I believe theses quotes should now kill BS&T.

[hazek]

Btw pirate finally realized he can't handle the forums anymore and decided to move to a more controllable environment where can be in absolute control of what PR potential "investors" are exposed to - his very own irc channel: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=50822.msg1010582#msg1010582

[coinjedi]

I've noticed that there are large bets (total of 635 btc) placed on this issue on our site:

Bitcoin Savings and Trust will default before the end of 2012

If the bettors are here, thank you for your trust. We'll do our best to be a fair judge. For further clarification here is what we put on the page as the definition of "default":

"Default" is defined as keeping people's bitcoins for a period of time and not applying pre-advertised rates of interest or not letting withdrawals. Change of interest rates for future periods is not a default as long as they let people to withdraw funds before the new period.

Don't hesitate to contact us for questions, or think that the statement is resolved. For people who wonder, all the bets are moved to an off-site cold wallet.

[hazek]

I've noticed that there are large bets (total of 635 btc) placed on this issue on our site:

Bitcoin Savings and Trust will default before the end of 2012

If the bettors are here, thank you for your trust. We'll do our best to be a fair judge. For further clarification here is what we put on the page as the definition of "default":

"Default" is defined as keeping people's bitcoins for a period of time and not applying pre-advertised rates of interest or not letting withdrawals. Change of interest rates for future periods is not a default as long as they let people to withdraw funds before the new period.

Don't hesitate to contact us for questions, or think that the statement is resolved. For people who wonder, all the bets are moved to an off-site cold wallet.

Just for the record: Are you in any way shape or form involved with pirate or his business?

[coinjedi]

I've noticed that there are large bets (total of 635 btc) placed on this issue on our site:

Bitcoin Savings and Trust will default before the end of 2012

If the bettors are here, thank you for your trust. We'll do our best to be a fair judge. For further clarification here is what we put on the page as the definition of "default":

"Default" is defined as keeping people's bitcoins for a period of time and not applying pre-advertised rates of interest or not letting withdrawals. Change of interest rates for future periods is not a default as long as they let people to withdraw funds before the new period.

Don't hesitate to contact us for questions, or think that the statement is resolved. For people who wonder, all the bets are moved to an off-site cold wallet.

Just for the record: Are you in any way shape or form involved with pirate or his business?

For the record: No, absolutely not.

[hazek]

I've noticed that there are large bets (total of 635 btc) placed on this issue on our site:

Bitcoin Savings and Trust will default before the end of 2012

If the bettors are here, thank you for your trust. We'll do our best to be a fair judge. For further clarification here is what we put on the page as the definition of "default":

"Default" is defined as keeping people's bitcoins for a period of time and not applying pre-advertised rates of interest or not letting withdrawals. Change of interest rates for future periods is not a default as long as they let people to withdraw funds before the new period.

Don't hesitate to contact us for questions, or think that the statement is resolved. For people who wonder, all the bets are moved to an off-site cold wallet.

Just for the record: Are you in any way shape or form involved with pirate or his business?

For the record: No, absolutely not.

Great, thank you for answering.

[coin_toss]

I already did, I can't help you if you cut that part of my post.

Ok, let me make it clearer just for you:

How can you possibly know pirate was in USD at the time when the market moved up?

Supposedly, it's his business model:

Bitcoin is not fiat yet.  That doesn't mean it won't be at some point nor does it mean I don't believe in it. There's simply no reason at this time for me to risk market movements with my converted fiat > bitcoin

Now I don't know about you but I don't know of a business that can run by not doing what their business model says that they do. Either pirate was operating as usual when the exchange rate increased and made the profits he paid his "investors" or he didn't run his business and didn't pay his "investors". It can't be that he didn't run his business but was able to pay his "investors". There should either be loses or there should be no profits. We appear to have neither.

Unless you are willing to claim that pirate can predict the future and knew exactly when to jump back into BTC just before the price increase to avoid loses, my argument makes perfect sense.

