. In reality, if you are laundering money without knowing why it could just as easily be proceeds from child prostitution or murder. People could probably rationalize it for drug money but I doubt they would for murder. If all these buccaneers lost was money and it was just a ponzi scheme - that’s a good thing.

There's no activity in the world can stably/sustainably produce weekly 7%, not even drugs. It's a simple matter of mathematics.

Well you could have constant 7% per week return on capital, if capital stays constantly close to zero, and profit is sent to shareholders.

[jjshabadoo]

All that really needs to happen is for bitcoin business people to actually incorporate their entities and stop with the anonymity. No one would invest a dime in the real world if they didn't know who ran the business.

Once people who actually have experience running businesses begin to step up, this crap will go away.

Bitcoin still has to follow basic commerce rules to be successful, i.e. businesses must be legitimate and customers should have reasonably viable means of recourse due to adverse events.

Unfortunately this community seems to be real heavy on the tech knowledge and close to ignorant on business, economic and legal issues.

Once this ASIC and block reward halving stuff settles out, there should be a period of relatively stable exchange prices and a network which is secure enough for people to begin starting truly legitimate businesses.