Bitcoin Savings and Trust is probably a Ponzi Scheme: A Petition

[ineededausername]

Why doesn't everyone just leave it alone and let people do whatever they want ?

Because people are wrong on the Internet!

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[JoelKatz]

Why doesn't everyone just leave it alone and let people do whatever they want ?

My silence is not a requirement of your freedom.

And, one more time, while I think it's possible it's a Ponzi scheme, I think it's more likely something other than a Ponzi scheme. But I have no idea what, and I don't think very many other people do either. As a result, the risk is completely unknown.

[ShadowAlexey]

Oh, I certainly think it's very risky business (did I ever claim otherwise?), not so much because pirate is dishonest (although there's obviously a chance of that, too; I've just spoken to him a lot more than most have so feel more comfortable there) but because of the nature of what he appears to be doing.

So what is the nature of what he appears to be doing? Selling bitcoins?

Also, in general, internet discussions proceed more fruitfully if you don't dismiss people who disagree with you with belittling things like "Next."

Okay, I apologize. Its just that Ive read a gazillion posters dismissing the possibility of Pirate running a ponzi by arguing things that make no sense. Ive yet to read a credible explanation for either his trust, or gpumax, let alone one that explains both, other than it being a elaborate scam.

Perhaps Ill be proven wrong one day, but until I hear a better explanation, Occam's Razor applies.

How about that, some one is willing to send money to payback, he is OK to over pay for doing it, he buys this amount from pirate with rate about(7 or even 10).
This is reasonable when you want to send BIG sum(over 300k$), because when you will buy it on gox the prise will go up(see gox chart) to unknown plus gox has limits and likes to ask questions,and then you dont know how to handle it on the other side. And then pirate just buys the mined BTC for this money, slowly, over a month, taking in to account BTC inflation this shouldnt be a problem. It can work all over the world, all what u need is BTC enough to fulfill the request, because now you can buy e-money for cash everywhere and the rates are flat .

[bitlane]

Why doesn't everyone just leave it alone and let people do whatever they want ?

My silence is not a requirement of your freedom.

Why not go straight to the source and PM Pirate, rather than smear his name and reputation here ?

....pissing in the wind much ?

[bitlane]

Every one of the Debbie-Downers in this thread needs a new hobby....

[P4man]

How about that, some one is willing to send money to payback, he is OK to over pay for doing it, he buys this amount from pirate with rate about(7 or even 10).
This is reasonable when you want to send BIG sum(over 300k$), because when you will buy it on gox the prise will go up(see gox chart) to unknown plus gox has limits and likes to ask questions,and then you dont know how to handle it on the other side. And then pirate just buys the mined BTC for this money, slowly, over a month, taking in to account BTC inflation this shouldnt be a problem. It can work all over the world, all what u need is BTC enough to fulfill the request, because now you can buy e-money for cash everywhere and the rates are flat .

The price will go up no matter what, because Pirate needs to refund the lenders and the miners with BTC and he got paid in fiat. He has no alternative to buying at an exchange. Lending money from investors can delay that, but it doesnt solve the problem, in the long run, it exacerbates it.

GPUmax is the same, assuming Pirate is the main buyer, again he can not possibly mine as many BTC as he needs to pay the miners (let alone his customers), and he does pay them in BTC, not fiat,  so he again must convert fiat to btc at some point.  He needs to convert considerably more than the initial deal was to pay back both his lenders and miners. So it doesnt help, it makes it worse.

[P4man]

It's hard to actually answer that, but I assume it involves doing more or less what he hinted at in the original thread: trading coins for ridiculous markups in person with people who want to send large amounts of money without leaving a paper trail or trading on MtGox (and thus moving the entire market). If he keeps buys/sells of that sort roughly balanced, he can avoid hitting the market much and can rely mostly on his lenders' coins. At some point, if this is actually the business, he should be able to put his own profit into buying coins to replace the ones we lend him, and will thus be able to shut down the lending program. If that doesn't happen in the not-too-distant future and I don't hear a good story about why it's still more profitable to borrow, I'll be more worried.

Joel already repeated the main argument against this, it doesnt really help Pirate to have a large fund of BTC, he needs to convert fiat in to BTC anyway.

The other thing Id like to add, is that his fund is what, almost 6 months old now? I havent heard anyone being told they need to take their coins out of the fund  because Pirate has no more need for it. Has he not made a dime of profit all that time while paying out ridiculously high interest rates? I think now is a good time to start worrying if you werent already.

That's certainly true, but I hope you realize those thoughts cross our (his lenders) minds all the time too, and we aren't all stupid (I like to think I'm not, anyway).

A lot of people far more clever than me were conned by Madoff.

[ShadowAlexey]

How about that, some one is willing to send money to payback, he is OK to over pay for doing it, he buys this amount from pirate with rate about(7 or even 10).
This is reasonable when you want to send BIG sum(over 300k$), because when you will buy it on gox the prise will go up(see gox chart) to unknown plus gox has limits and likes to ask questions,and then you dont know how to handle it on the other side. And then pirate just buys the mined BTC for this money, slowly, over a month, taking in to account BTC inflation this shouldnt be a problem. It can work all over the world, all what u need is BTC enough to fulfill the request, because now you can buy e-money for cash everywhere and the rates are flat .