And even if he was, how can you possibly know he doesn’t have sufficient profits saved up from last month to cover it? You can’t know, and that’s why I’ll ask you again:

Because that's not what he says is his business model. He specifically said, explicitly, that he is using other people's money as a hedge against fiat to BTC conversion risk. Why would he then after incurring these type of loses not transfer them to his clients if that is what is his business model?

It seems that there is just no reasoning with you. If your mind is that closed, there's nothing I can do here. Welcome to my ignore list. I hope you enjoy your stay.

[cryptoanarchist]

It seems that there is just no reasoning with you. If your mind is that closed, there's nothing I can do here. Welcome to my ignore list. I hope you enjoy your stay.

I'm sure you're crushed, hazek.   

[hazek]

It seems that there is just no reasoning with you. If your mind is that closed, there's nothing I can do here. Welcome to my ignore list. I hope you enjoy your stay.

I'm sure you're crushed, hazek.   

Yeah I'm devastated..   

 

[Vandroiy]

While the ignore counter is kind of annoying -- it's being abused the same way the old simple reputation system was -- its announced usage can be an indicator of people being emotionally compromised. "I will now ignore you, take that!" or something.

I never felt that skimming over pointless posts is harder than using the ignore button, you lose part of the discussion's context with it. My ignore list remains empty, and I fail to see any disadvantage of that.

[hazek]

I share the same view, so far I have only one person on ignore although there are several that I'm almost certain I wont care about their post.

It seems that in the last two days I hit quite a few nerves since my ignore count went from below first shade of yellow to the current 12+ which is fine, I do admit I paid little attention to being effective in communicating my positions and may have been a bit too blunt and persistent.

[Hunterbunter]

I don't think the quotes will kill BS&T...only a missing interest payment will, like pretty much every other business/ponzi ever.

If it's a ponzi, it's been masterfully executed from the start.

I personally suspect it started as a legitimate attempt to make some money using other people's money, at a time when it was easily possible; day trading, RL trading, whatever, and I was willing to support it and make some btcs. I was an early investor, and I could feel that optimistic burn of being onto a good thing. After a couple months RL events meant I had to withdraw my funds and deal with other things, I thought long and hard about still leaving btc in a 'savings' account there. There were various things that went through my mind, but the one that stuck was:

"How can somebody so confidently earn ~2% a day in this market legitimately? No one is so godlike that they can produce this amount indefinitely just via trading highs and lows on a daily basis - especially considering the heavy 1% trade fees." I know it's possible, but not predictable nor likely. I realize a lot could have been made through bitcoinica leveraging and market manipulation, but even that has its limits (like it crashing / being broken into constantly).

The alternative reason given, that money is flowing from the outside->in also doesn't really add up. Why would a group continuously pay 10% per week just to keep buying/selling bitcoins from Pirate? Who is so stupid and wasteful as to do or need that? Who is paying pirate 10% per week to borrow off him? Laundering, if that, would mean a million bank/IRS issues. It makes no sense in a large scale...when I first joined, I simply assumed it was something akin to money laundering (hence the anonymity), but pirate has devoutly claimed otherwise, and that wouldn't make sense either in the amounts he deals with (my own estimate is that he owes around 300k btc based on needing $135k in btc to pay interest, steadily increasing "min/max limits" + nominal re-invested interest over time etc etc). The whole PPT thing spreads the responsibility nicely).

I think it's quite possible he has made massive amounts of money via bitcoinica, and is using those funds as his buffer to trading for now, while hoping / acting to push the price back down so he can rebuy more cheaply. This would make this more of an investment bank than a ponzi, I imagine, and the price rise might be concerning, but it may also just be a case of w/e if the cash buffer is there. Again this proves nothing.

