Topic: Putting your money where Pirate's mouth is. (Read 73388 times)

I think maybe you stumbled into the wrong thread here, MarlboroMan!

With a corporate bond, the company itself is the borrower. And all the lenders (bond buyers) know the business of the company selling the bond. Apple might not release schematics and construction details of the iPad, but all their devices being sold in stores is evidence of actual profit generation. That's the extraordinary evidence which everyone can see.

Of course, even with AAA ratings it turned out that all the mortgage-backed-securities was a just a network of ponzi paper (the largest in history). And companies selling shares on stock exchanges much more reputable than GLBSE turn out to be fraudulent. Look at the report on Huabao, China's largest flavor and fagrance company by Anon Analytics.

Watch some episodes of American Greed, my favorite one is The Rise and Fall of CyberNet. The guy created fake invoices of big orders from Boeing, IBM, etc. to convince banks that he had their business. When the bankers came for a visit, he gave them a tour of his datacenter of server racks and blinking LEDs. It turned out the boxes were empty! No actual servers, just blinking LEDs. And with that the banks became his lenders.

Most of the other episodes are much more mundane ponzi schemes ripping off far less sophisticated "investors". Fraud is so commonplace among people offering returns that its the rule. Not the exception.

Butterfly Labs took pre-orders and everyone was rightly skeptical. Then they shipped (extraordinary evidence). Same for Bitcoin Magazine. Does BitInstant or Bit-Pay, or MtGox or Bitcoinica or Bitstamp offer returns to investors? [edit: i mean crazy returns to most any investor]. Hell, does Silk Road? No, because those are all businesses actually generating profit.

Thanks for having the courage to put your money where your mouth is.

Hopefully the strength of your conviction was enough to keep at least some suckers away from the scam.

Signature verified. Thank you Vandroiy for the confirmation.

wOOt. Now I have to make a tshirt with that hash

Yea, I probably should do some concluding post. On a lot of things. But not now, just got back from London. (Which was awesome. )

Making fun of hair sounds off topic to me.
 
I apologize, I did not realize I was speaking to Donald Trump all this time.  I thought I was speaking to his hair.

I'm a big fan of silencing people who take a purpose-oriented channel and treating it as a salon.  One can create -talk or -chat channels if they want to talk about fartpeppers 99.9% of the time. (Assuming the channel is not #fartpeppers)

You should probably be allowed to silence anyone who makes fun of your hair though.

That's a safe rule at any time.

Scam, not scam, doesn't matter. People with a vested interest in silencing detractors probably shouldn't be able to at a whim.

BurtW's BTC10k bet was bigger, although there is no proof he deposited that amount: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/--97094

respect. Next time, how about restricting operator privileges in #bitcoin-otc to more neutral parties? Not a user running the biggest scam on the scene.

He only won $59, 900 since the other half of the $59, 900 was already his.

Classic.  Is this the most expensive sentence ever typed into this forum?

At current $/BTC exchange rates, this was a pretty hefty bet by any yard stick.  I'm surprised we haven't seen any mainstream press pick up this story.  I can just see the headline, "Local Man Wins $119,000 In Bet With Ponzi Operator".

Vandroiy: Speech?

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

The bet has now been paid out to Vandroiy, with 10000 BTC sent to the address he has provided me in a signed message. This concludes my duties as the escrow/arbiter of this transaction. Expect Vandroiy to post a signed message acknowledging receipt in a few days, once he gets back from the London conference.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----

iEYEARECAAYFAlBWWGoACgkQ5/k4vslVlLJirACglw0z4wnOodhkhRpsmCYYbec7
s+0AoIXurXIKwW3H7w9YTPZ9rmzlFT9B
=lRSg
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

Did Vandroiy collect his winnings from nanotube yet?

One of few worthy of that title. Vandroiy, can I have your signature?
(preferably a digital one that unlocks those 10000 BTC )

He also had his mod position in Korean forum removed since he can't be trusted.

For all the reasonable jurisdictions I know of, contracts can involve all kinds of things. Might as well wager to perform a funny dance or something, you still have to do it if you lose. If a law does not punish breaking such contracts, the law is wrong.

I know a lot of the people would have paid Matthew if Pirate had miraculously conjured up coins. While I didn't believe that was possible, some people did, so from their perspective, Matthew broke contracts and fed the community misinformation. That constitutes a criminal. He probably bets on nobody coming to SK to sue him, or that an online forum and IRC network might not officially suffice as evidence.

Good to see he is no longer on the staff of the Bitcoin Magazine or on the list of speakers for London.