I believe, to the best of my knowledge, that given the absence of any public financial disclosure and an extremely high rate of return that the Bitcoin Savings and Trust is a Ponzi scheme.
I'd like to make this a forum-based petition of bitcointalk users who agree with this. I don't want to do a poll, because I want people to commit their user name to this statement.
I'm interested in seeing how many people agree with me. I'd prefer to have any debate over this issue in a separate thread.
My theory is that if you want to develop community, then you need to figure out who to trust and what is a scam. Bitcoin has suffered from too many scams.
So if you agree, reply and say "I agree".
I agree.
And "then don't invest" is a shoddy excuse, because it ignore the debasement of the forum and bitcoin's reputation, as well as unsuspecting investors who aren't savvy enough to realize their money is being used to steal from future investors.
Absent an explanation of how Pirate generates such profits, ponzi is the most likely explanation. Quantitatively, it's obvious from just a glance that his alpha relative to his beta against any standard benchmark puts him way beyond the Madoff level in terms of incredulity. Am I the only one that considers risk? Either Pirate is the greatest investor who's ever lived, or he's going to teach people a tough lesson in finance. Remember that people do actually make money in ponzi schemes, and that they can last for years. But they all end the same: disaster. As I mentioned in another thread,
revealing the strategy of one's investing technique does not reveal the actual investing process or "give away" any substantive information. Revealing that one's fund engages in spatial arbitrage or out-of-the-money options or equity straddles tells investors nothing about how the fund allocates capital, but it does give them deeper understanding into the process.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.
And it shouldn't be hard to demonstrate if it's legit.
The OP brings up a good point, because the reason we ask tough questions is because people actually get ripped off and wiped out by so-called investments that have numbers commensurate with Pirate's numbers.
Bitcoin has incredible potential. I don't want to see it sabotaged before its time and have its reputation sullied by a few dodgy "investment funds."
Nor do I want to see bitcointalk degenerate into a HYIP forum.
Satoshi developed something incredible, but these "investments" are what you all settle for?
If Pirate really is as good as claims, then he should be able to explain, at least in general terms, how he generates profits. And if he does demonstrate that he's not running a ponzi scheme, then I'll humbly apologize.