Starfish BCB - Loans and Deposits

[Shadow383]

Micon is a little bit crazy. Most pro poker players are. However, he had the wisdom, the foresight and the kindness to warn everyone about these ponzi schemes. The fact that you chose to ignore him is testament to your own lack of wisdom. A fool and his money are easily parted.

He whined and created controversy (which, by the way, did wonders to provide publicity for BS&T and brought in a bunch of new victims) whilst some of us were trying to investigate the scam properly and calmly explaining the facts of the matter. By attacking outright the entire lending forum, he managed to appear as an amusing tinfoil-hatter (just look at his accusations in the most recent pages of the Vescudero thread) and so potential Pirate marks didn't listen to him.

By diverting the forum away from proper, civilised debate Micon made it much more difficult for the rest of us to point out the obvious.

[CharlieContent]

He whined and created controversy (which, by the way, did wonders to provide publicity for BS&T and brought in a bunch of new victims) whilst some of us were trying to investigate the scam properly and calmly explaining the facts of the matter. By attacking outright the entire lending forum, he managed to appear as an amusing tinfoil-hatter (just look at his accusations in the most recent pages of the Vescudero thread) and so potential Pirate marks didn't listen to him.

By diverting the forum away from proper, civilised debate Micon made it much more difficult for the rest of us to point out the obvious.

I definitely understand where you are coming from. He can be quite rabid. He seems to be on a well intentioned, but ill judged crusade against Bitcoin scamming. I can see why he is so virulent though. Bitcoin scams are a really destructive influence on the whole system. I've already made my initial and only cash investment into Bitcoins back many times. I still hold a lot of coins, but even if the system disintegrates totally I am coming out a winner. However, I can see that if someone had a lot more to lose they might be quite acrimonious when dealing with scams of such a huge magnitude that they could destabilize the system.

To put it more simply: Bitcoin is a tiny, tiny economy in real terms. It's easy for people to move the markets with transactions that would be miniscule in the real world. If someone pulls off a huge scam then it could easily negatively effect the price of everyone's coins. So because a lot of dumb fucks don't know the meaning of due diligence, we all end up losing money. When you take that into consideration, I think Micon can be forgiven for foaming at the mouth a bit.

I agree with you though, the guy should have toned it down a bit.

With regards to Vescudero, I made my point in the thread about how I felt. I don't agree with Micon that he is necessarily going for a bigger con at a more auspicious time, but he has definitely behaved suspiciously. He's run a loss making enterprise, seemingly for the purposes of gaining the trust and goodwill of the community very quickly. I am not saying he necessarily has nefarious motives, but he behaved suspiciously and future enterprises of his should definitely be treated with suspicion and not renewed trust. No one should be allowed to buy trust like that. Pretty tricky to get that into the heads of those who have the lovely sweet taste of free coins in their mouth though.

I'll get out of this thread now, but a final point: Bitcoin is anonymous and irreversible. We all know this. At the moment, because of how people are using it, it is its greatest weakness. It should be its greatest strength.

[jasinlee]

In the case of Micon, there are ways to have logical discussion and explain your point of view. Micon did it the wrong way, and in the process made almost everyone hate him, and then joined up with sealswithclubs and as a result tainting their image along the way IMO. Other users that a lot of people "hate" joelkatz, phinneaus gauge, loupgaroux, all of which (and there are others those are just off the top of my head) are often hated on the forums but have excellent arguments and tend to reveal angles we had not considered. Micon could have gone this route and earned much needed clout, instead he made almost all of us hate him with his belligerence.

[BorderBits]

Obviously there is no way that a grown man who loves a children's cartoon would be running a scam either maliciously or ignorantly.  I rate the accusations against Patrick AAA-. 

[BorderBits]

If you do this and are indeed not Micon you are at least more intelligent then he is.

What if we're using one's ability to not lose money to obvious scams as a metric for intelligence?  AA-. 

[PatrickHarnett]

I am aware some people have provided me GLBSE addresses for repayments.  If you think the address I hold is a GLBSE address, please pm me a fresh address.

[Trance104]

What a giant shit-storm. If you continue paying back Pat, I'll be truly impressed.

Not just saying this because I have coins with you, but because it's just one thing after another!

