Starfish BCB - Loans and Deposits

[Rassah]

If Patrick had only classified his investment thing as a managed hedge/mutual fund, with returns based on his investment skills as opposed to fixed interest "savings account" style returns, none of this would have been a problem. Losses would have had to be taken by the customers instead of Patrick, and his returns would have been consistent with the average hedge fund (lesson: don't invest in hedge funds, people. You'll save time by just flushing your money down the toilet).

[heatstroke]

If Patrick had only classified his investment thing as a managed hedge/mutual fund, with returns based on his investment skills as opposed to fixed interest "savings account" style returns, none of this would have been a problem. Losses would have had to be taken by the customers instead of Patrick, and his returns would have been consistent with the average hedge fund (lesson: don't invest in bitcoins, people. You'll save time by just flushing your money down the toilet).

the "average" hedge fund managed by a well-educated, certified professional typically grow at 3% per year.

Bitcoin "investments" claim to be capable of 5-7% per week, then typically collapse a month later with the 'manager' disappearing with all the 'investors'' money.

Truly, it's the dirty fiat currency that has the problem here.

Although Moody's and S&P were hammered in 2009 for not downgrading US debt sooner, they do a very thorough review of a company's financials  before issuing a rating.  I would be shocked if Patrick's review was more than a couple of PM's.  "Hey man, is your investment going to collapse?"  "No, dude."  "Good enough, AAAA+++ rating for you!"

[PatrickHarnett]

  I would be shocked if Patrick's review was more than a couple of PM's. 

Other than finding a new thread to troll badly, i fear you would be "shocked" if you bothered to read enough to understand the process of credit ratings.

Also, those educated hedge fund guys do a good job at losing value and only a random 1/3rd actually beat a simple index tracker.  If you wanted a nice and safe regulated market, no one would have bothered to come to Bitcoin.  If people like unregulated, wild-west, high stakes than this is the place to be.

[Otoh]

If Patrick had only classified his investment thing as a managed hedge/mutual fund, with returns based on his investment skills as opposed to fixed interest "savings account" style returns, none of this would have been a problem. Losses would have had to be taken by the customers instead of Patrick, and his returns would have been consistent with the average hedge fund (lesson: don't invest in bitcoins, people. You'll save time by just flushing your money down the toilet).

the "average" hedge fund managed by a well-educated, certified professional typically grow at 3% per year.

Bitcoin "investments" claim to be capable of 5-7% per week, then typically collapse a month later with the 'manager' disappearing with all the 'investors'' money.

Truly, it's the dirty fiat currency that has the problem here.

Although Moody's and S&P were hammered in 2009 for not downgrading US debt sooner, they do a very thorough review of a company's financials  before issuing a rating.  I would be shocked if Patrick's review was more than a couple of PM's.  "Hey man, is your investment going to collapse?"  "No, dude."  "Good enough, AAAA+++ rating for you!"

His ratings were focused on those offering them & not their particular offerings & the first thing to ascertain by him would be a real life ID I assume, with passport, driver's license, SS for US issuers, utilities bills in the same name & all confirmed by a rigorous Skype proof of docs recorded session, for those borrowers who are now in default I expect he would be prepared to release this info to those who lent to them so that ppl can take action against them if they wish otherwise what was the point, I will request this for those who ripped me off soon.

[Shadow383]

If Patrick had only classified his investment thing as a managed hedge/mutual fund, with returns based on his investment skills as opposed to fixed interest "savings account" style returns, none of this would have been a problem. Losses would have had to be taken by the customers instead of Patrick, and his returns would have been consistent with the average hedge fund (lesson: don't invest in bitcoins, people. You'll save time by just flushing your money down the toilet).

the "average" hedge fund managed by a well-educated, certified professional typically grow at 3% per year.

Source?
If the average performance of any of the funds I invest in was that poor I'd have pulled my cash out long ago 

[PatrickHarnett]

If Patrick had only classified his investment thing as a managed hedge/mutual fund, with returns based on his investment skills as opposed to fixed interest "savings account" style returns, none of this would have been a problem. Losses would have had to be taken by the customers instead of Patrick, and his returns would have been consistent with the average hedge fund (lesson: don't invest in bitcoins, people. You'll save time by just flushing your money down the toilet).

the "average" hedge fund managed by a well-educated, certified professional typically grow at 3% per year.

