Bryan Micon's List of BTC Ponzi Schemes that should not be listed as "Lending"

[imsaguy]

Ty for the kind words.

You are welcomed / encouraged to call in, would love to talk to you about this matter next week.  I have this feeling you have interesting stories and would be a great guest.

Is there a working RSS feed for the podcasts?  I tried the ones on your site but they both seem to end around May of this year.  I'd like to have the donkdown shows automatically downloaded alongside the other podcasts  I subscribe to.

(I tried http://www.donkdown.com/component/podcast/?view=feed&format=raw&catid=34 and http://www.donkdown.com/index.php?option=com_podcast&view=rss&format=rss&catid=34 (labelled 'other podcast readers' and 'rss feed' resp.))

our RSS feeds are currently a mess.  In the market for a wordpress guy / very embarassing too

Good old wordpress. 

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[Micon]

So in the wake of the Pirate BCST debacle, there are still tons of scams running, so it's time to clean up everything:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=105285.0

[cAPSLOCK]

but Maged may have had sufficient material to establish proof. To me, that would be a lesser version of withholding the cure for a virulent plague that wipes out a large percentage of the population.

There is no cure for stupid.

[Frankie]

Now I'm going to start feeling sorry for Micon.  I must be very stupid (as he noted above) and he is turning into a parody of what he vainly tried to prevent.

(yes - this is as close as I get to trolling - but this has turned into one of the more entertaining threads in my household.  i should get MNW and Phinneas to look in, or even LouxGaroux for some more serious dissection of the thread.)

Must be a real pain in the arse to realise that real economic activity can deliver 2%/week or more.  On that basis, Micon shouldn't be in the bitcoin world at all.

Very amusing post!

In the last week, almost all of the 2%+ "funds" have turned out to be frauds, no? And many of them were rated quite favorably by the starfish, no?

What's left?

[SebastianJu]

Is mybitcointrade really a ponzi? I mean its a stock market like glbse and it looks like they were able to attract some well known names to runs securities with them. bitcoin-24 for example. So youre sure its a scam? All these websites are owned by one scammer or the owners are scammed somehow to use this instead glbse? Or do you think they only are attracted to give the website a legit view?

If so... wouldnt it be good to buy shares and contact the website owner whose shares you own so that he knows who you are even when the website turns scam or something so that dividends can be paid even then?

I dont see the ponzi. Even the security of mybitcointrade.com itself has dividends that are as low that i dont think of a ponzi at first thought.

[JoelKatz]

Is mybitcointrade really a ponzi? I mean its a stock market like glbse and it looks like they were able to attract some well known names to runs securities with them. bitcoin-24 for example. So youre sure its a scam? All these websites are owned by one scammer or the owners are scammed somehow to use this instead glbse? Or do you think they only are attracted to give the website a legit view?

If so... wouldnt it be good to buy shares and contact the website owner whose shares you own so that he knows who you are even when the website turns scam or something so that dividends can be paid even then?

I dont see the ponzi. Even the security of mybitcointrade.com itself has dividends that are as low that i dont think of a ponzi at first thought.

It perfectly matches the Stock Generation style of Ponzi scheme. Where do you think the funds to pay off investors are coming from? There's no evidence of any legitimate investments. And when the price of a security they offer decreases, what evidence is there that this price decrease came from a legitimate investment loss as opposed to them just deciding to pay less?

