Let's consider the two main "business models" people tend to propose for Pirate:
If there's almost unlimited demand for bitcoins among millionaire investors (there's no proof of this at all by the way; if this were the case, BTC price would be much higher) someone else would beat Pirate by selling to them at a smaller premium. Pirate must overprice his service since he has to pay his astronomically high interest on his debt. There's only so much you can do to overprice your service just by having the right connections. Someone will have almost as good connections and will be getting a fiat loan as 3% or lower yearly rate to finance a pirate-like service and keep his fees at a small fraction of what Pirate must charge. So, Pirate will be driven out of the market very quickly, since he has voluntarily crippled himself by issuing so much ultra-high interest debt.
The second option: He's controlling the markets and earning super-high profits on market movements, since he can force others' hands by having larger volume than anyone else. Firstly, there's absolutely no evidence that this is happening and extensive evidence to the contrary. Secondly, in a highly artificially manipulated market like this, all other players will change their behaviour in order to not lose so much. Even if he can do the manipulation at high profit ratio for a short time, eventually his returns will dwindle towards nil.
So, it's utterly unbelievable that either of these is the case.
+1, but you said it all in your first line. This latest round of Team Ponzi & the FUDdettes (aq, clipse, imsaguy) are the latest to propose a possible business model for what they think is possibly an actual 3000%+ APR paying legitimate business. Here is what Pirate says he does with your $1M+ USD worth of bitcoins, in his own words:
Q: What are my coins used for?
A: Coins are primarily used for large investment transactions but may also include the following:
Market Arbitrage
Private Loans To Network Members
Never Criminal/Illegal Related
Q: How do you make enough money to pay these rates?
A: If I told you then I couldn't do what I do.
Keep making up possible business plans. Keep piling on the denial.
To aq, clipse, imsaguy, and burtw (who I think knows what's up but has issued so many Pirate pass-through bonds on GBLSE he is posting in his sig "no, it's not a Ponzi" which makes me believe he is greedily trying to make the scam run just a bit longer) : do not take my word for it - ask someone that is smart and that you trust to read this thread, read BCST original thread
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/bitcoin-savings-and-trust-home-closed-50822 and have them tell you their thoughts on the investment plan.