Topic: pirateat40's end game - page 3. (Read 8238 times)

I'm with the skeptics here.  It seems foolish to do a significant amount of business with an anonymous party.  There is no legal recourse for any dispute.  Traditionally when legal means are unavailabe violence becomes a significant tool of negotiation.  That is way too much work for me, especially with an imaginary partner.

You can always trust me. 1) because my handle is my real name.  2) well, because I trust me and 3) I'm not asking you for anything.

Sam

P4Man,

 I am just pointing out other possibilities that are not nefarious as many assume. The answers you seek are buried on an Island somewhere and Pirate has the map.

People love to get the dirt and assume the worst. Often wrong.

Let us say what many think and see how ridiculous it is.

Pirate runs a large underground drug cartel and/or laundering operation out of the State of Texas in the United States and pays a huge amount of interest of 7% per week. And he does so by advertising on a public forum that is searchable via a search bots like google. He responds regularly to customer service requests and continues to post on the forum and in IRC. He uses Trillian as an IRC client being the high felutin hacking crime lord he is. Oh, he likes Jimmy Buffet and apparently GoDaddy. We have to solve the GoDaddy problem.

Geesh... I must now apologize. Sorry Pirate, don't send your goons after me. I don't want any horse heads either.

Discreet!?! Pffftttt......

I have 200k bitcoins! Suck on that egg. 

Most people with lots of money tend to be discreet about it.

I have no idea what you are saying here. That essentially pirate sold long term mining contracts? Seems unlikely at those prices, but even if, the obvious way to to fulfill his part of the contract would be on his own pool, rather than redirecting hashes through a massive proxy. So much easier, no middle men, etc. He could also increase his profits many fold by lowering his price to something like 120% PPS. ABC pool seems to do pretty nicely with 97%.


I dont even think its possible to do anything with our mining shares other than create blocks, but even if this were possible, you would expect to see a non trivial change in the networks hashrate depending on whether gpumax is running or not. This isnt the case, ergo, those shares are used to produce bitcoin blocks.


again, Im not following. Care to explain?


And yet Ive not seen anyone claim to know that. Have you? I dont mean anyone spilling the beans, but just saying he knows the answers and therefore decided to invest. All Ive seen is people guessing and/or not caring and just relying on his trackrecord.

Yes, 'moat' would be a good term. By keeping entry into, not only his model but other's models, he can maintain a lead during expansion.

First into a market doesn't always succeed if others figure it out to early. But if enough market share and trust has been accomplished then the first in can turn it into a powerhouse.

As to 'What market it would be', that is for others to speculate or pirate to explain.  But given the math and the finite amount of bitcoins, the end can be calculated. Remember, he pays in BTC not USD and it is relatively a small market.

He is paying 150% pps as stated earlier.

Someone wanted a list of ways to do it. I'll offer 'other' possibilities rather than the dark nefarious ones.

I stated that I would pay people 2¢ for 1¢ for pennies before 1982. With quantity, I might even do, 2.5¢ for 1¢. Why? Cause they are worth 3¢.

1. How much do you pay for Gas?  Is that what it really costs though? Buying Oil on the Spot Market would be way cheaper for you.        What determines the prices at the spot market? All the 'farmers' agree to a price they are willing to accept in payment for their work. What does the the 'broker' who paid these rates charge?

2. Leased Computing Power paid in BTC to miners but contracted in USD from one of the largest distributed computing project in existence.

3. Let us suppose Pirate controls 40K BTC in his account and pays 1% per day of 400 BTC back out to those investors. Now lets suppose he makes 2% per day off of those 40K BTC. How many BTC are created each day? 7,200 or so. So all he needs to get is 800 BTC of those per day on average to pay 1% to others and 1% to himself. But he would need to know where the blocks are going to hit. hmm...
What are the odds of accidentally calling the Pool and time of the next block to the minute? nah, nvm couldn't happen. But, hedging markets could net some 800 BTC if done appropriately.

4. and many, many others. Good and Bad from individuals, companies, and governments.

5. Any or all of the above.


But as to the OP. Pirate's End Game.

I assume Pirate's End Game is to make money for the longest period of time possible, and if that isn't everyones 'End Game', go home. The not so wise do this through schemes such as ponzies, pyramids, etc...  Something tells me Pirate is a little smarter than that. I am relatively certain that investors will get at least their principle back. That is all one can ask for today. But I can see a whole lot of people bitching when Pirate returns their money and says: 'No Thanks'.


I will tell you what I do know. Anyone with 5K BTC or more that wanted to invest with Pirate would know who he was, where he was, how his model works, and judge the risks for themselves and avoid posts like ours as a waste of time cause they don't make financial decision's from forum posts. Although, apparently, a lot of people do.

Could you expand on this? You mean increased barriers of entry (aka moat)? What market would this be?


The airline market is a long term losing market, it has an inherently bad business model.

For instance see "The intelligent Investor by Ben Graham (revisededition)" http://www.set.in.th/ben_graham_the_intelligent_investor.pdf
 'It is commonly accepted today that the cumulative earnings of the airline industry over its entire history have been negative. The lesson Graham is driving at is not that you should avoid buying airline stocks, but that you should never succumb to the “certainty” that any industry will outperform all others in the future.' (p21 footnote by Jason Zweig)

Market Share.



This is sensible. You've weighed the risks and decided. On a percentage scale, How much do you 'trust' him? 0 -> 100%  Then invest as appropriate.

