Topic: Confessions of an Economic Sh*tman (Read 2878 times)

Hi Thy - great to communicate with you finally, wish it was under better circumstances.

Regading Brian Gaer, I'll post what I know, which is unfortunately not a lot.

As you may know, we were both members of the Bitcoin Investment Group (BIG). He was quite active and built up a good reputation. I think this came from several factors - working for a legitimate company, having proven large salary and really (AFAICT) knowing what he was talking about in regards to trading, bonds, etc.

What I *believe* happened in regards to myself and another member of BIG who were recruited to handle parts of TRADER for him, was that our decent reputations (mine was still decent at the time), were leveraged by him to add legitimacy to his projects by association.

My role with TRADER was to manage investments only on the P2P BTC lending side on BTCjam and BitLendingClub (I never actually made any on BTCjam for trader). I was allocated a fixed amount of BTC and kept public the investments which were made (IIRC, else I probably posted in BIG most of them as they were in a Google Spreadsheet). I pretty much lived and breathed P2P BTC lending at the time, so it felt like a good opportunity for me.

I'd also virtually met Brian previously as part of the ALTIS (or ALT?) investment group with a few others, but had left that not long after as it wasn't my thing, with many meetings and group decisions.

Anyway, back to TRADER: At some point in the group, questions were asked of Brian, regarding the legitimacy of his various securities listed. His responses were non-existent or shady, which raised alarm bells for me and had me starting to think I was being used for my association value. Soon after, the other TRADER member and myself announced that we would exit from TRADER and the BLC account of TRADER and management of the accounts was handed over to another BIG member.

I really didn't know how any other parts of TRADER operated, I was just doing the P2P lending side. It actually yielded pretty good dividends for several months at least (the P2P side of things, at least) and the stock price was traded fairly well - I think I had some at initial IPO, then sold for a few BTC profit. Eventually, I made 2 bad investments in Kevin Kelly and Gerald Wilkie Jr - as once again, I thought they were solid or at least people committed to repaying if late, as Kevin had in the past.

I was happy to disassociate from the project, but it still obviously impacts my reputation somewhat.

I was one of the first to start pressing Brian for answers in BIG and was met with hostility as was the original questioner and those to follow. Odd behaviour, such as big silences, stories of hacking, illnesses, etc came out and around December, I think that was the last he was seen or heard from in the group.

At this point, I can only speculate on what happened with Brian and all his projects. Though I do have wild fantasies, that is about all they can be until someone finds out.

To me, the P2P debts are clearly debts - the stock options/securities or what not are perhaps less enforceable of shareholder repayments, just like any stock one can speculate on without promise of dividends, etc. Even in December, the first BTCjam loan payment missed of ~ 12 BTC should not have been hard for him to repay, so based on my own experience, he was probably in trouble long before that and trying to fill many buckets with holes in them from other such buckets.

If he is still employed at his job, then there is hope as it's a decent salary and he's definitely a smart enough guy to earn more, but if there is no communication, then perhaps he has chosen an alternate path out of this. If he is reading this, I encourage him to at least make communication with people and make a tiny BTC repayment in a sign of good will. Can move a mountain, one stone at a time, etc...

Cheers,

Leon

^Just thought I would set the record straight here in case anyone ever does check this thread anymore, Leon did end up paying everyone back that he owed plus interest it took awhile but he kept his word which is very rare in this game. Brian is still AWOL but Gerald Wilkie Jr can be found on CCC facebook group and as far as I know he's never even made an effort to repay lol. 

I handled the Alts club lending position for like a month on the BTCJam side but like Leon I started to see the truth(far too late mind you) and I resigned from the position shortly before he disappeared.

Hi Thy - great to communicate with you finally, wish it was under better circumstances.

Regading Brian Gaer, I'll post what I know, which is unfortunately not a lot.

As you may know, we were both members of the Bitcoin Investment Group (BIG). He was quite active and built up a good reputation. I think this came from several factors - working for a legitimate company, having proven large salary and really (AFAICT) knowing what he was talking about in regards to trading, bonds, etc.

What I *believe* happened in regards to myself and another member of BIG who were recruited to handle parts of TRADER for him, was that our decent reputations (mine was still decent at the time), were leveraged by him to add legitimacy to his projects by association.

My role with TRADER was to manage investments only on the P2P BTC lending side on BTCjam and BitLendingClub (I never actually made any on BTCjam for trader). I was allocated a fixed amount of BTC and kept public the investments which were made (IIRC, else I probably posted in BIG most of them as they were in a Google Spreadsheet). I pretty much lived and breathed P2P BTC lending at the time, so it felt like a good opportunity for me.

I'd also virtually met Brian previously as part of the ALTIS (or ALT?) investment group with a few others, but had left that not long after as it wasn't my thing, with many meetings and group decisions.

Anyway, back to TRADER: At some point in the group, questions were asked of Brian, regarding the legitimacy of his various securities listed. His responses were non-existent or shady, which raised alarm bells for me and had me starting to think I was being used for my association value. Soon after, the other TRADER member and myself announced that we would exit from TRADER and the BLC account of TRADER and management of the accounts was handed over to another BIG member.

