Quote from: unclescrooge on August 17, 2012, 06:55:38 PM

Now that Pirateat40 closed down his operatations thanks to all the fud that was going on and growing on the forum, I expect everyone that spreads this fud, accused and insulted Pirate and the people that supported him to apologize.

Not only did Pirate brought us a great opportunity for investors (once in a lifetime actually), he did help stabilise and grow steadily bitcoin price, volume exchange, and thus contributed to the success of bitcoin. For that, Pirate, I want to thank you. You've done a wonderful work, and I hope you're stay around here.

Now, apologies on.

Regardless of the outcome, I dont think anyone owes an apology for pointing out that a semi anonymous forum poster paying out >3000% interest per year based on an undisclosed and rather miraculous business plan is probably a ponzi. That its a legitimate business is possible, just like its possible that 10-post newbie in the lending section really crashed his car, needs 1000BTC and will actually pay it back in 6 months with 100% interest. But you wouldnt just assume that, or would you? If anyone called that an almost certain scam, you wouldnt demand proof or apologies, or would you? The onus to disprove the assumption such a venture is a scam is firmly on the person requesting the loan. Particularly if you are going to hold millions of dollars of other people's money, the burden of proof of legitimacy is upon that person, and not on anyone pointing out the obvious. Failure to provide any such proof should automatically lead to the assumption its a scam. Assumptions are not facts.

So what proof do we have Pirate scheme is legit? Pirate chose not to reveal his identity, nor his business model, nor give any other guarantees that he can fullfill his obligations.. No credible explanation for how he could generate those returns has been put forward. In the lending forum most people generally demand far more proof, verification, IDs etc to lend just 10BTC while pirate lend 100s of 1000s of BTC. Think about it. So unless you know something I dont, we have zero evidence its not a ponzi, while it has all the hallmarks of a ponzi, and therefore the only sensible thing to do is assume it is indeed a ponzi. Could that assumption be proven wrong? Sure, but we are all waiting for that proof to be paid out.

Now, Id like you all to recall the thread about bitcoinica were paraipan filed a police report to force Zhou Tong to publish his identity and/or the legal entity that ran Bitcoinica:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=64176.0

The forum lynched him over that action, Zhou Tong was considered a saint that no one had the right to doubt, yadayada, go read it. But what paraipan did was a pretty sensible thing to do: If you are going to give a semi anonymous forum poster 100s of thousands of your coins or dollar, you at least want to know who to sue if it goes wrong. Because it can, and did go very wrong, just like mybitcoin went very wrong and who knows how many other schemes. Everyone with a vested interest in bitcoin lost because of those, just like we will lose if pirate's scheme turns out to be a scam, even those people who didnt invest in it.

So no, I wont apologize to anyone for using common sense and protecting my interests. I will however, gladly and genuinely congratulate Pirate if he manages to pay off his debt.