Topic: Scammer tag: PatrickHarnett - page 18. (Read 39315 times)

You transferred 500 Bitcoins to Patrick and did not require a signed contract to secure or to determine both parties obligations? Is that the way you handle your stock exchange business?

If you think an IRC log represents a legitimate contract, you have completely failed.

How do you expect a third party to trust in your claim if Patrick alleges that your claim was not a mutual agreement? How could a third party be sure that no other agreement was settled between both parties?


I recommend you look at the thread where the user MPOE-PR requests a scammer tag for Theymos. If you compare that thread with this, you will realize that evidence is a concept outside the scope of the user MOE-PR. That and this thread are just claims...

http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/claim?q=claim


False statement. I never have been "shilling for usagi for months" and I never "discredit as trolls those who were asking valid questions".


A user which is unable to require a signed contract is not businessman...


I fully support JoelKatz arguments, which are very reasonable and based on factual data.

You need to take a step back and realize that the people who loaned Patrick money made precisely the same mistake Patrick did.

People like Patrick, Hashking, and Pirate will always come along. So long as there are idiots willing to lend money at criminally usurious interest rates on the most ridiculous and implausible business plans, and who then feel they can deny any responsibility when the shit hits the fan (as it *always* will, that's the one certainty) this will keep happening over and over and over.

But keep those insults coming. If you're good at something, don't waste it. (But stop the self-righteousness. You're not very good at that.)

And by the way, I basically agree with you. Patrick hasn't, and likely won't ever, make the lifestyle sacrifices he and his wife need to make in order to pay back their fair share of the losses. So he'll almost certainly deserve a scammer tag at some point, if he doesn't already. If he isn't even on track and committed to paying back 40% in 3 years, which is ridiculously little in a very long time, I'd say he clearly deserves to be branded a scammer.

Yeah yeah, right. Stop trying to present yourself as some sort of thought leader of a process you have - to the best I can determine - absolutely nothing to do with.

A much more intellectually honest approach would be to present your crackpot theories somewhere apart (such as in the Offtopic forum, which pretty much exists for this very purpose) and allow the world to ignore them on their own merits rather than trying to interject yourself in discussions between the adults and trying to piggyback them on actual issues of actual import.

We get it, you feel you're one with the whole, you think everything's the same and all are the same one thing and bla bla bla. It doesn't work in the real world, it's not interesting in the Bitcoin world, it has no merit, no value and no importance. Stop wasting my time with it.


You are very much mistaken. This thread is not asking of "the community" anything at all. This thread is telling the community a simple fact (ie, that PatrickHarnett is a scammer, and that it's unsafe to take him at his word from now on), is presenting to the community the proof for that fact, and is asking the moderators to enact this fact into the little symbolic representation they use in this particular venue to sum such facts up.

The community is, jointly or severally, perfectly free to ignore the facts. The net results of ignoring the facts are never going to be a "common mistake", they will be their mistake, wholly owned and quite personal, and the results theirs to bear entirely.

The moderators are perfectly free to ignore the facts too. All that'll do is make the symbolic representation a little less relevant.

None of this discussion has any impact whatsoever on whether PatrickHarnett is a scammer or not. That is something you can't vote, either as a "community" or as a congregation of moderators or as anything. Only PatrickHarnett can make himself a scammer. Unfortunately for him, he has done this already.


Again, that PatrickHarnett is in default is not the point of this discussion. PatrickHarnett is a scammer, aka a liar and a thief, not an honest businessman in default. The last thing scammers, aka liars and thieves need around these parts is more leeway.


Simply stating that makes you an idiot, are you aware? How exactly is loaning to the most respectable (at the time) forum "bank" at rates a degree of magnitude under market "imprudent"? No, never mind, don't answer that. Just get lost.


This is not at all what happened here.

What happened here was that PatrickHarnett took some money from some people at fixed rates, looking to make a profit. He made some bets that, contrary to his expectation and contrary to his high regard of himself, turned sour. Instead of manning up to this failure of his, such as for instance by skipping a month's discretionary expenditure in his life, putting that money into BTC and paying out he went the classical Peter Lambert route: played double or nothing with his customer's money (in this case by buying discounted pirate debt with money he represented as not exposed to pirate - also a classic).

