having just come across this thread a day or 2 ago & read it all through I feel it's about time for the fortnightly 'why this looks so obviously dodgy' post again, so here goes, it's similarity to a Madoff ponzy scheme in that it's very hard to get in to, by referral only, peeps clamoring to invest & singing it & it's maker's praises, pays above average returns, set up & run by a person of high reputation (Mr Mad was prior head of the NY stock Xe), suspected of making these great & regular returns by doing something not quite kosher (front trading his stock broking clients), feeder funds appearing & referral bonuses, no oversight & doesn't allow due diligence (this understandable in the circumstances), marked communal hostility to any nae sayers (FO Troll etc), a clever humorous & self depreciating strategy of drawing in investors with reverse psychology, building an on-call extra large fund that could be drawn down for that fateful day when one sails off on a spanking new 50 foot yacht (with a not so ironic little skull & cross bones pendent) in to the Caribbean sunset - I have too much imagination, I know
ARRRRRG... My booty has been plundered!
Hayday of pirating appears to be 1600 - 1750, so though it still goes on probably being born 300+ or 400 years too late would be more accurate & funtimes, the later ones mostly ending up on the gibbet - though free-booting in the US independence & civil wars many found rewarding
PMing you now to ask to be added to the waiting list for new accounts & hope that you won't make me walk the plank so that your motley crew of jolly backers can keel-haul me
edit: an ever expanding need for more funds to be deposited (bigger volume new clients) but playing hard to get (some funds returned, no new accounts atm) as this can easily be done with existing peeps wanting more of those big returns, preferring large investors to the small fry (Mr Mad liked Hedge funds & banks more towards the end)
if this is as profitable for Pirate as for the investors why hasn't he amassed enough funds by now to be self financing & so keep 100% of the profit, also knowing & being trusted by rl peeps with $10,000s of cash to move around wouldn't some of those be interested in fully funding his ops, it's not like buying BTC anonymously via cash is so hard from the States atm afaik - perhaps they could sell something on TSR to raise a few, a BTC back to cash op might make more sense, in fairness I can see some scenarios where certain peeps would have a lot of cash & just want no hassle BTC regularly so I'm keeping an open mind on all the above synchronicity for the moment. I'll PM P@40 after I've meditated upon it with some Cuba libres, perhaps after all my freely given analysis & input he'll fast track my account
As nobody has bothered to reply to this i will take it on myself to do so.
You raise a number of good arguments supporting your apparent view that Pirate is running a ponzi scheme. Your main arguments seem to be:
- There are a number of similarities between the Madoff ponzy scheme and Pirate's loan program.
- If pirate is making as much money as he claims, why doesn't he use his own money and be fully self-financed?
- If pirate is truly dealing with real life people with large amounts of cash why don't they just finance him?
You conclude that pirate is one day going to close up shop, take everyone's money, and sail off into the sunset.
I will leave aside your third point, which you have already answered yourself when you say 'I can see some scenarios where certain peeps would have a lot of cash & just want no hassle BTC regularly.' As for your first 2 points:
The existance of similarities between a ponzi scheme and pirate's loan program is of only small significance. This kind of evidence is not really evidence at all. It is like saying Bitcoin has gone up 4000% in two years, and it rewards early adopters, therefore it is a ponzi. I'm sure you can see the weakness in this kind of argument. It is good to be skeptical of things that sound too good to be true, but you need to be careful not to be so blinded by skepticism that you miss out on legitimate opportunities.
As for why pirate doesn't simply use his own money, my understanding is that pirate IS using his own money - but his clients require so many bitcoins that his own resources are not enough. If he is dealing with people with large amounts of cash, then it makes sense that he would not always have enough resources on his own and would need to borrow some from us.
The two main reasons why I trust pirate are as follows:
Pirate has revealed information rendering himself 100% identifiable. Thus there is no sailing off into the sunset anonymously (of course he will not be identifiable to you, so you will have to take my word for it). What this means is that if pirate were to run off with everyone's money it would result in both criminal (ie fines and prison time) and civil (ie recovering the money owed) legal proceedings.
Pirate has launched a business known as GPUMAX, which is still in beta but early indications are that it will be very successful. This is not a sham business created merely to encourage trust by his investors, as it is obvious to anyone who has been accepted into GPUMAX that there has been an enormous amount of work gone into the site and business model. By sailing off into the sunset with everyone's money he would lose this business, which in my opinion has the potential to be far more profitable than his loaning program.
Obviously there is some level of risk in investing with pirate. For me, the risk is about the same level as investing in bitcoins to begin with. Remember, the government could decide tomorrow to declare bitcoins illegal, in which case the bitcoin price will crash as people rush to get their coins out. You will need to make your own assessment of the risk and decide whether you want to go ahead and invest anyway.