It would also explain why Pirate was worried about the BTCUSD price going up too high. If he had been running the ponzi himself the BTCUSD price would have been irrelevant to him.
On the other hand, in the week after August 17th Pirate was still claiming to be able to pay out everything. If all the funds had been in zeekrewards then he should have known that he wouldn't be able to get them out anymore.
Pirate has now in IRC today denied knowing anything about Zeek or having any involvement with it.
He has not deviated from his standard course of showing up every once in a while and saying absolutely nothing substantive about payments or even anything meta about why information is restricted.