So i read through some of the links listed and this is what im understanding: There's a guy named pirateat40. He has supposedly 500k BTC. People lended him money. There's a large group that calls him a scammer...
I'm still not getting the full picture
You are forgetting he was paying 7% interest per week. Which is the same as doubling the investment every 10 weeks.
That makes Pirate either a ponzi scam artist, or a genius since no one else figured out how you could possibly achieve such returns.
As for why people trust him? Honestly, it beats me. In the lending section of this forum they will require a scanned ID, proof of residence and what not before lending anyone 5BTC, but for some reason a lot of people feel confident lending pirate a total of 500000BTC without even knowing for sure what his real name is. Either they know more than the rest of us, or frankly, they are idiots.
*shrug* I wouldn't call them ALL idiots. Those who believed it was a scheme of some sort made a calculated assessment as to the likelihood of being able to deposit, gain interest, and withdraw funds before the scheme collapsed. Those who didn't believe it was a scheme perhaps had reasons for not believing it was a scheme. Everyone had their own set of information on which they based their decisions, and calling them idiots because it looked like they invest in a scheme isn't necessarily true.
Of course, some were probably too blinded by greed to objectively view the information in front of them, so I might call them idiots.
