A day in the life of a pirate.

[P4man]

As a gentlemen I wont discuss how much money other people own.

Though, in the BS&T deposits, considering the transaction volume ever Monday when the interests are paid, my wild guess would be that there are 100-200k BTC.

I said owes. Not owns.
Lets assume your lowest number is correct. That means he would currently be paying over 20 million dollar per year in interests. Let that sink in for a moment.
Now I dont know about you, but if I had some  business model that was somehow that incredibly profitable, and yet I needed to loan even and ever more, Id talk to a bank or anyone willing to fund me at slightly less insane interest rates.

[herzmeister]

[...] that has been looking for an invite, and yet more stories of people who have given out invites to people who have still not gotten in.

Invites are very apt for a Ponzi too in the beginning. You want to make sure that your friends and inner circle profit before they back out, right?

[wachtwoord]

As a gentlemen I wont discuss how much money other people own.

Though, in the BS&T deposits, considering the transaction volume ever Monday when the interests are paid, my wild guess would be that there are 100-200k BTC.

I said owes. Not owns.
Lets assume your lowest number is correct. That means he would currently be paying over 20 million dollar per year in interests. Let that sink in for a moment.
Now I dont know about you, but if I had some  business model that was somehow that incredibly profitable, and yet I needed to loan even and ever more, Id talk to a bank or anyone willing to fund me at slightly less insane interest rates.

In Bitcoins? Good luck finding a bank. Or in fiat? Volatility might take your entire profit. This way (if this is true of course) he makes less money but the income is far more certain.

[piotr_n]

That's a smart correlation.

Not rally. Not everyone uses the automatic interest payments and the transaction volume sums up the payments and the change.
That's why I said "a wild guess".
But on the GLBSE's PPT bonds alone you have over 50k so I would say that there should be at least another 50k on top of it, outside GLBSE.

[piotr_n]

As a gentlemen I wont discuss how much money other people own.

Though, in the BS&T deposits, considering the transaction volume ever Monday when the interests are paid, my wild guess would be that there are 100-200k BTC.

I said owes. Not owns.
Lets assume your lowest number is correct. That means he would currently be paying over 20 million dollar per year in interests. Let that sink in for a moment.
Now I dont know about you, but if I had some  business model that was somehow that incredibly profitable, and yet I needed to loan even and ever more, Id talk to a bank or anyone willing to fund me at slightly less insane interest rates.

Sorry - English is not my native language

AFAIK, the business has been running sine November and the initial rates were lower.
Analyzing it in a few years span is purely theoreticall.
A ponzi or a legit - the interest rate that we are getting now is obviously temporary.
That's the economy: you need more credits - you rise interest rates. You don't need more credits or have a competition that takes your customers away - you lower the rates.
As one of the guys said: this may be just one in a life time chance, which wont last forever - so risk to pick it up or keep doubting... the choice is only yours.

[wachtwoord]

Interest rates were higher in November (3% per 3 days 3546% interest per year compounded) versus 7% per week now (3273% per year  compounded).

[P4man]

AFAIK, the business has been running sine November and the initial rates were lower.
Analyzing it in a few years span is purely theoreticall.

So its been running for 8 months. Is analyzing over the next 6 month reasonable then? Because even if he stopped accepting funds all of a sudden, that would put the number at "only" $10M for the next 6 months.

A ponzi or a legit - the interest rate that we are getting now is obviously temporary.

I heard that 8 months ago.

[piotr_n]

Interest rates were higher in November (3% per 3 days 3546% interest per year compounded) versus 7% per week now (3273% per year  compounded).

Oh, ok - so another reason to assume that they will be going down in a future...

[coblee]

My guess here would be that his customers need more than 330 BTC

Give us your best guess of how many BTC pirate currently owes.

As a gentlemen I wont discuss how much money other people own.

Though, in the BS&T deposits, considering the transaction volume ever Monday when the interests are paid, my wild guess would be that there are 100-200k BTC.

That's a smart correlation.

It was a decent theory, but Monday transaction volumes are the lowest of each week:
http://blockchain.info/charts/estimated-transaction-volume?timespan=30days&showDataPoints=false&daysAverageString=1&show_header=true&scale=0&address=

[piotr_n]

A ponzi or a legit - the interest rate that we are getting now is obviously temporary.