Granted it may just be that I, like hundreds of others on these forums, just can't think of how it's done so consistently and legitimately without any real service being offered that anyone here has even used. Instead of making me jealous, however, it would be most sensible to assume the simplest answer to be true. I haven't visited these forums for a few months (due to said RL events), but I'm quite surprised to see the mounting pressure on pirate. He is responding to critics very differently now than he was when I was active previously - definitely more hostile, but also more erratic/irrational. Even Apple is quite open about how it went from being a $5/share company to $650. What's the big deal? If everyone could do it, like Pirate has claimed, how could it be that hundreds of people wracking their brains could not also conceive of it? The more I think of it, the more clearly my intuition speaks.

At the end of the day, it's not a ponzi until it fails to pay what it says it will. Anyone investing today simply has faith that pirate is a better trader than them.

[cryptoanarchist]

"How can somebody so confidently earn ~2% a day in this market legitimately? No one is so godlike that they can produce this amount indefinitely just via trading highs and lows on a daily basis - especially considering the heavy 1% trade fees." I know it's possible, but not predictable nor likely. I realize a lot could have been made through bitcoinica leveraging and market manipulation, but even that has its limits (like it crashing / being broken into constantly).

Do you really think pirate pays/paid 1% trade fees?  Redo your math with more realistic numbers.

I think he's referring to TWO trades - one buy and one sell. Most exchanges are about .5% each. You have to cover a one point spread between your buy and sell.

[imsaguy]

"How can somebody so confidently earn ~2% a day in this market legitimately? No one is so godlike that they can produce this amount indefinitely just via trading highs and lows on a daily basis - especially considering the heavy 1% trade fees." I know it's possible, but not predictable nor likely. I realize a lot could have been made through bitcoinica leveraging and market manipulation, but even that has its limits (like it crashing / being broken into constantly).

Do you really think pirate pays/paid 1% trade fees?  Redo your math with more realistic numbers.

I think he's referring to TWO trades - one buy and one sell. Most exchanges are about .5% each. You have to cover a one point spread between your buy and sell.

Actually, with any sort of volume on Gox, your fees are much less than that.  So reduce your numbers even further.

[rjk]

https://mtgox.com/fee-schedule

0.25% for 30-day volumes of over 500K is the lowest it goes.

[vampire]

Unless pirate is the exchange himself.... He can easily untaint coins, in person exchange for large amounts, mixing services, etc.

[Hunterbunter]

"How can somebody so confidently earn ~2% a day in this market legitimately? No one is so godlike that they can produce this amount indefinitely just via trading highs and lows on a daily basis - especially considering the heavy 1% trade fees." I know it's possible, but not predictable nor likely. I realize a lot could have been made through bitcoinica leveraging and market manipulation, but even that has its limits (like it crashing / being broken into constantly).

Do you really think pirate pays/paid 1% trade fees?  Redo your math with more realistic numbers.

I think he's referring to TWO trades - one buy and one sell. Most exchanges are about .5% each. You have to cover a one point spread between your buy and sell.

Actually, with any sort of volume on Gox, your fees are much less than that.  So reduce your numbers even further.

~2% was based on 0.5% fee over 2 trades, assuming he has the 500k volume limit (which may not have even been the case for much of his "banking" days).

He claims 10% profit per week (on a post somewhere on this forum a few months back)...which means over 7 days, roughly 1.5% per day growth on average. ~1.5% + 0.5% = ~2%. I don't particularly think it makes a big difference even if he paid no fees...1% "confident" profit per day on a massively volatile and sometimes utterly stagnant market is living on the edge of insanity. Firstly you have to be right almost all the time, and secondly you have to be so perfectly right on big moves that any wrongs are minor are easily absorbed. Apple did well with the iPad, but they will certainly produce some crap products in the future, and had a hell of a lot of shit before it too...that's just normal business wins and fails.

