I believed I would win the bet and I also believed there was a good chance Matt had no intent in paying so I skipped the bet.
Why bet on something you will win and probably not get paid?
Not sure you thought this through. A bet you will definitely win and maybe not get paid is a very good bet.
The only reason I didn't bet more is because I really felt sorry for Matthew back then (this was early in the bet still, before he went full retard and went above 10K, actually much earlier than maxing the 10K).
But thinking about it there are many wins about this bet. You get to be a "victim" so I can have some fun and go to the Financial Services Authority in the UK, something I always wanted to try but never had the excuse to. I'm still pondering this. Also, being entitled to ask for the scammer tag etc. I'd say this bet was really good, feels better than winning a couple hundred.
Sorry I didn't mean to imply 100% sure I would win. Just that I likely (90% to 95%) would win.
I still considered it possible that Pirate would attempt to repay investors with devalued coins.
While I doubt Pirate could pull that off on his own maybe some large third party would use that as an opportunity to crash the market for their own reasons.
So investors would get "repaid" but the buying power of the coins repaid would be less than what they invested.