Topic: BS&T -- Are you staying or leaving? - page 11. (Read 24797 times)

None of this explains how bitcoins are repurchased to pay back lenders without driving up the price anyway.

This is huge.

How much will bit-pay earn from that private deal?
Also, $135k? In their pocket, regularly? BFL isn't taking pre-orders all the time, remember?
The kind of volume they faced in those days was even press release worthy for them

Try it.  Call them up.  Ill buy them.

I'll take this one.

Call bit-pay, private deal done in 10 minutes.

Next question?

@Vandroiy

Let's say you have 135K USD right now.  I need you to buy Bitcoins without changing the Mt.Gox rate by 2%.  You have 3 days to do it, nah I'll give you 7 days.  GO!!!

Let me know how that works out for you.

Occam's Razor is to find the simplest solution that actually fits the case.

The other examples all do not fit the case at all. You don't need other peoples' money to sell anything. Even illegal activity knows exponential growth, Pirateat40 would not need an ever-increasing amount of funds if he can grow his own exponentially. Money laundering has been discussed in great detail, turns out the investors hardly ever help in movement of funds, so it's again pointless.

The difference in how well it matches is gigantic. The Ponzi matches perfectly, and the other explanations usually fail at the first comparison to what's actually happening.

I'm not saying Occam's Razor is always right. I'm not basing my accusation solely on this either. But Occam's Razor clearly yields that BS&T is a HYIP Ponzi. If it doesn't seem to, there has been some error in its application.

I'm wondering anyway why one needs Occam's razor to understand that 7% per week, or 3,300% per year, or anything above 10% a year means Ponzi? You don't need Occam's razor to state the obvious.

It all depends on the standard of proof. If you trying to prove something on "beyond reasonable doubt" standard, then yes, Occam's razor sometimes can be disputed effectively. And there might be some magic underlying biz with humongous yield for which it is impossible to find any financing with less than say 1000% APR. It is just we, the lesser beings do not understand it. I would give intuitively 0.000000001% chance that this could be the case. You never know. Would this count as a reasonable doubt?

However, if the standard of proof is "on balance of probabilities", then Occam's razor is good enough.

Yes yes, let's compare apples to oranges, a case where people ignore evidence(shiny plate installed on the moon off of which one can bounce a laser beam) applying Occam's razor to support their crazy ideas vs a case where there is no direct evidence.

Just a moment. You state:

• You understand the exponential function.
• You assume that some people have their interest paid out, which I will take the liberty to translate into: Some other people will not have their interest paid out, but instead will try to accrue compound interest.
• You conclude that the total will not be growing significantly.

What gives?

The other question is: Somebody anonymous offers to take your money and accumulate 7% interest per week for you (i.e. 3,300% per year). It takes me half a second to conclude that this is a Ponzi scheme. You come to a different conclusion? Could you please confirm that you come to a different conclusion?

I'm not trying to attack you. I don't want to be your or any honest person's enemy. I just want to make sure we understand each other properly. I believe the things we are discussing here are actually pretty simple.

I'm pretty good at math   I know what exponential is.  I was asking if he meant Pirate's balance sheet was growing exponentially.  I know some of the largest investors and I know they're taking payouts so it'd be pretty hard for Pirate's total to be growing


I'm most certainly not in on it.  I am not a sock puppet.  I've traded with enough people in here and met enough people in here in person to prove that I am most certainly not Pirate.  I wasn't psycho tricked.  In fact, pirate's never really tried to convince me.  I've done a bunch of my own researching, thinking about things, talking to people and I've simply come to a different conclusion than you.  It pisses me off that just because I arrived at a different opinion than you or the other people convinced that it is a ponzi that I must be in on it.  I'm an adult with reasoning skills and I simply came to a different conclusion than you.

There is just a tiny little difference. Only one of the sides can be right.

@imsaguy, yes. Your post is reasonable.

But what are you responding to? Of course Pirateat uses the bonds and large accounts to keep down his work-load. So what? Every large Ponzi-operator does that. He need not even know anyone personally for it.

