Topic: Pirate accomplices - page 9. (Read 30339 times)

Do you really think there is a never ending line of rich fools out there lining up to buy bitcoins at over inflated prices week after week? Further,by compounding the interest they would need to increase their appetite for btc or he would need to find increasingly more and more rich fools.

Out of curiosity imsaguy...
1) How do you pronounce your name? I keep pronouncing it like I'ms (or Iams, like the dog food) A Guy
2) At this point, given the long delay and minimal communication do you think Pirate will be able to pay out the rapidly increasing debt he owes as per the terms of his post (principle + interest to the hour)?

The theory that I've always thought for this is:

There are 50*6*24=7200 new btc per day.  If pirate wanted to control the market price, he'd need to control a certain percentage of the market.  The open deposit policy was a way to suck up those new btc.  Obviously he had to continue to expand things to cover for that, but that is probably part of the reason 1) he was lowering rates a bit (even if people argue he really wasn't) and 2) he said he didn't know how long it would go on.  Anyone that thought that 7% would continue for years is sadly mistaken. When I see the exponential formulas that people want to throw around and they're extrapolated to anything more than 18 months, I just write them off as trolling.

Thanks for the non-defensive answer.  I honestly have no idea whether pirate is a confidence trickster who planned to take the money and run all along, a ponzi operator, someone who thought he had the perfect business model but was operating out of his depth and now doesn't know how to deal with the collapse of his scheme, or something else entirely.  Maybe he's the predator some people are making him out to be, maybe he's just a guy who isn't as smart as he thought he was when it comes to making money (and both the Bitcoin world and the conventional business world are filled with such people).

What I can't do is blame pass-through operators for whatever pirate's scheme turns out to be.  People were virtually begging to be given a piece of the pirate action which was not directly available to small investors.  That the scheme went sour is not the fault of the pass-through offerers.  That some people got back more than they invested before the scheme collapsed and others didn't is also not the fault of the pass-through operators.  Nobody would be complaining about the role of the pass-through operators right now if the scheme was still profitable.  The pass-through operators didn't take people's money under false pretences - people knew it was being invested with pirate and that his venture was high risk.  You can't blame your stock-broker if the stock you chose tanks.


1 and 3 are the big warning signs for me.  Why a single, uncapped fund?  Unless he could place the ever-increasing amount of BTC in his fund at 10% every single week and the interest he was receiving was being compounded, his scheme couldn't be sustained.  But if the demand was predictable, then why weren't the loans fixed term (even if that term was short)? How was he protecting himself against a sudden decrease in demand or against someone else offering his clients a similar service for less?  How was he hedging his risk?  Were his clients repaying interest only?  If so, when was the principal due to be returned?  What allowance had he made for his clients defaulting?  Why wasn't he trying to entice the hoarders who are still sitting on large amount of BTC which barely ever move?

These are all questions to be asked the next time a similar scheme comes along - and it will.

I do think there are circumstances under which people will both buy and borrow at a premium, but when that appears to be happening on a large scale I think it's probably wise to curb one's enthusiasm and ask some difficult questions before assuming you've discovered the goose which lays the golden egg.

No, they didn't. For starters, none of the above promised a consistent x% per week.

Keep dreaming!

By your logic, Coinabul could pay out 10% interest a week because they charge a 20% premium.

I do think it's a viable business idea on some level. I believed it at one point, mostly because I wanted to believe.

But it's the volume of BTCST plus the extraordinary interest rates (over such a long time) that make me unable to believe it.

Possible, maybe. I just don't think that is what is actually taking place. If it weren't for my new bet, I would like to be wrong.

It's also very easy for a legitimate investment scheme to slip over into the realm of ponzi. I do tend to think it was a scam from the start, and that this business idea is the only one Pirate could propagate to justify borrowing so many coins. It was only a matter of time before someone realized how simple a bitcoin ponzi scheme would be to pull off. Inevitable.

I think if any one were to go through D&T's posts they would find plenty of substance.

Smart people get fed up with idiots on forums just like they do in real life.

If nothing else, I think D&T has held himself in check quite admirably.

The respect of someone that clueless, lost doesn't mean a whole lot.

I had more respect for you when I thought you believed it was a ponzi and were just looking to time it for max profit.  Unethical but not stupid.  This theory is just stupid.   On par with ideas like "a rich person could destroy Bitcoin by buying all the coins" but nobody was ever foolish enough to invest on that idea.

In related news Mr-10%-OTC-Trader no longer only owes his creditors ~$5 mil USD.  
It is now more than $6 mil USD and increasing at a rate of $0.75 per second.  

