Topic: Pirate accomplices - page 5. (Read 30339 times)

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And we will need the cocaine... and acapulco shirts

No.  He has stated he will payout if he loses but hasn't escrowed any of the 10K BTC he wagered.

I believe the point of the OP is that the large piles of gold accumulated by pirate drew in accomplices, who accepted some guilt in helping to dupe more greedy fools.  The responses of said accomplices (denial) only show that there are lessons being learned here on both sides:

1) The lenders are learning the psychological effect of piles of gold (i.e. greed).  Namely, it can make people do stupid stuff that results in losses.  It's an ancient story but if you don't know it, you might get bit.  It's ok to trust people anonymously but if something seems to good to be true, step back.  You don't need that shit.  Enjoy your wealth, don't sweat all day and risk it all in the hope to make it larger.  Careful or you wind up like gollum.  

2) The borrowers and accomplices are learning the same lesson.  It doesn't really feel that great to steal candy from babies after all does it.   I'd rather have 100 coins and not a care in the world than 1000 coins and a bunch of trolls on my ass every day nibbling at my karma.  Live and learn.    

There will always be people needing to learn these lessons.  Bitcoin is just a new way to learn them  

One more point:  did Matthew actually put any money on the table?  

We are definitely in Bat Country now.....

Goat, as your attorney, I advise you to just eat the damn pills and leave it at that. 

I really hope you're just trolling Goat.

There is nothing legally gray either about fraud or property rights.

That's exactly what brings an economy to a screeching halt.

We all did exactly what you just did. We considered it, and then rejected it as completely implausible.

But even so, it doesn't matter. If something is indistinguishable from a Ponzi, and most likely a Ponzi, you should treat it like a Ponzi. If you have a gun that looks like it's loaded, you should probably treat it like it's loaded.

ITT I have learned that Goat is greedy, stupid, amoral, and a liar.

I agree, D&T's image is no more or no less than it was before someone said he was now to be thought of lesser for his postings..


 That's the exact business model. It has been the only known part of the business model since day one. We keep seeing posters make comments like, "It was so easy, I figured it out in seconds". No shit, Sherlocks, that is the extreme obvious conclusion. And the same one most of us drew from the get go. Now, if you can wrap your brains around the HUGE gaping hole in the model, then you will become instant millionaires! And that is, just how exactly would you reacquire coins + 7% without paying more than you just sold them for?
Private sellers?
 Sure, we could possibly find sellers who would want to avoid the same pitfall as the buyers would face making large buys/sells on the open market. But, who in their right mind would be a seller at a locked in, reduced rate when they can instead earn 7% on that BTC invested, or slow sell it as the market trend was and has been UP? (partly due to lots of liquid BTC being pulled into said investment, removing potential sellers from the market)
Strategic Market Buys?
 Yep, you bet. It is easy to move the market a bit to stagger in buys without jogging the market up. The cavaet however is two fold. One, the market trend is up. Two, the market movement is of a gain/loss volume that is not large enough to absorb more than a few K BTC without still moving it. Meaning, the more you need to purchase over a few thousand worth, the more you will find you have to manipulate the perceived trend, utilizing greater volumes of currency than you can afford to keep illiquid and still have inventory to sell to buyers and pay in interest.
Buy them from gpuMAX yourself
 Surely, this must be the answer. Except that in order to purchase shares from gpuMax and in turn acquire the bitcoins from the pools mined at, you have to pay for them upfront with BTC.. Even if we consider that we can manipulate the per share cost to be within 20%(a very conservative number as it is usually more like 35%+) and we can convince buyers that 27%+ is still cheaper than the alternative market route. We are then limited by the output capacity of gpuMAX. This total output was observed a few months back(sorry for lack of citation) and was roughly 1TH~. 1TH will produce ~2884 per week. We could even consider that the 1TH, if utilized at it's maximum Pool Hopping capacity may be able to produce an extra 20%. This would provide an additional 576.8 coins. For a total of 3460.8 coins purchased at a cost of 3460.8 coins. At that rate it is a zero sum benefit as the extra 20% of coins acquired are eaten by the 20% cost per share. We also assume we can negate the 10% fee since we control it. This is overly optimistic as that fee would likely be consumed in hosting and operator costs but I've left it out to attempt to give us the most benefit in BTCST's favor.
Unknown Method to buy coins below market price
 There could even be some uber secret method to buy large amounts of coins at or below market price. I can think of a few methods, all of which involve hedging other markets (I.E., S R) and have a HUGE risk of being negated by price movements. This secret sauce being unknown is what kept my coins away from this venture. Maybe some of you thought of this one too and it was very obvious to you. I however, could think of nothing and Pirate was unwilling to divulge this piece of the business model.

I could not stop laughing long enough to sum up a meaningful response to place here. 

Lol, pirate himself said in an IRC log that he knew what it looked like from the outside.

Trolls be trollin'.

Good point.  I think many here are so invested in the "ponzi proposition" that they're refusing to consider other possibilities.

At the same time, it would be great if you could spell out your understanding of what pirate was up to (as long as it was legal ofc).  What is there for you to lose at this point?

Ponzi or not, there's no legal activity that I can think of that would allow paying such returns for any length of time. 

Are you trolling now? Or are you seriously saying that you need me to provide evidence that Pirate is indistinguishable from a Ponzi scheme? You know what Pirate said, right. You know what Ponzi schemes are, right? If you think they're distinguishable, why not just tell me what distinguishes them?

I'm arguing that something is absent that would be trivially identifiable if it existed. If you want to maintain that it exists, just point it out.

I mean, I can do a point by point comparison of what we know about Pirate and what we know about Ponzi schemes, but I've already done that at least five times. I don't see the point in doing it again.

Honestly, I think you've switched to trolling at this point. Or you are very seriously in denial.

So we strip away the claims, and all that's backing up "you're already missing it" is a sarcastic non sequitur?

This is where the explaination seems odd to me. The advantage that supposed IRL buyers have in buying through pirate is that he can give them a fixed price (say+10%) without changing the exchange price. Ok, so far so good.

Because he pays 7% every week he has to turn over these coins in order to continually make the payments. You explain this away with alleged market manipulation, but when you look at the market numbers, they don't seem sufficient to cycle through 500k bitcoins every week or two. Moreover we're back to a mystery--rich clients can't buy thousands of coins without moving the market, but somehow pirate can--repeatedly. Ads to this the difficulty of moving MILLIONS of sollars to exchanges each month, and I think you'll agree this theory seems as implausible as D&T harshly said it was.

Or am I still missing something?

Do you really think it matters whether people knew that this was a Ponzi scheme or wondered precisely what type of illegitimate investment it was?

The argument that it must be a Ponzi scheme is complex and nuanced. But the argument that it is indistinguishable from a Ponzi scheme is trivial.

Rational people should treat a car the same way they treat something indistinguishable from a car. So as far as culpability for actions goes, it makes no difference.

No. People... People never change.

Goat I didn't know I would literally have to spell it out for you, but I never had a penny invested into anything to do with pirate, ever. It was painfully obvious to both you and me what that operation was since day one. Rather than trying to profit off it like you, I mostly ignored it. Sometimes tried to warn people, watched you turn up the propaganda machine to get more marks, and now calling you out on it and you don't like it. Boohoo.

Maybe this will teach people not to lend or borrow money anymore.  It does not matter if it was a ponzi or not, there is a lot of risk in lending and borrowing.