I heard that 8 months ago.

Well, then all I can tell you, is that you should have invested your capital in BS&T 8 month ago, compound the interests and thus multiply the initial capital few times by now.
And then withdraw it all today - yet before the ponzi collapses

No risk - no gain. Suit yourself.

[coin_toss]

Why doesn't pirate try to hide is real identity?

Hm?
Why isnt he just revealing it?

Why does he limit deposits?  

Does he really? There are a gazillion pass through bonds and other schemes that funnel money to Pirate. Ive not seen any one of those refusing new deposits. It doesnt look to me like he is reducing his holdings. BTW, Madoff also tried hard to give the impression of not wanting to accept everyone's money and making it look like a privilege.

   He has Forex experience

Surely not as much Madoff.

   At least some portion of his business requires locality and face-to-face type transactions

Thats what he says. If you were running a ponzi, it makes perfect sense to spread that kind of disinformation.

   If he were really doing something massively illegal the US could, and would, come in and snatch him in a heartbeat

Took a while before they snatched Madoff. That said, Im not even sure if it would be illegal with bitcoins.

   He is not alone in what he does, as a few others that he is aware of have also started similar operations

So he says. Ive yet to see anyone step forward and say they do the same independently . Most other high yielding investments seem to be all about funneling money to pirate.

P4man your arguments are like a broken record. If I were not so lazy I would copy paste a rebuttal from one of the previous threads. The facts speak for themselves now. BTCST has been operating for almost 8 months without a hitch. At what point will you admit that you are wrong? 12 months? 2 Years? Or Never?

[RoloTonyBrownTown]

At what point will you admit that you are wrong? 12 months? 2 Years? Or Never?

I'm going with never.   But I'm also going to add a "who gives a crap what he thinks" into the mix.

[Bitcoin Oz]

http://tmblr.co/ZMIp3vNthL_Q   

[Sukrim]

P4man your arguments are like a broken record. If I were not so lazy I would copy paste a rebuttal from one of the previous threads. The facts speak for themselves now. BTCST has been operating for almost 8 months without a hitch.

Still to my knowledge nobody has (publicly) tried to combine pirate's addresses and check out what he might actually do with that money. Does it end up at MtGox after 2-3 hops? At silkroad? Is it transferred in huge batches or only in 0.1 BTC transactions? ALL the information is already out there, in the block chain + in the clients of pirate's customers (who know which addresses are his). We even know quite on time when he pays the interest on Monday, so even without any account holder cooperating we could still get out quite a bit of information there.

Something like http://toolongdidntread.com/category/bitcoin/ developed a bit further could really come in handy...

Operating for 8 months means nothing as long as there are 7% or more per week flowing in (he gives an estimate of ~10% in total per week here in this thread). So far, with all the "pass through" operations, people seem eager so far to throw money at him, so probably he still grows exponentially.

[P4man]

Operating for 8 months means nothing as long as there are 7% or more per week flowing in (he gives an estimate of ~10% in total per week here in this thread).

He doesnt even need such inflow rate, since most people are reinvesting their profits. If everyone does that, pirate could keep a ponzi going as long as more new funds flow in than people withdraw, and that seems a certainty at this point.

[Sukrim]

The real test will still be when (if?!) he decides to lower interest and some big accounts might drop out + withdraw. This will happen this year or latest next year - after that there won't be enough BTC mined to pay for his interest and it would be obvious that he pays it from deposits. So for coin_toss: in ~2 years we'll see who was right, if there is a "bank run" after lowered interest rates.

[P4man]

The real test will still be when (if?!) he decides to lower interest and some big accounts might drop out + withdraw. This will happen this year or latest next year - after that there won't be enough BTC mined to pay for his interest and it would be obvious that he pays it from deposits. So for coin_toss: in ~2 years we'll see who was right, if there is a "bank run" after lowered interest rates.

Since we dont know how many btcs are deposited, theoretically a ponzi could go on even if pirate owes more btc than there are in existence.

[Sukrim]

Yes, but by then it'd be obvious.