Still hypothetically, 
I hope the bitcoin community has considered the very real danger posed by an individual in control of 500K of BTC. Sure there are accounts with balances almost as high but what is to prevent Pirate or anyone else with so much BTC from cyclically crashing the market and buying up more coins?
Some might say that someone with so many coins wouldn't destroy the market as they are so invested in it, but what happens if their Buy/Sell cycle doesn't destroy bitcoin in the long run, but they are just taking a wager that they can pull it off enough times while bitcoin is small enough and then quit misbehaving when it's bigger?
Even if you can't regularly do $15 to $8, even 1-2$ in change often enough could eventually give you monopolistic power over the bitcoin system.
For bitcoin's sake- I hope Pirate Returns the money, and the community stays away from such "financial innovation" in the future, even if it's not a ponzi.
I hope the bitcoin community has considered the very real danger posed by an individual in control of 500K of BTC. Sure there are accounts with balances almost as high but what is to prevent Pirate or anyone else with so much BTC from cyclically crashing the market and buying up more coins? Some might say that someone with so many coins wouldn't destroy the market as they are so invested in it, but what happens if their Buy/Sell cycle doesn't destroy bitcoin in the long run, but they are just taking a wager that they can pull it off enough times while bitcoin is small enough and then quit misbehaving when it's bigger?
Even if you can't regularly do $15 to $8, even 1-2$ in change often enough could eventually give you monopolistic power over the bitcoin system.
For bitcoin's sake- I hope Pirate Returns the money, and the community stays away from such "financial innovation" in the future, even if it's not a ponzi.
It's a feature, not a flaw. If you were rich, would you want us barking at you for being able to "control" our supposedly decentralized perfect new world freedom currency? If it's a problem, it won't be fixed by wishful thinking, sunshine and farts, it will be fixed at the application layer.