 

[Micon]

Just picking up a point that Joel made, it's not simply a case of bad loans (people refusing to pay or those that invested into Pirate and then defaulted).  There are also a range of GLBSE assets that have been used to generate income since the start of the year.  Some have proven to be very good, others have tanked recently and I'm not keen to sell those at a huge loss unnecessarily, and others have been much more at the scammy end.  In looking after this, it's not a case of taking a knee-jerk reaction and panicing and yes, to-date I have taken significant losses.  That wasn't helped by losing 8000+BTC of some other obligations that I had relating to PPT, but being one of the few who made good on those promises is separate to this thread.  I have also injected a large quantity of cash into the system to cover obligations.

Today, seeing the GLBSE is doing whatever it's doing reinforces the non-panic approach.

As for Micon, he's looking for something in particular, and if he bothered to actually understand what was written in this thread he would have realised I have answered his question, just not the way he would like me to.  As a non-customer, he's not entitled to a better answer than that.

ur playing great kiddo / keep up the good work.

PM me next time you give an AAA+ rating to a scammer or start the next Janken fund.

seriously pack it in home boy.   maybe you are a plain 'ole scammer / maybe you are just too stupid to handle bitcoins / either way stop fucking people out of money and funneling "investor" funds into random scams and unlicensed securities.

"oops I lost another $90k" 

goooooooo Starfish!   (do you know starfish is a slang term for asshole?)

I hereby apologize to Patrick and the community for this drunken post.  I can understand if some people lose respect for me because of this.

Even if I think Patrick is a scammer or inept, I should not type such angry words just to be mean.  I take full responsibility for my actions.  Gonna tighten up my game.

I'm raising my hand on this one and fully admitting I was wrong. 

Sorry community and to Patrick directly.

[salty]

I hereby apologize to Patrick and the community for this drunken post.  I can understand if some people lose respect for me because of this.

Even if I think Patrick is a scammer or inept, I should not type such angry words just to be mean.  I take full responsibility for my actions.  Gonna tighten up my game.

I'm raising my hand on this one and fully admitting I was wrong.  

Sorry community and to Patrick directly.

*Applause*

Well done fellow, you just went up in my estimation. I appreciate you have only been trying to help people stop getting scammed but the way you were doing it was just too much to handle, especially with all the goons and trolls circling around this place trying to whip everyone up for their amusement.

[PatrickHarnett]

I hereby apologize to Patrick and the community for this drunken post.  I can understand if some people lose respect for me because of this.

Even if I think Patrick is a scammer or inept, I should not type such angry words just to be mean.  I take full responsibility for my actions.  Gonna tighten up my game.

I'm raising my hand on this one and fully admitting I was wrong. 

Sorry community and to Patrick directly.

An unusual post to greet me this morning.  I did think it was a bit out of character, but I tend to ignore the insults here anyway.  However, I appreciate your post.

I understand that you might consider me a scammer, but I've given up trying to correct that.  Inept I would probably also disagree with.  Dealing with a large number of dis-honest people in bitcoin land - definitely especially now Nefario has decided to kill off the value held in GLBSE investments.

[Chang Hum]

I hereby apologize to Patrick and the community for this drunken post.  I can understand if some people lose respect for me because of this.

Even if I think Patrick is a scammer or inept, I should not type such angry words just to be mean.  I take full responsibility for my actions.  Gonna tighten up my game.

I'm raising my hand on this one and fully admitting I was wrong. 

Sorry community and to Patrick directly.

GLBSE investments.

Isn't that an oxymoron?

[Shadow383]

I hereby apologize to Patrick and the community for this drunken post.  I can understand if some people lose respect for me because of this.

Even if I think Patrick is a scammer or inept, I should not type such angry words just to be mean.  I take full responsibility for my actions.  Gonna tighten up my game.

I'm raising my hand on this one and fully admitting I was wrong. 

Sorry community and to Patrick directly.

An unusual post to greet me this morning.  I did think it was a bit out of character, but I tend to ignore the insults here anyway.  However, I appreciate your post.

I understand that you might consider me a scammer, but I've given up trying to correct that.  Inept I would probably also disagree with.  Dealing with a large number of dis-honest people in bitcoin land - definitely especially now Nefario has decided to kill off the value held in GLBSE investments.

Out of curiosity, how badly has the GLBSE situation affected your repayment schedule?
I put some of the coins I took out of starfish before it collapsed into GLBSE - probably not an improvement overall 

[PatrickHarnett]

Out of curiosity, how badly has the GLBSE situation affected your repayment schedule?
I put some of the coins I took out of starfish before it collapsed into GLBSE - probably not an improvement overall  

It appears to have screwed things up pretty convincingly.  I was going to compile a table covering things, but text will work just as well as I have had responses (and non-responses) from various people this week.

