Topic: Pirate accomplices - page 10. (Read 30323 times)

It explains why gigavps went to vegas 

 If you can imagine all the investors standing on an island it looks like pirateat40 standing at the wheel of the pirate ship and the PPT operators are swabbing the decks. Now the PPT operators are claiming they were never on the pirate ship when their are pictures of them  sailing the high seas with the captain

Any reasonable businessman would not continually borrow capital at 7% interest per week.  Reinvesting profits in his own business would be much more profitable in the long run than relying on larger and larger loans.

I never sourced my coins on gox.  When he and I traded, afaik, neither did he.  We knew large miners, etc that had coins and were looking to sell.

If this was the primary source of Pirate's income, wouldn't it imply that at 10% fee per trade he is doing 350k in trading per week? That's almost 2/3rds of MtGox's volume.

There are many types of fraud, the ponzi fraud is paying out returns from new investors money. The business can start out completely above board but the moment it begins recruiting new investors so that it can take that money to pay promised returns to current investors, it becomes a ponzi scheme.

If someone takes investment money and provides it as an unsecured loan to a friend or associate knowing the associate will "invest" it in a manner to benefit the lender, that is not a ponzi but it is fraud.

If someone takes investment money claiming it is for Business A but uses the funds for Business B and C, that is not a ponzi but it is fraud.

I would love to hear this brilliant business model that I'm too closed minded or dumb to spot that allows Pirateat40 to not cutoff interest accrual upon closing. If it's high interest loans not done in a fraudulent manner how can the returns have been so consistent and how can he be so confident of repayment that he doesn't put a stop on compounding interest? Please oh wise claimants, enlighten us. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

This is about the best written and reasoned post in support of Pirate not being a ponzi that I've seen here.

Yep, because you're generally a gigantic douche.

(for those thinking I put a hit out on him or something, it was just for a swift kick in the nuts.  Something he thoroughly deserves, but clearly not a serious offer.   Still, I'd love to see it ).

Here's a post I made a bit ago:


and to further expand..

When I first joined #bitcoin-otc, I did a crapton of trading.  I did a bunch of moneypaks to btc and back.  Basically, playing market maker for whomever needed to move.  Pirate joined around the same time as me, a few days earlier if I'm not mistaken.  He was doing much the same thing.  As a result, it was inevitable for us to end up trading.  At various times, we each would come up with some big fish (or so it seemed at the time) and would help each other out with sourcing coins or finding coins good homes.  All of these trades were always online, with random people that would join #bitcoin-otc.  Eventually, pirate had some 'IRL' customers and it seemed they were larger than your typical moneypak transactions.  Eventually, I got into mining rather than trading because of a few bad moneypaks that someone screwed me with.  It seemed safer and less time intensive.  Meanwhile, pirate seemed to be branching out his trading and there were times where he needed to borrow coins.  When trading, you'd try to line up the incoming with the outgoing to minimize exchange risk and maximize profit, but then sometimes things go weird with one side or whatever and a person would end up needing to borrow.  It happened to me at times in the past so I didn't think anything of it to loan out.  Time went on, the lending became more regular and one thing leads to another and we end up here.  Pirate never really told me what he was doing but I felt I had a good grasp of what was going on.  The dip in and out of two transactions could make 10% pretty easy (5% on both sides, sometimes much more than that) so 7% actually seemed fair.

Yeah. No one asked this noob (who has been a "Pirate is a Ponzi and you guys are shills" kinda guy from day one), but I find the threats here disturbing, especially the threats against true innocents.

I don't think this is unreasonable.  Even if pirate spun a plausible line of bullshit about his business model, I'm interested in hearing why people were willing to trust him with large amounts of money without investigating his prior business background, references, etc.  Anyone can claim anything on the internet.  What did pirate say which convinced people that he, personally - as opposed to his business model - was both trustworthy and competent?  What evidence did people ask for of his competence and worthiness of trust? 

