Trust is earned, not given. What did pirate do to earn trust? Do people know who he is or where he lives? Do they know how the money they give him is used to make those returns? Do they know how much of the profits he keeps for himself? Do they even know why he needs other people's money instead of just earning the 7% weekly return on his own money?

With Bitcoin, the new awesome feature is the publicly available ledger that is still pseudonomous. I would guess pirate would have had way more trust if, while staying anonymous, he explained how the investor's money was being invested, and posted his own accounting ledger online along with the Bitcoin addresses being used, so people can verify that the money is going where he says it is. No need to disclose your identity to be fully transparent when it comes to Bitcoin and the blockchain. That's actually how the Bitcoin100 works, with a publicly viewable ledger matched to all a dresses and transactions (though we're not ourselves anonymous)