500K BTC * 1.07 * 1.04 * $11.00 = ~$6.1 mil USD.
So congrats are in order I guess.  All you "investors" just made another cool million (on paper)!

You aren't adding anything to this conversation but personal attacks.  To the ignore you go.

No the only thing that is missing is your money.  It is gone because you are even stupider (if that was the theory you invested your funds on) than the ones who were just clueless.  Most of them were just gambling.  If you thought that theory made sense then please find a broker.  Please please because with investing "skills" like that you are going to need a good one.

If his customers can't fund even a fraction of the funds needed, why not reach out to other sources? Bitinstant is likely sitting on a pile of BTC, and since if he isn't in the negative already he should have enough USD to buy the BTC he needs, they could probably supply at least a sizable chunk that he could begin paying out the 7% accounts with to stop the bleeding.

Poor execution.  Does the owner even leave mommy's basement?

Um that is why coinabul isn't moving $5M in gold a week.  Hell they probably aren't moving $5M in gold this year.

You're already missing it.

Okay, LoupGaroux’s posts are interesting to read and the amount of cheesy quotes is indeed overwhelming, but really? Aren’t we all been here before? Even if it actually was the whole $5m stolen, the perpetrator/s will never be romantically punished by the ‘masses’ (you’ll in fact buy conference tickets from them in a few weeks) and surely there’ll be enough ‘investors’ born to fill up all the inconvenient gaps. These types of ‘incidents’ are bound to scale up together with the project and are indeed a result (maybe the very point) of a ‘free market’ experiment. The life lesson cannot be taught by any amount of typing/talking/screaming, as all parents should know. Sometimes it is beneficial to let kids break their heads a bit. I’d like to hope, however, that the pirate40 would not become an annoying evil hero figurine or an avatar of half of new users on these forums.

Anyone who thinks the sell OTC trades at 10% markup was a plausible investment strategy is dumber than a box of fraking hammers.

One:
No rich idiots exist that buy products 10% over price.  Period.  Certainly not a continual supply of downright retards with deep pockets so you can unload 500K BTC a week every week into perpetuity.  I mean scope people.  We are talking about 5% of all Bitcoins ever mined (and given idle, cold, and lost accounts probably closer to 10% of all coins in active circulations).  Doing that once would be hard to believe, doing it every single week for months and months.  Are you stupid, or did you just fail elementary math?

Two:
So he can make 10% gross profit assumming he can perfectly utilize his capital.  He gives away 7% and then pays another half percent in trading & banking fees.  So he is left with 2.5%.  He does all the work, takes all the risk, dealing with clients, moving massive amounts of funds in irreversible transactions and gets the tiniest cut.  Worse if he has a slow week he is operating at a loss because his interest costs are fixed.  How dumb did you think Pirate is?  If you thought he was that stupid why would you have him handle your money?

Three:
Nobody thought it strange he never capped deposits?
Nobody thought it strange he never paid down the principal?
Nobody throght it strainge his funding requirements never changed?

Nope there just was this imaginary pool of 500K BTC worth of rich idiots.  Every week.  Not occasional but every friggin weak, forever.  These rich people just happened to only be know by Pirate and likewise never knew anyone else.  They also were totally incapable of using email or their web browser to locate other sources at less than 10% bloody markup?

Honestly anyone who thought this was the master investing plan is even more stupid then the ones who just didn't have any idea.  The fact that you guys thought this was such a great idea that you needed to keep it a secret is just sad.  Had you explained this theory I would have gladly debunked it weeks ago given our company brokers bitcoin deals we might know a little about it.

It is honestly the stupdiest explanation for the cashflow I have heard.  Hell the SR mixer idea while totally impossible is less stupid. Sorry for the rant but Christ people.   Seriously if you thought that please for the love of God hire a broker and never manage your own money ever again because I don't want to have to support you when you are 60 and on welfare due to you "investing skillz".

I have not ever met Pirate IRL.  I was supposed to meet him in Vegas, but ended up sick while out there and leaving without meeting anyone but the few people I had met earlier in the week to exchange coins with.  Those parties did confirm the trades, either here or in #bitcoin-otc. 

If Pirate is doing 300k worth of trades in and out of BTC per week, every week, why is it taking him so long to get back into BTC? Even if for some reason he was sitting on $5M is USD and 0BTC, you would expect after a week he should be able to have at least half that back.

There's no reasonable excuse to not start paying back lenders after 10 days.