Quote from: miscreanity on July 30, 2012, 09:41:39 AM

Quote from: JoelKatz on July 30, 2012, 08:52:12 AM

Quote from: miscreanity on July 30, 2012, 08:48:05 AM

Tell Mark Zuckerberg there are no investments that return 3000%+ per year.

Is that an attempt at humor? Or did you *totally* miss the point?

Facebook was a derivative of prior social networks. Pirate's operation is a derivative of other financial business models, not necessarily a Ponzi. The early growth patterns are similar, rapidly building an increasing share of their respective markets.

Initial investment in either would return enormous profit (not the FB IPO). Whether it's through capital gains or a huge dividend, the result is the same; we're just accustomed to the "normal" pattern of dividends being paid after the explosive growth phase.

Literally any business could be loosely compared to a Ponzi. A startup begins, grows rapidly until it encounters competition or the limits of its market, then slows or stops growing. The difference is that finance doesn't actually produce anything to support itself with once it hits the limit.

Okay, so apparently he paid out 26000BTC in interest last week.

If you had a bitcoin business that was able to produce >1.3 Million BTC per year, would you give such a large chunk of it away?
If he's really making such stellar returns, why is he still seeking new deposits?

Besides, if he was making profit equal to 16% of the entire currency (so far) per year, I'm fairly sure we'd be able to track down somebody he's done business with.