Source?
If the average performance of any of the funds I invest in was that poor I'd have pulled my cash out long ago 

It was a recent article I read and I've hunted for it since I read it because it was so startling - I was surprised it was that terrible (I'll hunt for it again).  I knew most funds made the owners quite wealthy even with a 1% fee, but the after tax (real, not nominal) returns for many people is negative.

[Shadow383]

If Patrick had only classified his investment thing as a managed hedge/mutual fund, with returns based on his investment skills as opposed to fixed interest "savings account" style returns, none of this would have been a problem. Losses would have had to be taken by the customers instead of Patrick, and his returns would have been consistent with the average hedge fund (lesson: don't invest in bitcoins, people. You'll save time by just flushing your money down the toilet).

the "average" hedge fund managed by a well-educated, certified professional typically grow at 3% per year.

Source?
If the average performance of any of the funds I invest in was that poor I'd have pulled my cash out long ago 

It was a recent article I read and I've hunted for it since I read it because it was so startling - I was surprised it was that terrible (I'll hunt for it again).  I knew most funds made the owners quite wealthy even with a 1% fee, but the after tax (real, not nominal) returns for many people is negative.

Over what time frame though? I mean if you looked at performance 2007-2009 or some window like that you'd probably get pretty poor results 

[PatrickHarnett]

Going off topic, the analysis of the US stock markets that suggest they out perform bank deposits is also massively skewed by the start time.  During the 1920's and 1930's there were some huge movements.  If you started from 1950 (say) you get quite a different result.  Also, you need to really compare those returns against something like treasury bonds to account for the underlying (approximation) of risk free rate.

This link has some interesting observations about the long-flat periods  http://observationsandnotes.blogspot.co.nz/2008/10/100-years-of-stock-market-history.html

Still, holding a bucket of stocks like ArthurAnderson, Enron, MCIWorld would have seen some great paper returns (until the fraud crashed them).  More recently AIG, (insert name)-investment bank, and GM probably should have been left to fail.  Still, there are some other darlings of the markets that are based on niche technology and hype which could fall from grace much faster than their ascendancy.


And, the reference I was looking for earlier: http://articles.marketwatch.com/2012-10-10/investing/34350951_1_fund-managers-active-managers-stock-funds
In the five years through June, the study reported, slightly fewer than one-third of domestic equity funds beat the total return of the Standard & Poor’s 1500 index.

[JoelKatz]

If Patrick had only classified his investment thing as a managed hedge/mutual fund, with returns based on his investment skills as opposed to fixed interest "savings account" style returns, none of this would have been a problem. Losses would have had to be taken by the customers instead of Patrick, and his returns would have been consistent with the average hedge fund (lesson: don't invest in hedge funds, people. You'll save time by just flushing your money down the toilet).

I 100% agree. But I don't think this is because Patrick was scamming, I think it was because Patrick was naive. This should have been just as obvious to Patrick's customers as it was to Patrick. Having been there, I can assure you that it certainly seemed that both sides were equally deluded and both sides were equally willfully blind.

I don't have any problem with foolish Patrick sharing his losses with his foolish customers. Hopefully, they will all learn a lesson. Some of his customers did make outrageous profits and it's not at all unfair for them to bear some of the losses.

[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.

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.

I take it you're the one writing the "I'm sorry, and thank you PatrickBarnett" thread, then?

[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.

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  

Yup, You are all really going to do this yet again.  All this time, and all these scams, yet you have managed to learn nothing at all.

See you in the "defaulting, but I have a gun" thread.

[heatstroke]

If Patrick had only classified his investment thing as a managed hedge/mutual fund, with returns based on his investment skills as opposed to fixed interest "savings account" style returns, none of this would have been a problem. Losses would have had to be taken by the customers instead of Patrick, and his returns would have been consistent with the average hedge fund (lesson: don't invest in bitcoins, people. You'll save time by just flushing your money down the toilet).

the "average" hedge fund managed by a well-educated, certified professional typically grow at 3% per year.