I had invested >5000 BTC (excluding anything pirate related because that's outside the mandate for Starfish) and have been in communication with some of the issuers this week.  One is straight out of business so despite having one of the best dividend formulas on the market, 1500BTC is effectively gone there.  A couple of others appear to have done their best to also fail (another 600), and I understand there is a recovery effort for one of the other investments that I hold covering 1100BTC.  There's around 1000BTC that still seems supported by decent issuers.  

In the interests of recovering client funds I also went through the bullshit AML process that GLBSE put up yesterday.

The loan book is approximately 8800BTC and broken down as follows:
 - People known to be dodging responsibilities (3): 400BTC
 - People suspected of dodging responsibilities or being slow to payback (7): 1350BTC
 - Tied to sale of another asset - working with client to resolve (1): 800BTC
 - Good people continuing to make repayments (: 1200BTC
 - Accounts that were then tied to Pirate (and also slow) (5): 5000BTC - Most of this is via HK and Nckrazze, but of which I've discussed options with during the past few weeks and is being paid back although slowly.
 - And not counted is an account where the person is probably in prison (that might get collected eventually).
 - So >6k should still be recoverable.

Overall, however, with the demise of different companies on GLBSE and people running from their obligations (defaulting) it looks like the repayment schedule will continue but will face a deficit of about 25%.  That is, there is probably around 9000BTC tied up to cover the 12000BTC outstanding.  This also means I will be making pro-rata payments on all accounts from now on, even if you haven't requested a withdrawal.

[Trance104]

Sheesh Pat!! I commend your efforts!!!!

[PatrickHarnett]

Sheesh Pat!! I commend your efforts!!!!

Sometimes that's not enough - that's why I've poured a heap of money into this as well as having spent a lot of time extracting coins out of people and will continue to do so.

[TheBible]

This again, huh?  pirate started like this.  Super helpful, big apologies and promises, the forum heaping praise on him and scorn on doubters.  Then he split with all the money. A month later, he'll get a scammer tag.

You are all going to let it happen again, and you'll be absolutely blown away for the umpteenth time this has happened.  It's as if you have no pattern recognition at all.

[JoelKatz]

This again, huh?  pirate started like this.  Super helpful, big apologies and promises, the forum heaping praise on him and scorn on doubters.  Then he split with all the money. A month later, he'll get a scammer tag.

You are all going to let it happen again, and you'll be absolutely blown away for the umpteenth time this has happened.  It's as if you have no pattern recognition at all.

He got money from investors and he claims he has legitimate losses due to loans that went bad, indirect Pirate-related losses, and GLBSE operational stoppage. It's possible he's lying about the extent of his losses, but we all knew that he would eventually sustain those kinds of losses if he wasn't scamming. He is splitting losses from high-risk loans with his investors. Even if he walked away from all his obligations now, it still wouldn't be clear this was a scam. (As opposed to Patrick just being rather naive and causing his equally-foolish investors to suffer heavy losses due to making obviously bad loans.)

In other words, what he is claiming happened is precisely what we all said would happen if he wasn't scamming. Pirate didn't start by claiming to be making high-risk loans. Pirate didn't start by claiming he had suffered losses due to bad loans.

[BorderBits]

Given the recent information provided by Patrick, I rate his ability to repay AAA-

[Shadow383]

This again, huh?  pirate started like this.  Super helpful, big apologies and promises, the forum heaping praise on him and scorn on doubters.  Then he split with all the money. A month later, he'll get a scammer tag.

You are all going to let it happen again, and you'll be absolutely blown away for the umpteenth time this has happened.  It's as if you have no pattern recognition at all.

Pirate didn't pay anything back, and it was obvious from the start that he had no intention of paying anything back. Patrick has been paying back at a pretty regular rate...

Patrick is realistically guilty of massively understating risk (in the case of both his own fund and his ratings of other funds), but I don't know of any major BTC investments that haven't lost money lately.

Best of luck to patrick in getting this shitstorm sorted out, I've lost somewhere in the region of 80BTC to the GLBSE situation myself  

[PatrickHarnett]

I noticed Greece was rated BBB- yesterday.  Their bond holders were told to expect a 50% reduction in principal several months ago.