You know as well as I, before anyone gives him a signifiant amount of money, due diligence has been done. They know who he is and probably his and his families entire history. They know how he does it and the risks involved.

Your skepticism is healthy, voicing it is not always healthy.


Don't be to hard on yourself. You're not stupid. ( I hate that term as it is subjective). I still can't figure out the Airline Industry business model, so lump me in with you.

But if you are really concerned about him, before you invest your money. The first question is: Who is Pirate?  Because do people really give large sums of money to pseudo-anonymous people on the internet. Answering that question will probably shed light on what is happening.

NDA's have probably been signed and it might take some work. But, Apple tried to hide its suppliers for the new Ipad but they forgot to include the dock workers on the loading docks.

Your skepticism does you service though. Run through the possibilities. The 'Trust No One' mantra is relevant as always. The nice thing is that you don't have to trust anyone. In my book, trust is earned through trials of fire, not whether someone charged you back or not.

Pirate does have a cloak of haze around him. As he grows, that will disappear as it did with Mark. Remember, there are sometimes real companies behind these businesses that have to live in the real world and interact with it.

Don't you find the challenge of figuring it out exciting though?  

I just find throwing out speculation as to his intent harmful rather than productive. Another post did a good job utilizing the percentages and leaving the speculating up to others.

So far, Pirate has done what he said he was going to do. Past performance doesn't guarantee future performance but it lets you judge risks.

it would be hilarious if the whole bitcoin community would be ripped off by someone called pirate  

seriously, that is one of the reasons I would never give him a coin. I could not stand the irony.

I hedged that shit and put 1 BTC on both sides. 

This is quite honestly how we should be handling many things all the time. Here’s the link: http://betsofbitco.in/item?id=349

Pirate is ponzi? Make some free money on it!

Despite so many people being convinced that he's a scam, the "yes" bin on betsofbitco.in is not growing any larger. You'd think people would want to profit on something they are so sure of

1 Kilo of cocaine street price: $15,000
1 Kilo of Cocaine sold at SR: $125,000
Covering up your business with legitimate bitcoin ventures: Priceless


***100% speculation***

Have you considered that a large number of loans through his network (directly or indirectly) are being used to fund and pay for mining equipment?  I would suggest that is helping bitcoin grow rather than hurting it.

If growth slows and things start looking unsustainable, whats to prevent him from simply lowering interest rates?  He's already done it once and I don't think anyone made a fuss about it.

Ummm,

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/are-you-long-or-short-nwss-77334 If you replace the ******** in that thread with Zhoutonged, you're essentially looking at a fairly easy way to make an awful lot of $ simply by holding enough btc and moving the market every once in a while particularly if you take bitcoinica leverage into consideration.

Why go through all that  trouble?  If you think its too much hassle or risk to pay Giga and a few other large miners once a week, then set up a pool (a real pool, running its own bitcoind) and pay your miners 150% PPS. Get hashes from anyone who wants to, and you get the purest cleanest self mined coins and its oh so much easier than what GPUmax does. There is not even any need to pay 150%, most miners will happily take 110 or 120%.

I do agree with the "team" thing tho. It does seem likely that whoever is paying for those shares is either really close to Pirate or Pirate himself. Thats the only reason I can think off why that person would not buy hashes any place else.

I can only think of one "team" this would be valuable to. So to me it makes sense there is only one and they run everything themselves. In fact it's the only way I see it actually working for it's intended purpose (increased security) When you have to constantly work through others (renting p2p or through other pool) it becomes less anon for more work and risk (scams) , rather than just set up some sites that eventually will run mostly automated and you are in control of everything yourself. As long as you have the skills to set up a site like that.

Can you explain what exactly is a "51% attack against mtgox", please? 

I might believe this if I saw it elsewhere besides gpumax. The volume argument doesnt make much sense. There are plenty of opportunities to rent big farms, Ive not seen anyone pay anything like gpumax prices.  You think someone like GigaVPS would say no to an offer to buy his hashes perpetually at "only" 130%?

But if someone is reading this, I got 50+GH available for rent with far lower stales and issues than GPUmax for a 50% lower surcharge.  Im not kidding, I can provide that.  And yet no one will take it.

Why?


Yes it is unreasonable to just assume that. All the other arbitration bots have proven to be scams. You wouldnt need that kind of coins for it anyway.

First, as to why someone would buy shares at gpumax.

Say they really don't want their transactions followed. I can't think of a better way than to trade "tainted" coins for freshly minted ones.  ( Lets assume coins are tainted via willing trade rather than stealing or other victim crimes. )

But why do it this way rather than other "laundering" methods. Well if volume is big enough the fees will be huge. You also have to trust whoever the launderer is. You have to trust lots of different site or pool operators with your coins all the time and that their system actually works along with a few other things. Can't just buy shares at other pools because the volume is so big (do others even accept btc?) . So rather you just offer a really high buy price to get more volume. Keep in mind your main concern is volume more than price per bitcoin. It could take so long to cash out you lose more in volatility than "overpaying" for shares. It seems buyers outnumber miners on average for gpumax.

As for the savings and trust. I don't really know. Someone with control over a few hundred thousand USD worth of BTC could surely make good money. We know he has the programming skills to make a site like gpumax, it's not unreasonable to assume he has arb bots or other ways to exploit the market with his holdings. It can also be used to further obfuscate any BTC earnings.