The price will go up no matter what, because Pirate needs to refund the lenders and the miners with BTC and he got paid in fiat. He has no alternative to buying at an exchange. Lending money from investors can delay that, but it doesnt solve the problem, in the long run, it exacerbates it.

GPUmax is the same, assuming Pirate is the main buyer, again he can not possibly mine as many BTC as he needs to pay the miners (let alone his customers), and he does pay them in BTC, not fiat,  so he again must convert fiat to btc at some point.  He needs to convert considerably more than the initial deal was to pay back both his lenders and miners. So it doesnt help, it makes it worse.

Stop, he needs to refund 30% of deposit a month (i think that BTC inflation rate is about 35%/year or 3%/month?), everything else can be done when some one(I assume that the person who receive the BTCs will want to spend them) will be selling his btc.

Have no Idea about GPUMax, because hashing is only applicable if you want to brute-force some ones RSA key or smlr. That`s the only thing that comes to my mind.

[MarketNeutral]

Why doesn't everyone just leave it alone and let people do whatever they want ?

My silence is not a requirement of your freedom.

And, one more time, while I think it's possible it's a Ponzi scheme, I think it's more likely something other than a Ponzi scheme. But I have no idea what, and I don't think very many other people do either. As a result, the risk is completely unknown.

Good point. It comes down to risk and reward, with the former being unknown and, absent further information, unknowable.

[ineededausername]

The other thing Id like to add, is that his fund is what, almost 6 months old now? I havent heard anyone being told they need to take their coins out of the fund  because Pirate has no more need for it. Has he not made a dime of profit all that time while paying out ridiculously high interest rates? I think now is a good time to start worrying if you werent already.

Well, I have heard of someone who had his funds forcibly withdrawn to his address.  Goat, please confirm that in January, Pirate returned some funds he could not handle back to you.  (Public proof is already in Pirate's thread.)

I am late to the party but I am also okay with how things are going. It took me a while to figure out the system but that's fine.

I had some coins get sent back. How do I know when it is okay to send them again?

Thx

[ShadowAlexey]

Joel already repeated the main argument against this, it doesnt really help Pirate to have a large fund of BTC, he needs to convert fiat in to BTC anyway.

The other thing Id like to add, is that his fund is what, almost 6 months old now? I havent heard anyone being told they need to take their coins out of the fund  because Pirate has no more need for it. Has he not made a dime of profit all that time while paying out ridiculously high interest rates? I think now is a good time to start worrying if you werent already.

As I said in my post, Pirate can be handling both sides of the exchange. Some people need coins and have dollars, others might have coins and need dollars. Assuming reasonable balance, he could easily be skimming off both sides of the exchange, paying us some of the bitcoin proceeds, and keeping the USD proceeds for himself. If he wanted to start covering all the coins himself, he'd probably need to move some some of the (allegedly large) USD profits into bitcoin, which would require a large bank movement, paperwork, and other stuff he probably doesn't want to do right now.

One of the risks to consider, under this model, is the chance that his local sellers/buyers find each other, and stop paying Pirate the huge premium for effectively letting them trade with each other.

I doubt that he is handling both sides, because i dont believe that there are so much interested in btc in Texas, and I think that they would find them each other long time a go) May be they got the system all over the world, then it would be possible, but in short term i think that it is one way)

[P4man]

If he wanted to start covering all the coins himself, he'd probably need to move some some of the (allegedly large) USD profits into bitcoin, which would require a large bank movement, paperwork, and other stuff he probably doesn't want to do right now.

Again, this doesnt make much sense to me, Im sorry. If he is doing both sides, he would have even less need for a large buffer, and it makes even less sense to pay these kinds of interest rates. What you are saying boils down to Pirate paying extremely high interest rates in BTC, to have a BTC buffer and thereby avoid having to convert cash in to BTC... to pay those interest rates with?

One of the risks to consider, under this model, is the chance that his local sellers/buyers find each other, and stop paying Pirate the huge premium for effectively letting them trade with each other.

Thats not a big risk to investors. At worst his business would dry up, but it wouldnt make him default.

But doesnt it strike you as... odd, to put it mildly, that Pirate somehow finds those large bitcoin buyers (and possibly sellers) willing to pay extreme prices for bitcoins, and then also find buyers willing to pay similarly insane prices for bitcoin shares on gpumax?  When no one else seems to be able to find either?

Im sure he is clever and talented, but I just cant believe the two are not related, and the explanations given so far dont relate them.

In short; I dont buy it. The trust and gpumax are part of one and the same operation, and its pretty tough to come up with sensible explanations that covers both and does not involve a scam. Im open to the possibility, but wouldnt bet a dime on it.

[P4man]

A) You don't have the marketing skills to overcome your lack of presence (or notoriety) compared to GPUMax.

You think whoever is pouring 1000s of btc in gpumax does it because of its.. marketing?
Its not just me, Ive not seen Giga or any of the other well known miners get anything like gpumax prices.

let me put it this way; whoever is buying at gpumax, could just PM giga and 2 other large miners and get a few 100GH pointed anywhere he wants for a fraction of GPUmax cost. Why isnt anyone doing that?  You think Giga would say no to a 120% offer?