(A Stock Generation style Ponzi scheme is one in which made up "funds" are sold to investors. The operator periodically raises the price of the "funds" as if they were actual stocks representing companies doing well. They pay "dividends" too, out of the money gained from people buying the "funds" on a schedule picked by the operator solely to encourage investment and not based on any actual investment profits. Then one day, the operator just drops the price of the "funds" and keeps people's money. Any operation whose terms specifically permit the operator to run this scheme using "funds" whose prices are set by the operator and whose gains and losses don't reflect any demonstrated actual change in the actual value of anything can reasonably be assumed to be this scheme. There is no actual investment. Generally, these are claimed to be gambling and not investment to try to avoid legal consequences. The operator will generally claim that he never said there was any actual investment and that he fully held up his side of the bargain as he had promised.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stock_Generation

[SebastianJu]

So you say the websites that have securities there arent real? I mean that stockprices drop looks quite normal to me when the dividends drop. And i see the same at glbse too. Its simple because the dividends only bring break even after years normally. But mining projects like pyramining have a break even at 10 months. So the shareprices drop until the value is worth more to buy for the dividends paid. That has nothing to do with the business behind doing well when the dividends arent going down too much. Its only that there are better investments. So i dont see fully where the ponzihints are. The break evens are mostly worse than with projects at glbse. A ponzi really would avoid this i believe.

On the other hand... why isnt glbse listed here? I mean both sites seems to have independent securityowners. Or does any of the sites admins claim they dont work together with mybitcointrade?

Edit: I see the lists with 3% per week and so on in their thread. That looks like ponzi for real. But i dont know what it has to do with their website. I even dont see this offer at their website. Im looking at https://www.mybitcointrade.com... and there i only see a stock exchange similar to glbse.com. But messages like this: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=81357.msg1167601#msg1167601 i dont understand because i dont see it on the actual website.

[Bitcoin Oz]

Now I'm going to start feeling sorry for Micon.  I must be very stupid (as he noted above) and he is turning into a parody of what he vainly tried to prevent.

(yes - this is as close as I get to trolling - but this has turned into one of the more entertaining threads in my household.  i should get MNW and Phinneas to look in, or even LouxGaroux for some more serious dissection of the thread.)

Must be a real pain in the arse to realise that real economic activity can deliver 2%/week or more.  On that basis, Micon shouldn't be in the bitcoin world at all.

Very amusing post!

In the last week, almost all of the 2%+ "funds" have turned out to be frauds, no? And many of them were rated quite favorably by the starfish, no?

What's left?

Its hard to tell the difference between a liquidity crunch and a ponzi. Lots of the deposit programmes lent the money out to people who invested it in pirate and now cant pay depositors their funds. They may not have invested directly in pirate but their customers did and a massive amount of bad loans will cause the service to go out of business. I guess they didnt account for the risk of this happening.

[SebastianJu]

They may not have invested directly in pirate but their customers did and a massive amount of bad loans will cause the service to go out of business. I guess they didnt account for the risk of this happening.

But thats the same with glbse. There are many pirate pass through shares that now cant pay anymore. But thats the risk of the investor only. At both websites. (At least thats real investors risk. Not like in europe where investors that invested in highly risky shares at the banks and lost, now are saved with the countries money so that the banks dont close.) So i dont see why it makes the one website a ponzi and the other website is only a stock exchange. I mean its investors risk at both websites isnt it?
At least everyone investing in a loan without knowing what its used for took this risk on its own. I wouldnt ever do it but i dont see why a share of bitcoin-24.com would be scam too. I think that would only be the case when the whole website from the start would be a scam. But i dont see this sign yet. I think the admin of the website wouldnt get much from offering shares with the intend to scam afterwards. The securityowner needs to take out the invested money so he can start his business. The dividends are paid to investors and they take it out or invest again. So the only money in the system that can be stolen are bitcoins that arent invested. Because they can be stolen maybe. Selling shares by the admin wouldnt give him more money. And i dont think that investors will let lie much bitcoins unused there.

But please convince me. I dont want to get scammed for sure.

[Frankie]

Now I'm going to start feeling sorry for Micon.  I must be very stupid (as he noted above) and he is turning into a parody of what he vainly tried to prevent.

(yes - this is as close as I get to trolling - but this has turned into one of the more entertaining threads in my household.  i should get MNW and Phinneas to look in, or even LouxGaroux for some more serious dissection of the thread.)

