Quote from: memvola on August 22, 2012, 11:14:16 AM

Quote from: JoelKatz on August 22, 2012, 10:26:00 AM

Quote from: memvola on August 22, 2012, 09:37:26 AM

I can't agree with this. I tried to deposit with Vescudero and he only accepted around 1/4 of my offer as deposit. After he increased the total limit, he put a per-deposit limit.

Madoff made people jump through hoops to invest with him. This is typical Ponzi behavior.

In my humble opinion, you are being dismissive because you're convinced that it would be best if everyone stopped investing in these schemes. Although I agree with the sentiment, that approach is hopeless. Regarding Vescudero and others, I don't think decreasing limits and lowering interest is typical Ponzi behavior. It could be a long con, and he could be thinking of expanding after gaining enough trust, but that kind of conviction borders on not being able to do any business with anyone remotely.

I think a lot of people think this way, so I don't see people beginning to withdraw because the scheme could be a Ponzi. One could easily make up a business model to collect money if the goal is to run with a measly 2600 BTC. He could come up with an idea like ASICMINER, run with tens of thousands of BTC and claim identity theft.

Quote from: JoelKatz on August 22, 2012, 10:26:00 AM

Quote

Another borrower, chungenhung recently returned all deposits with interest and shut down operation. I'm not sure he's the first one to do that either. How would you explain these phenomena?

I'd say chungenhung was probably investing the funds in a ponzi and managed to cash out before the ponzi he was investing in collapsed. It's also possible he was really an extremely high risk investment that just happened to pan out by sheer luck. I don't know. Do you know? And if you don't know, how can you rationally evaluate the risk? And if you can't rationally evaluate the risk, why invest?

Might be luck, we don't know, though it's less probable by definition. By the way, if we are talking rationality, why return the funds ever? Either way, the funds are returned, so it's more quantitative proof to the contrary. You could even say that notme and chungenhung (and possibly others) have done a bad thing by being honest.

Even after Bernie Madoff, Allen Stanford and now pirateat40 you still write rubbish like this? You are a complete idiot. Just give your bitcoins away now, it will save you some time.