Quote from: micers on April 17, 2014, 05:35:22 AM

I completely agree with the argument you have made. Technically your analysis is flaweless. The most alarming thing for me is the lack of any other contact points between the staff of the site and the customers of the site.

Yes, the lack of contact is troubling. Fingers crossed, they are too busy focusing on the problem. Just because the worst case cannot be proven at this point, does not make it wrong. Rather than jumping to conclusions, the wisest course of action is to wait and see. If they come back, I personally plan to reward them with more capital. If not, I'm one of the lucky ones who retrieved my initial investment before it was too late. Investments such as this are certainly not without risk. Anyone who risks more on an investment of this than they can afford to graciously lose is a fool, as is anyone who assumes up front it is a scam. With the possibility of reward comes risk. If people can't accept that, they should keep all assets under a mattress in a fortified bunker.

My take is that there are an uncountable amount of potentially lucrative investments. Diversify among a large number of them that are unrelated, and barring an end to all social order, you will do okay. Get greedy, and put everything in the highest return investment you can find, and you run a good chance of losing everything. Like everything else in life, the key is moderation, and emotional equanimity. Investors in anything that panic at the first sign of reversal, or go all in when things look hot, Inevitably buy high, sell low, and lose their shirts sooner or later.

I've made investments where I have lost everything, investments where I've profited 10 fold, and investments that did nothing but languish. The only times I've lost in aggregate is when I've gotten too excited or too scared and over reacted. It's not easy to keep your head when others are panicking. It's not easy to resist going all in on something that looks like a no-brainer, but forcing ones self to do so almost always is the wise decision. I lost a good chunk of money in the 2008 crash, but not as much as some, because I avoided putting everything in stocks. When things crashed, I took the Warren Buffet advice, and bought with both hands to keep myself diversified in the same proportions as I was before the crash. I am far worse off than the minority that timed everything right, but far better off than the majority that panicked. I have a lot more now than I did before the crash.

It all comes down to whether you want a 1 in 10 chance of getting rich quickly vs getting poor quickly, or a 10 to one chance of merely doing very well, vs losing a minor portion of your wealth. I'm no super investor. I've given in to both greed and fear, and generally regretted it. The longer I've been doing it though, the more I've learned to fight those inclinations. In 20/20 hindsight, if I'd gone all in on some investments that paid out 10 fold, I'd be a rich man, but experience has proven to me that the only way to know which investments those are, is after it is too late.

If the site folds, anyone severely hurt should thank them for the lesson in moderation. If it doesn't then hopefully the scare will teach them the same thing. If the site comes back, and anyone becomes rich off from putting too many eggs in this one basket, then if they don't change, they will soon lose it all. Just my opinion.

IMO, Everyone should just dial back the the paranoia, hope things work out, and be prepared if they don't.By jumping the gun, they only make failure of the site more likely, and hurt themselves along with the whole community.

octopus1

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