Must be a real pain in the arse to realise that real economic activity can deliver 2%/week or more.  On that basis, Micon shouldn't be in the bitcoin world at all.

Very amusing post!

In the last week, almost all of the 2%+ "funds" have turned out to be frauds, no? And many of them were rated quite favorably by the starfish, no?

What's left?

Its hard to tell the difference between a liquidity crunch and a ponzi. Lots of the deposit programmes lent the money out to people who invested it in pirate and now cant pay depositors their funds. They may not have invested directly in pirate but their customers did and a massive amount of bad loans will cause the service to go out of business. I guess they didnt account for the risk of this happening.

I'm not saying that all of these were scams (although many appear to have been feeding scams), nor am I saying they are all insolvent (although I would bet that most are).  My point is that there was never a good reason for anyone to pay above 100% APR.

Patrick himself has announced he will reduce his nominal rate to 1% a month, and he might be one of the "good guys" insofar that he might not actually be insolvent (although I wouldn't be shocked if he is).

If the former dividends of these funds were generated by loaning money to people who plowed it into a Ponzi scheme, was Patrick right or wrong in the post I quoted?  I don't think this is a hard question.  Outside of currencies entering hyperinflation, there's no reason for any borrower to pay 100%+ APR. These rates were unhealthy artifacts of a marketplace crowded out by scams.

[Bjork]

If anyone thinks Patrick will default on his obligations and wants to draw up a reasonable contract / find escrow, I'd be willing to throw down ~100 btc or so that says he won't.  To clarify, I do think he will pay back his obligations in full.

[wachtwoord]

What indications of this do you have? I have been traveling and it has been impossible to keep up with everything.

[Bjork]

What indications of this do you have? I have been traveling and it has been impossible to keep up with everything.

Me?

Well Patrick's withdrawals are delayed / not going through now.

[wachtwoord]

Oh lol I read that as Pirate, I thought you were copying Matthews thread

[Bjork]

Oh lol I read that as Pirate, I thought you were copying Matthews thread

haha

[makomk]

So which part did you think wasn't exactly accurate? Read over what I said very carefully. I think you were thinking I said something I actually didn't say. For example, purporting to tell investors where their money is going is perfectly consistent with not giving investors any way to know where their money is going.

Sorry, didn't notice this. The Perma-Pave scammers actually gave enough specific information about where investors' money was going that one of their bigger investors managed to prove that the supposed orders their investments were meant to provide funds to help fulfil didn't actually exist, they just relied on investors not investigating that deeply. I believe they even named specific companies that they purported to have placed the orders and those companies had never heard of Perma-Pave.

[memvola]

As wachtwoord said, an Islamic bank can't invest in a business if it doesn't know what it does with the money. This actually saved the Islamic banks from the last couple crises.

true

It would have saved many bitcoiners as well.

[Frankie]

IBB is still here Interest free banking in YOUR Interest

Damn, I should have taken that bet... I'd still have 5 days left in my original 8-week bet proposal.  Heh.

I just wasn't sure who'd stick around when the big one went bust. We've seen that a lot of "trustworthy" borrowers aren't able to pay back. I guess you're a cut above, senbonzakura, and I would use you to escrow if I could do it again.

Made some pocket change on Betsofbitcoin though, both the year-end and the end-of-September bet.

[wachtwoord]

I thought you stopped responding then because you chickened out. Not trusting Shenbon as escrow was an obvious mistake, as was not trusting Patrick as escrow.

I still believe the bet was good at the time I offered it.

[Frankie]

I thought you stopped responding then because you chickened out. Not trusting Shenbon as escrow was an obvious mistake, as was not trusting Patrick as escrow.

I still believe the bet was good at the time I offered it.

I'm not so sure about Patrick... he seems to have some unfunded liabilities due to the post-Pirate credit market. http://betsofbitco.in/item?id=696

If you still believe it was a good bet, we'll have to bet via Shenbon when the next Ponzi scheme shows an obvious lag in enthusiasm.