B) 80 Ghash is not much.  Have you actually made a purchase on GPUMax and seen the volume generated?

80GH may not be enough for stress testing a pool, but I dont think anyone seriously believes stress testing pools is more than a tiny fraction of gpumax purchase.

You are not comparing equivalent offerings, and you are making claims that Pirate must be up to something because you have failed to execute something you see as similar.

Not just me. Everyone else.
As for the equivalence, indeed its not. GPUmax doesnt let you time your purchase, not even to the day; it restricts the pools you can point it to, and charges a premium thats at least 50% more expensive than what most miners and miner consortiums would accept. But I guess they have great marketing...

 

There are ways to use the system to gather a decent ROI.  Most people who post can't see how to use it, so the math doesn't work out for them.

You cant get a decent ROI if you dont even know what day your leases will run. If you claim you can get a decent ROI out of a non timed 150% PPS purchase, you can buy our 80GH at a bargain price and make a real killing. PM me.

[PatrickHarnett]

Red Flag No. 4: Cheaper to borrow

Doing business the Madoff way was expensive. He returned about 12 percent a year to investors, and this percentage was his cost of doing business. Madoff could have borrowed money at a much cheaper rate, and then done any trading and investing that he chose and could have kept all the profits for himself. This red flag is so obvious that it’s hard to believe Markopolos is the only person who figured it out.[/i]

Pirate is paying FAR more than 12% annually.  But I guess you would have been happy with Madoff's explanation too.

Tell me who will lend to you (at sub-usurious rates) for doing a big bitcoin operation of any sort. Now tell me who will lend to you at any rate if your business model involves dealing with shady characters who don't want to leave paper trails.

Oh, this is priceless (I'm catching up on the trash that has been written).

Do you people actually know how to borrow money?  Do you know how banks decide to extend a loan (either in business or personally).  The basic formula is you give them 120% of what you want to borrow, and they might consider it.  Show then the assets!!

Interest rates on debt might be lower, but if availability is zero, that's irrelevant.

[PatrickHarnett]

But doesnt it strike you as... odd, to put it mildly, that Pirate somehow finds those large bitcoin buyers (and possibly sellers) willing to pay extreme prices for bitcoins

That's how I made a decent chunk of money out of bitcoins (and still do).

[P4man]

If you only wanted BTC possibly in return, yes you could. Is there a dual purpose to using GPUMAX?

Its a question often asked asked. There seems to be no impact on the networks global hash rate when gpumax is running or not, so it seems very unlikely its not producing bitcoin blocks in some way. If those hashes can be used for something else as well simultanously, like merged mining does, well that would be big news to me. Its not impossible I guess, but without explaining what the side product would be, its not something I consider an adequate explanation,  particularly when none of the crypto experts seem to have thought of it so far.

[P4man]

Your 80Ghash is not worth my time, honestly.  And it doesn't really matter when the purchases run, but yes, I believe I could make more if the system were more responsive to my purchases.

Your time must be expensive. 80GH is >1600 BTC per month. If you can break even on 150% PPS, that means you could make >500BTC per month by renting our machines. I find it hard to believe that would not be worth your time, while posting in threads like these is, sorry. 
Nice story, but Ill believe when I see it.

[exahash]

Not just me. Everyone else.

You have evidence for this?  Everyone?  You do know that most people with a secret but obvious way of making a shit-ton of money are smart enough to STFU?  Pirate is the tip of the iceberg.

And we have a winner!

 

[JoelKatz]

Do you people actually know how to borrow money?  Do you know how banks decide to extend a loan (either in business or personally).  The basic formula is you give them 120% of what you want to borrow, and they might consider it.  Show then the assets!!

Interest rates on debt might be lower, but if availability is zero, that's irrelevant.

It's really this simple: You can't pay off extraordinarily high interest rates reliably unless you have an astounding source of income. If you have an astounding source of income, you don't need to borrow at extraordinarily high interest rates. This could explain a small number of loans over a short period of time to jump start some kind of amazing opportunity, but it can't explain a sustained endeavor.

A reasonable explanation would have been that he needed the money to finance a drug deal or two. But you don't keep borrowing money at high interest rates to finance drug deals unless you're planning to run off with the money.

[PatrickHarnett]

Do you people actually know how to borrow money?  Do you know how banks decide to extend a loan (either in business or personally).  The basic formula is you give them 120% of what you want to borrow, and they might consider it.  Show then the assets!!

Interest rates on debt might be lower, but if availability is zero, that's irrelevant.

It's really this simple: You can't pay off extraordinarily high interest rates reliably unless you have an astounding source of income. If you have an astounding source of income, you don't need to borrow at extraordinarily high interest rates. This could explain a small number of loans over a short period of time to jump start some kind of amazing opportunity, but it can't explain a sustained endeavor.

A reasonable explanation would have been that he needed the money to finance a drug deal or two. But you don't keep borrowing money at high interest rates to finance drug deals unless you're planning to run off with the money.

You went straight past the point without even looking.