All through this he felt no need to kneel before his intellectual superiors, those people more intelligent, more competent and more versed in these matters, present his stupidity which he thought was "a plan", be told it's a stupid idea and not a plan and obediently (as the intellectually inferior are held to do) given up on his stupidity which he thought was a plan. Because oh why don't you know, PatrickHarnett is such a smart financier, even better than Kludge the Bancoclerk, and he can pull off things.

If it had panned out he'd have made 50-500% on the capital, paid 2-3-5% to his investors and counted himself a great businessman. Since it didn't pan out he doesn't want to sell his house and move into a shelter where he belongs, because he figures (correctly) that the forum is full of idiots anyway and who cares about what they think.

This used to work just fine but then Mircea Popescu happened and pretty much that meant the end of this sort of bullshit. You're welcome, and fuck you.

It would make you "in default."

Why not just a tainted tag? 3 colors

Something like the Ignore but possibly a little bit more BOLD....



Say I borrow 120 BTC... 2 weeks later I get robbed or my house burns down........ I would be unable to pay right away until my life got back together.. Would that make me a scammer?

That just seems kind of ugly to me. But I do agree that the current system has at least one major problem -- the term "scammer" strongly connotes intentional fraud. But I think we all agree that a person who borrows some Bitcoins fully intending to pay them back but then can't pay them back (say they lost their job) deserves a scammer tag. The point is not to pass judgment or act like a court but to provide some kind of useful indication of who you cannot trust to keep agreements.

Honestly, I'd say getting rid of the scammer tag would be preferable to a plethora of tags. A broken trust indicator may be worse than none at all.

It seems like the best way to make everyone happy here is to introduce more tags.

If there were an "in default" tag, we could all agree that Patrick deserves this tag. Unlike the term scammer, there is no question of blame here. It is a simple fact.
If you introduce a tag like this, you allow more leeway for people like Patrick. The "in default" tag might not satisfy MPOE, but it would probably satisfy almost everyone else.

If one tag seems unjust, there could also be an "imprudent lender" tag. There is no question of blame here. It is a simple fact that the MPOE's loan to Patrick was imprudent.

Readers could draw there own conclusions about which tag is more meaningful.

Joel, would you support the use of those tags?

If so, that would be a terrible shame. It would mean the Bitcoin community learned almost nothing from the Pirate collapse and is likely doomed to repeat it. When people can make mistakes and harm others with no consequences, markets cannot function.

Good thing this isn't a popularity contest.  I don't agree with Joel either but you've made a terrible and worthless post.  The goal here is to get to the truth and not stroke each other's egos.

A well. We all make mistakes.

You can usually get the best measurements of something's value or cost from a healthy market. But the lending market at that time was completely infected by such widespread fraud that it was basically meaningless.

If you had a situation where a person could sell a car but keep the car and no law or government would do anything to stop them, the market might show a price of $500 for a car. In that unusual situation, the market is not real, and the $500 price is not a measurement of the value of the car.

The Bitcoin lending market was a market of that type. People could borrow money and avoid paying it back with substantially no consequences. As a result, interest rates got bid up to ludicrous levels by borrowers who had no intention of ever paying people back. Those interest rates were not a sensible measure of any price or value, it was just a broken market.

Broken markets really can happen, just not usually for very long. As soon as people understand the particular breakage, it likely will never happen the same way again. The real estate market got inflated this same way. The securitization of mortgages lead to a broken market where the lenders had no incentive to make sure the mortgages were solid. This caused buyers to overvalue them. As a result, the market gave values for homes and mortgages that were nonsensical. Now that people realize this problem, it is self-fixing. Nobody will buy or value securitized mortgages ever again (or at least, significant numbers of people won't) without making sure the value is based on the actual strength of the mortgages.

With luck, this same problem will never happen in the Bitcoin lending market again. But the first step is recognizing the problem and those who caused it taking responsibility. You should strongly consider whether you really want to continue to oppose that process. I'm still presuming you are acting in good faith, but it's getting harder and harder. Perhaps you are profiting from the widespread fraud and theft?

