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 running 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