But he can win if he has the funds to shut down and pay out!
I don't think he needs the funds to shut down. All he needs to do is say that the interest in the current scheme is dropping to 1% per week, but that a new scheme is opening which pays 4%/7%, and let people switch to the new scheme if they want to. Almost everyone will switch, then he can afford to force-withdraw the rest.
Then the bet is won, and the scheme carries on, just with a new name.
Or am I missing something?
You're missing that, unlike some people, nanotube has a brain.
To keep his "trust", which is apparently not zero, Pirateat40 would want to leave a trace to the new operation. It's risky, expensive to do, and if he leaks anything, nanotube will tell him to bugger off.
Edit: remember that the Ponzi abuses human misunderstanding of the exponential function's main property (its derivative being itself) and the implications this has for the expected time-frame people think they can play it. This is why they need months of head-start to push the irrelevant number of "past days run" up!That's because he let pirate manipulate him into a put-up-or-shut-up. (...)
While I won't say pirate played this like a matador, he did pick and goad the right bull. Vandroiy saw red and charged right at the cape. Who knows when the bull will die, but the odds are very much not on its side. It remains to be seen if pirate will get an ear or two.
If this is true, he didn't get me to sign as fast as he could have, by far. For the record, about three hours after we knew the bet's terms were serious, the decision was made. Everything else was just a nonsensical show in the hope to minimize the moves of Pirateat40 which would allow to evade and still blame it on me successfully, from the perspective of people who have no clue. Most of the time taken was for the shutdown-reopen scenario that plays little role were he legitimate, and remember it was
not Pirateat40 who gave in on it.
To be precise, it was a double-bluff: I showed fear of a potential weakness of me (the shutdown-reopen scenario), and then saw him bluff on this one. In the now remote chance he didn't... bear with me, it's rock-paper-scissors at that point, it's trivial to give me a tail risk on interpreting stances wrongly.
From Pirateat40's viewpoint, I think his move is a close call. The exp growth should overpower any "surface" effects in three to five weeks. He's the psychology master, let's see whether he was right. If he was, well, he profited, and that's all that counts for someone who knows no friends and enemies.
Why am I still explaining part of my thinking to people who are completely oblivious to what is going on here?
Pirateat40 doesn't even try to hide it, people just read what they want to read.
Really why do you guys think I took the bet? What does all this even translate to, emotional outburst? Calling someone stupid without a clue what he was thinking is dangerous. I used a vote of five mathematically well-educated people whether we have >50% chance here. The outcome was 5:0. We
reduced our initial amount suggestion because we expected a chance Pirateat40 might default instead of accepting if we place too much.
My indicators start to tend to "Pirateat40 was right". Just to clarify it endlessly, this has nothing to do with who wins the bet. I... just can't feel sorry for you guys anymore. It's like looking at these cows that stay on the tracks when they run from trains. Disturbing, but it's just hard to feel with them.
TL;DR: If you are under the impression we are simply betting about Pirateat40's business being a Ponzi, and that we just sucked at staying focused on the point, you need a serious reality check. It took almost two days! On a 1:1 bet we're both certain on? Think again, we're not that inefficient.