FTFY

I am relatively certain the only one who agrees with Joel in this thread is Joel.

Absolutely no forcing involved. Absolutely no "common mistake" involved. Market is always more "objectively" than Joel Insanikatz. Your bus has sailed long, long ago.

Patrick harmed Patrick, much like Joel is harming Joel. But carry on, by all means, after all in six months' time when I'll be quoting this trainwreck of a nervous breakdown against any attempt on your part to represent yourself as sane or even vaguely intelligent you'll probably be explaining how it was our common mistake, ie you were being an idiot and I was making fun of you, and so I caused you harm and so we should be jointly held responsible for you being an idiot.

Sounds legit, especially given that the Internet not being like a truck and reasoning not being like a bus, you gotta keep going.

The point is that reasoning is not like a bus. You can't choose your stop and get off. You have to keep going.

No. In fact, Patrick expressed an erroneous lack of doubt. That is a mistake Patrick made and for which he should be held accountable. But other people who made the same mistake and jointly caused the same losses should also be held accountable.

You can recast any complex argument to make it seem invalid by showing its conclusion can't follow from just one of its premises. The damage was caused by the particular way money was loaned. The money wasn't poisonous, but the usurious loan was. It forced a business model that both parties should have known could not have worked. The collapse is jointly the fault of a mistake made by both parties -- both parties making the same mistake.

The market was horrifically broken. Measuring the sensibility of this loan against that market is silly. It's time to look at these things objectively now. There was no realistic way this loan could have made sense for either party, and both parties should have realized that.

You're much better at insulting people than you are at responding to the arguments they make.

Did the loan harm Patrick? Was the loan based on a mistake on the part of both parties?

Right. So the next question is who is responsible for this situation and how to hold them accountable. Patrick is certainly one of those people, but he's not the only one.

1) Patrick's business suffered an $X loss.

2) Why did Patrick's business suffer an $X loss? Because two people made a mistake for which they can be held accountable.

3) Patrick is one of the people who made that mistake, thus he's responsible for some portion of that loss.

4) The people who loaned Patrick money also made that same mistake and thus they're responsible for some portion of that loss.

I'll give you a real world example of this same principle. A few years ago, a doctor examining my daughter noticed that her pediatrician had noted a heart murmur in her records but that he didn't hear it. The physician felt that she might have grown out of it, but the only way to be sure was to run a test. He assured me my insurance would cover the test. We had the test, and my insurance didn't cover it.

I refused to pay. The physician argued that I had signed a contract saying that I was responsible for any amounts my insurance wouldn't pay. He argued that our contract clearly stated that I was responsible for any amounts my insurance wouldn't cover. I agreed with him, but then pointed out that because I was responsible for any amounts my insurance wouldn't pay, his mistake in assuring me that my insurance would cover the costs damaged me. And he was responsible to me for the loss his mistake caused me, a loss that (because both are between me and him) offsets my responsibility to pay him for the test. He actually checked with his lawyer (I think more because he was curious than anything) and he agreed.

It's substantially the same thing here. It's precisely because Patrick promised to pay that money back that the mistake made by those who loaned him money caused Patrick damages for which they are responsible. Because both mistakes are between the same two people, the losses one party's mistake caused the other offset the losses the other party's mistake caused.

Irresponsible lending is just as much a problem as irresponsible borrowing. We wouldn't have had the Pirate fiasco if not for irresponsible lenders.

That was my concern when it first started. It seemed to me like Patrick knew he had a lot of worthless debt owed to him and a lot of legitimate debt that he owed to others. I feared that his plan with Kraken was to have it buy all his worthless debt and give him the cash to pay people off. But the strange thing is, he *guaranteed* Kraken -- explicitly, after knowing the issues with the debt it was holding, with his eyes fully open. I can't see how that makes sense unless he was planning to run it as a Ponzi, using the initial funds to pay off previous investors in his other funds so preserve his reputation. There seemed, at least to me, to be no plausible way it could ever return principle, much less make a profit, and thus the guarantee of the principle from his personal funds makes it seem like the only plausible business model was 100% scam.

If there's another explanation, I can't think of it.

Starting to sound more and more like Usagi.