Oh, and:

"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function" -Albert A. Bartlett



Wait a second. imsaguy, I was just suspecting this, and dropped it with "nah" until that last post. If you are actually not in on the heist, we need a talk. I was convinced you are a sock puppet, but that post is... somewhat credible. If you have been somehow psycho-tricked into Pirateat40's side, we've been doing something wrong here. Well, I have, because I never tried to convince you with my answers to you, since I assumed you were well aware what's going on.

When people like Bob cry that I'm being disrespectful or others say I'm a fanboy, I take offense.

I really don't know much more than most people about Pirate.  I respect that people are trying to warn n00bs away from a potential scam.  I disagree with the methods.  If you really want to protect n00bs, you go to the n00b forum, make a well written posting and keep it bumped at the top.  Trolling the BS&T thread with "ponzi because occam said so" really doesn't accomplish much other than piss people off and create a wedge issue that only drives apart the community.

Now to get back OT.  The bundlers have quantity thresholds to maintain if they want to keep their rate.  The thresholds that have been set are a bit high, which probably means many of them won't actually get to keep their rate.  This is the catch-22.  People claim his rates are too high.  If he reduces them, people scream the end is near.  So he pretty much can't win unless we pays out everything right at this very moment.  If we can make the assumption that isn't a ponzi for a moment (just like people assume it is), if the business is still successful, why would you want to wind it down completely just because some people were bitchy?  I think the easing of rates downward is a good thing, regardless if its a ponzi or not because the rates aren't sustainable either way.   There is/will be an endgame.  It does suck for my pocketbook, I would absolutely love to get 7% a week forever.  So if he can consolidate the number of contact points AND reduce his rates ever so much, he's essentially getting *almost* free labor out of his bundlers and I think that's' why he doesn't actually hire someone as a salary position.

As to the fanatical coverage bit.. the defenders are fanatical just as much as the people crying wolf are fanatical.  Its bad on both sides.

hgmichna, exactly.

The name of the game is:

One, who pulls his money first, wins.

I'd like to have your opinions on when the bubble will burst.

My take is that a Ponzi operator shuts down and disappears with the money as soon as he feels that his money mountain is no longer growing fast or even begins to shrink. The latter happens when more money is withdrawn than new money is coming in.

As long as nobody withdraws, the scheme can run forever, but of course some people always withdraw, for various reasons, the most obvious being that they slowly realize that the Ponzi operator claims to have more than, say, 10 million bitcoins, while only 8 or 9 million bitcoins exist.

Assuming he has 100,000 BTC now, that would happen after a bit more than one year (at 7% a week = 3,300% a year), but then nobody believes that he can possibly get all existing bitcoins, so the ultimate time limit is probably less than a year, give or take a few months. Or would you believe than any single Ponzi scheme can hold 3 million BTC in 2012 or 2013?

Trouble is, if the "investors" get the outrageous idea to switch on their brains, they might withdraw much earlier, namely when they realize that only the first few will get their stash back with interest, while all latecomers will lose everything they "invested".

I think the time until it happens is a bit difficult to guess, but with all the obvious information and explanation out in the open right here, I think it can't be long.

So let's think about how many new "investors" he may be getting. I would say that, if all new "investors" read this thread first, he would get none. This would mean that the Ponzi scheme will shut down later this week. But then one should never underestimate stupidity.

Unfortunately people don't know how to calculate compounding interest rates [ P(1+ R) to the power of T] and even if they did they don't know just how ridiculous the result at weekly 7% on an annual basis is of approx. 3400% is.

Awesome, some reasonable post finaly. Thanks.

This could explain the many intermediaries thing, though it is still much cheaper to hire help than to sacrifice significant part of revenue.

Absence of "leaches" will also mean less fanatical forum coverage.

The business.  Keeping capital around to do what you need to do.  ML, pimping, whatever it is.

Its not reasonable because there are no borrowers, only lenders. So nobody is paying the interest, just a bunch of lenders collecting.