Source?
If the average performance of any of the funds I invest in was that poor I'd have pulled my cash out long ago 

It was an article I read for economics class years ago.  Safe growth for a hedge fund is 3% per year (above inflation), but the article's subject was this wildcat manager growing at 5-6% because he was shorting poorly-managed stocks, which is like the Wall Street equivalent of check-raising in poker.

Patrick, I find it hilarious that you're talking smack about professional hedge fund managers while your various ponzi schemes and 'investments' collapse.  The only index you're beating is the 'still posting, hasn't disappeared with the money yet' index.  This isn't a 'wild west' economy, it's a cargo cult.  Foreign capital funds are "high stakes", giving money to children in a sandbox pretending to be a stock exchange is just foolish.

[Rassah]

If Patrick had only classified his investment thing as a managed hedge/mutual fund, with returns based on his investment skills as opposed to fixed interest "savings account" style returns, none of this would have been a problem. Losses would have had to be taken by the customers instead of Patrick, and his returns would have been consistent with the average hedge fund (lesson: don't invest in bitcoins, people. You'll save time by just flushing your money down the toilet).

the "average" hedge fund managed by a well-educated, certified professional typically grow at 3% per year.

Bitcoin "investments" claim to be capable of 5-7% per week, then typically collapse a month later with the 'manager' disappearing with all the 'investors'' money.

If you are getting 3% from your hedge fund, you ARE throwing away money. Also, Patrick was wrong: although managed funds might outperform index funds 1/3 of the time (closer the 1/4th), hedge funds do WAY worse. Even if they do as well as index funds, the ridiculous fees they charge you will likely eat up all your profits (the ones you'll earn 1/4th of the time). Hedge funds are overly glamorized BS investments that rich people who don't know a thing about money use to make the hedge fund managers rich.
So, yeah, you would definitely be way better off putting your money in Bitcoin.
BTW, FYI, I invested in bitcoins, even buying at $20. The thing is, the amount of time it spent at $20 was very short to the time it spent at $3, and I've been investing continuously through the drop and the subsequent rise. Now my investment is worth thousands more than what I originally invested, even including the few grand I bought at $20. Long story short, you're an idiot.

[JoelKatz]

I take it you're the one writing the "I'm sorry, and thank you PatrickBarnett" thread, then?

I think Patrick was a fool who suckered a lot of people including himself. I'm not sorry for anything I said to or about him. He certainly doesn't deserve a thank you for what he did.

It's entirely possible his losses are entirely mythical and he is basically just keeping his investors' money. It's possible that was his plan all along. But the evidence supporting that view isn't any stronger than the evidence supporting the view that he never planned to scam anyone, was in fact as naive and foolish as his customers, and took very real losses which he is reasonably sharing with his investors.

The risk of Pirate default, GLBSE shutdown, and the like was reasonably known to both Patrick and his investors and outside the control of Patrick. Losses due to these things weren't incurred due to negligence or malfeasance on Patrick's part (other than that known by and agreed to by his customers, inherent in the fund, and part of the accepted trade-off to get such high rates).

If I borrow money from you to build a hotel and pay you 3%/year and the hotel is destroyed by an earthquake, you are entitled to pursue any assets of mine you can find. You're not a partner in the hotel. But if I borrow money from you to build a casino and pay you 1%/week and the casino is destroyed by an earthquake, you should share the losses just as you would have shared the profits. You're effectively a partner in the casino and it is totally reasonable for you to bear some of the exceptional risk just as you expected to benefit from the expected exceptional return.

[Shadow383]

If Patrick had only classified his investment thing as a managed hedge/mutual fund, with returns based on his investment skills as opposed to fixed interest "savings account" style returns, none of this would have been a problem. Losses would have had to be taken by the customers instead of Patrick, and his returns would have been consistent with the average hedge fund (lesson: don't invest in bitcoins, people. You'll save time by just flushing your money down the toilet).

the "average" hedge fund managed by a well-educated, certified professional typically grow at 3% per year.