A plausible business model is no guarantee that someone isn't just going to run off with your funds, so I don't think that can be the only reason the "institutional" investors placed their funds with pirate (or at least I hope it's not, because it would be hopelessly naive not to research the person behind the offer).

You have handled the situation with integrity.

When the shit hits the fan the last place you want to be is standing in front of it. Thats just the way shitstorms work  

I really dont think lawyers are what the pirate brigade need to worry about if pirate was doing what I think he was doing. Anyone with half a brain would have avoided the whole situation not put themselves in the firing line when the inevitable happens. I dont know who made the worse decisions here, the people who thought they could get out before it collapsed or the people who setup pasthroughs knowing they would be left holding the bag if  pirate runs off to the caymen islands and sits on the beach sipping pina coladas.

tl;dr Are you really surprised that shit rolls downhill ?

I agree that anyone expecting extra consideration from an uninsured pass through is mainly in denial or trying to pass the buck. But I think it's about time for people who said they "knew what pirate was doing" to step up and either say "nah I was just fronting for pirate" or reveal the information they claimed to possess.

Just going along with the memes. In my other posts I mention 12 noon flight to Bermuda. BTW I travel with a dog and Cayman islands are rabies free = HUGE hassle to travel there for me. Honestly my only motive is for fun.

Thanks for the kind words.

Well put

You're assuming that pirate has ripped off whoever he was lending the Bitcoins to when the reverse could very well be true or he could have been setting people up to be ripped off by his clients.  After all, if they just say "not gonna pay you any more, thanks for the BTC", what exactly is pirate going to do about it?  If pirate is involved with seriously nasty people, he has far more to fear from them than he'll ever have to fear from vigilante Bitcoiners should he rock their boat.  And if he hasn't ripped of those people, then they'll protect him.

$5,000,000 is not a great deal of money in the world of serious money laundering.  Bitcoin might be attractive to small time money launderers but it doesn't have the capacity to absorb the tens and hundreds of millions of dollars which serious organised crime launders.

While pirate's scheme may have been attractive to his clients, there's no reason why they wouldn't take a better deal if one came along.  I'm quite sure that other people in this community have considered tapping his market and possibly even succeeded.  His model was contingent on his clients needing increasing amounts of Bitcoin weekly and being willing to pay 10% for it, but I seriously doubt he was in a position to argue if they suddenly decided they wanted less BTC or were no longer willing to pay 10%.

Everything pirate has said could be pure bullshit.  There might never have been any clients, let alone nasty, shady ones.  He could come in here tomorrow and post that all your Bitcoins now belong to Los Zetas and you'd never know whether it was true or not - and even if it could be established to be true, are Bitcoiners really going to fuck with a drug cartel, a gang, or whatever other version of organised crime people believe pirate may have been servicing? I'll buy tickets to watch that event.   

He could also be just another opportunist who saw a chance to exploit people's greed.  He may or may not be working alone.  He won't be the last such opportunist the Bitcoin world encounters if that's the case.

pirate can write any narrative he wants right now and there's not a whole lot people can do to verify what he says in the short term.  

This appears to be the "Make Team Pirate walk the plank" thread so I'll throw my +1 in.

Remember that everyone here has an ethical obligation to discourage current and future investors in a likely Ponzi scheme.  Not only should the investors walk the plank but anyone doing anything other than warn against Pirate should as well as they're helping to build confidence in the Ponzi for later investors.  It's not ethical to remain silent, it's not ethical to sit on the sidelines and not warn people and it's definitely not ethical to treat Pirate and BTCST as anything normal.  It doesn't matter if a user has a financial interest or not, they're ripping off their fellow Bitcoiners and need to be marooned.

Stop worrying about petty forum rules and scammer tags, there's a higher calling here.  Anyone defending Pirate or instilling confidence in BTCST needs to walk the plank and it's everyone's mutual responsibility to make sure that happens.

...tumbling down the rabbit hole...