I really didn't know how any other parts of TRADER operated, I was just doing the P2P lending side. It actually yielded pretty good dividends for several months at least (the P2P side of things, at least) and the stock price was traded fairly well - I think I had some at initial IPO, then sold for a few BTC profit. Eventually, I made 2 bad investments in Kevin Kelly and Gerald Wilkie Jr - as once again, I thought they were solid or at least people committed to repaying if late, as Kevin had in the past.

I was happy to disassociate from the project, but it still obviously impacts my reputation somewhat.

I was one of the first to start pressing Brian for answers in BIG and was met with hostility as was the original questioner and those to follow. Odd behaviour, such as big silences, stories of hacking, illnesses, etc came out and around December, I think that was the last he was seen or heard from in the group.

At this point, I can only speculate on what happened with Brian and all his projects. Though I do have wild fantasies, that is about all they can be until someone finds out.

To me, the P2P debts are clearly debts - the stock options/securities or what not are perhaps less enforceable of shareholder repayments, just like any stock one can speculate on without promise of dividends, etc. Even in December, the first BTCjam loan payment missed of ~ 12 BTC should not have been hard for him to repay, so based on my own experience, he was probably in trouble long before that and trying to fill many buckets with holes in them from other such buckets.

If he is still employed at his job, then there is hope as it's a decent salary and he's definitely a smart enough guy to earn more, but if there is no communication, then perhaps he has chosen an alternate path out of this. If he is reading this, I encourage him to at least make communication with people and make a tiny BTC repayment in a sign of good will. Can move a mountain, one stone at a time, etc...

Cheers,

Leon

Leon thanks for informing people about your current situation. So it may be a while until the next possibillity for you to make payments on your loans, maby you can help lender/investors out in another way then, as you were handling the p2p lending part in brian gaers stock Trader for some months i guess you have some knowledge on what did or is going on there ?

bg_froggie/bjames/Brian Gaers investors is currently missing something like 565 btc on the 4 platforms Btcjam, bitlendingclub, Cryptostocks and coinsortium in his loans/stocks/bonds and his 2 internet sites for coinddebtcollection and trader has recently dissapeared to. Do you have any information as to why someone handling over 500 btc havent been able to make any payments since december, the smallest payments is just 1.84 btc or so in the bonds ?
Im actually very supprised that there isent more talk going on about what happened with his 10 stocks/bonds and loans as its a very substancial amount his handling, something like 140 000(250$/btc) - 300 000$(500+$/btc) in the pricerange btc has been.

Leon we dont need you write a book/diary with your history 

What we need is the repayment plan.

ps: if you want to write the diary and in the future a book, dont forget you should pay us too for that

btcjam links doesn't even belong on bitcointalk.
I wish the OP good luck with his loans though.

Wrong section?

Allow myself to introduce… myself. I’m Leon Stafford, a now likely notorious name in the P2P Bitcoin lending space.

I started out in the crypto space in 2013 as an amateur Litecoin miner, whilst living in China. Where I will end up is still to come, but I’m currently in a position of massive debt, most of which is overdue by many months and owing a lot of people.

This thread starts my activity on Bitcointalk and hope it will provide another channel for updating investors of my repayment status. Not everyone (myself included) likes Facebook or can keep up with comments on loan listings.

Right now, my current overdues amount to ~ ฿180 and $17,500 - yes, that’s a massive amount of BTC!

Where did it all go?

The majority of it has not gone into anything tangible or worthwhile - I estimate about 20 to 25 BTC worth of losses investing in other people’s loans; some lost trying to leverage $ vs ฿ and getting the unlucky movement in currency exchange; copious amounts of interest as I snowballed debts several times on already high % rates; family relocation costs as I moved countries and hastily overpaid for rent and transportation; and various web projects - trying to make $ from internet marketing and failing to get any ROI from injected funds.

All in all, I was careless - and I was careless with OPM (other people’s money).

For many years (most of my life), I’ve lived a rather high risk lifestyle. As terrible as this debt incurrence has been, it’s been enough of a wake up call for me to realize my lack of self-control, especially when it comes to budgeting and planning for the future.

Though I do see the next year as going to be quite rough in servicing debt and scraping by, I’m also grateful for the things it has helped me realize so far - that time with family does not cost anything, but is very rewarding; that growing your own vegetables is much cheaper and enjoyable; and that budgeting and catching up on bills/debt is a great feeling and something everyone should want to be an expert in (I have a long way to go!).

Though I have made some sizable overdue repayments earlier this year, it is a bit more bad news for my investors - with another repayment not expected until at least May. In addressing my cashflow and seeing how much had been wasted in renting a house which then required a car to get kids to school, I’ll be relocating to a cheaper rental that should also mitigate the need for maintaining a car.

Once relocated and a few more overdue fiat bills taken care of, I should be able to commit to a minimum regular BTC debt servicing, along with continuing with some side projects aiming to generate more $/BTC in a shorter time.

Apologies for the long post, I’ve definitely not covered enough of the past and future but welcome any questions and comments and I’ll periodically reply here.

Here are my P2P BTC lending profiles - please feel free to link to this in the comments if I do not update them first and share with any of my investors you know who would be interested in updates:

https://bitlendingclub.com/user/index/id/991/leonstafford
https://btcjam.com/users/4240

Cheers,

Leon