Source?
If the average performance of any of the funds I invest in was that poor I'd have pulled my cash out long ago 

It was an article I read for economics class years ago.  Safe growth for a hedge fund is 3% per year (above inflation), but the article's subject was this wildcat manager growing at 5-6% because he was shorting poorly-managed stocks, which is like the Wall Street equivalent of check-raising in poker.

Not really, I've made more shorting overvalued tech stocks in the past year than I have off anything else (Primarily Facebook, Apple, Groupon  ).

[memvola]

If I borrow money from you to build a hotel and pay you 3%/year and the hotel is destroyed by an earthquake, you are entitled to pursue any assets of mine you can find. You're not a partner in the hotel. But if I borrow money from you to build a casino and pay you 1%/week and the casino is destroyed by an earthquake, you should share the losses just as you would have shared the profits. You're effectively a partner in the casino and it is totally reasonable for you to bear some of the exceptional risk just as you expected to benefit from the expected exceptional return.

So a contract becomes something other than what it states, not because the risk is high, but the return is "insincere". So I don't have to pay what I borrowed from you and can just say "did you honestly believe that I was making that kind of profit?" and you're okay with this. If this was something defensible, nothing would work in real life, if only because of the heap paradox.

Also, even though GLBSE shutdown was a known risk, I don't think anyone had predicted such a mess. This was almost engineered in a way to cause as much trouble as possible.

[PatrickHarnett]

I'm still curious why people that are recently registered and have little real knowledge continue to scour these threads, unless it is simply for entertainment, or they are a sock-puppet for someone else - there are a few that have turned up.  The usual insults and speculation from the likes of Joel is rather ho-hum.  And the myopia for the last decade of US economics is also a bit tedious, but then reading textbooks is quite a bit different from having your own money at risk.

Although unlikely for most people browsing, I'll go back to being on-topic.

[PatrickHarnett]

Table of balances updated at https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=61262.msg981017#msg981017

[JoelKatz]

So a contract becomes something other than what it states, not because the risk is high, but the return is "insincere". So I don't have to pay what I borrowed from you and can just say "did you honestly believe that I was making that kind of profit?" and you're okay with this.

Yes, exactly. This is called "common mistake". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mistake_%28contract_law%29

Also, even though GLBSE shutdown was a known risk, I don't think anyone had predicted such a mess. This was almost engineered in a way to cause as much trouble as possible.

That's practically the definition of force majeure. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Force_majeure

These are all reasons a contract won't, and shouldn't, be enforced as agreed.

[TheBible]

If Patrick had only classified his investment thing as a managed hedge/mutual fund, with returns based on his investment skills as opposed to fixed interest "savings account" style returns, none of this would have been a problem. Losses would have had to be taken by the customers instead of Patrick, and his returns would have been consistent with the average hedge fund (lesson: don't invest in bitcoins, people. You'll save time by just flushing your money down the toilet).

the "average" hedge fund managed by a well-educated, certified professional typically grow at 3% per year.

Bitcoin "investments" claim to be capable of 5-7% per week, then typically collapse a month later with the 'manager' disappearing with all the 'investors'' money.

If you are getting 3% from your hedge fund, you ARE throwing away money. Also, Patrick was wrong: although managed funds might outperform index funds 1/3 of the time (closer the 1/4th), hedge funds do WAY worse. Even if they do as well as index funds, the ridiculous fees they charge you will likely eat up all your profits (the ones you'll earn 1/4th of the time). Hedge funds are overly glamorized BS investments that rich people who don't know a thing about money use to make the hedge fund managers rich.
So, yeah, you would definitely be way better off putting your money in Bitcoin.
BTW, FYI, I invested in bitcoins, even buying at $20. The thing is, the amount of time it spent at $20 was very short to the time it spent at $3, and I've been investing continuously through the drop and the subsequent rise. Now my investment is worth thousands more than what I originally invested, even including the few grand I bought at $20. Long story short, you're an idiot.

So how does this work?  Every success story is worth one point, and every failure story is a negative point, and whoever has the most points at the end wins?  I mean, if your anecdote means that in every situation you are right, someone with an opposite anecdote in the same situation would then prove the opposite, right? 

Is this some dank style "Thinking defines reality" shit, or do you think maybe anecdotes aren't the same thing as data and are useless when discussing a large scale topic?