In the early days I gave him some coins, but it wasn't because he was claiming arbitrage...at the early stage he said he was earning coins through local business transactions, the specifics of which he wanted to keep anonymous for the sake of his safety, and should anything "happen to him" during transactions the coins would be safe and returned somehow. Over time his ability to accept coin with little need for rejection (which implied either his business grew perfectly with however many coins he had, or the coins weren't really relevant to any real world productivity) made me rethink the situation and I cashed out. I don't regret doing so, even though he still seems to be doing just fine.

[CoinCidental]

"How can somebody so confidently earn ~2% a day in this market legitimately? No one is so godlike that they can produce this amount indefinitely just via trading highs and lows on a daily basis - especially considering the heavy 1% trade fees." I know it's possible, but not predictable nor likely. I realize a lot could have been made through bitcoinica leveraging and market manipulation, but even that has its limits (like it crashing / being broken into constantly).

Do you really think pirate pays/paid 1% trade fees?  Redo your math with more realistic numbers.

I think he's referring to TWO trades - one buy and one sell. Most exchanges are about .5% each. You have to cover a one point spread between your buy and sell.

Actually, with any sort of volume on Gox, your fees are much less than that.  So reduce your numbers even further.

~2% was based on 0.5% fee over 2 trades, assuming he has the 500k volume limit (which may not have even been the case for much of his "banking" days).

He claims 10% profit per week (on a post somewhere on this forum a few months back)...which means over 7 days, roughly 1.5% per day growth on average. ~1.5% + 0.5% = ~2%. I don't particularly think it makes a big difference even if he paid no fees...1% "confident" profit per day on a massively volatile and sometimes utterly stagnant market is living on the edge of insanity. Firstly you have to be right almost all the time, and secondly you have to be so perfectly right on big moves that any wrongs are minor are easily absorbed. Apple did well with the iPad, but they will certainly produce some crap products in the future, and had a hell of a lot of shit before it too...that's just normal business wins and fails.

In the early days I gave him some coins, but it wasn't because he was claiming arbitrage...at the early stage he said he was earning coins through local business transactions, the specifics of which he wanted to keep anonymous for the sake of his safety, and should anything "happen to him" during transactions the coins would be safe and returned somehow. Over time his ability to accept coin with little need for rejection (which implied either his business grew perfectly with however many coins he had, or the coins weren't really relevant to any real world productivity) made me rethink the situation and I cashed out. I don't regret doing so, even though he still seems to be doing just fine.

Thats another valid point ,

if pirate gets run over by a bus tomorrow  ,and hes got around 500k of everyones coins in some encrypted account or  wallet that nobody knows the password except him.........

is there any partners or any failsafe in place for investors to withdraw deposits  ? 

I had around 5k coins deposited with pirates accounts  and i have reduced it to 1k recently because thats all im comfortable losing when things go wrong

If i had more confidence ,i would put the 5000 back in ,even more but too much risk depends on the  too little information being given out 

[Phinnaeus Gage]

If the shoe fits...

All these people harping on about pirate are the worst thing about the whole debacle.    Perhaps they're right, perhaps not,  but the words these people use and the sheer gall of the "I'm smart and you're stupid" attitude they all have is appalling.

Well, unlike Pirateat40 about me I am not saying he is stupid. I said he's an incompetent trader, but that's a different thing. I've pretty much shown it, and it's a really useful part of the argument in this case.

Pirateat40 is pretty good at what he does, and certainly not stupid. Look how he acts like he doesn't care at all, and tries to put on a facade of me having said nothing of meaning.

Leaving money with him after reading this thread, though... and all the others that point out massive problems... yeah. Sorry, that's just stupid. I could just not care, but I'm in too deep now. My reputation is unusable until this ends because I'm accused of massive slander.

If you could only see your comments through my eyes.  Sadly, you picked the wrong battle to fight and only time will show how wrong you were.  Hey, but time heals everything so it's all good.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cP-c2Aq47Cs

Just started a readin' this thread, pausin' to comment. The same song came to my mind, but a better link is warranted: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YZBNfYvIMs

~Bruno~