This is an very interesting hypothesis. I've been wondering why pirate didn't attempt to hide his RL identity if he was intentionally running a massive ponzi. Surely he didn't expect that he would be able to just walk away with the cash and there would be no RL repercussions. But if he was operating a Zeek passthrough, then he may well not have realized that it (Zeek) was a ponzi, assuming he's bad at math. But if there's one thing we've learnt from this fiasco it's that a lot of seemingly intelligent people are really bad at math.
It also explains why he tried to keep the BTC price down, which does not fit with the default straight-up ponzi theory.
The only gotcha I see is that under this theory it makes less sense for him to restrict or decline deposits, as he apparently did at times. Does anyone know whether Zeek restricted deposits early on?
I agree with Brunic that we need to look closely at Zeek's history for further confirmation or contradiction.
P.S. Perhaps a mod can split this conversation off into a new topic?
Early on this makes sense because he might have not been as deep as he is now so he could easily decline deposits.
As the scam grew he couldn't lose face by not making a payout or restricting deposit withdraws, so he continued to pay retarded amounts of interest weekly.
If you notice in late July he posted up that he was lifting the requirement for referrals to deposit which opened up to everyone who wanted to participate. This was my cue that pirate was getting short on bitcoins and that if a few large investors decided to cash out at the same time he would not be able to deliver.
Hence that is what happened.
The way I see it is that all PPTs should be held responsible for investor funds that are not returned and possibly the interest that could be due on it since it is out of their hands and in the hands of a douche named pirate that they gave it to.
PPT's you all profited from the
business scam and should be held accountable for paying back your investors that submitted funds to you that were sent to pirate.
I can feel the backpedaling starting to accelerate and the denial and attempts to retort what I have said here.
On the other hand if I'm not mistaken some PPTs did say that if pirate defaults then the loss is on the investor. I know Coblee said this. So that is the other side of the argument.
At the very least the PPTs should all get like a "dumbass" tag or maybe a "don't listen to me because I may help you lose your money" tag.
