Quote from: rise_against on August 21, 2012, 04:13 ami really dont see how he could possibly pay back everyone what he promised if he wasnt a scammer.Easy! Announce the closure of BCST in order to induce panic in the marketplace, adding hundreds of thousands of BTC from your BCST wallet to the sell orders on the market to initiate a landslide price drop - everyone panics because of the huge amount of coins released, knowing that price is going to drop because of this, so they attempt to cash out their own BTC immediately; this drops the price further enabling you to buy up BTC effectively at half price (hugely increasing your BTC holdings) in order to pay back your investors.Don't forget, he was paying interest in Bitcoin, so if you invested 100 BTC valued at $1400.00, and you get back 107 BTC worth $749.00, he's still fulfilled the terms of the contract as you've received your 7% interest in Bitcoin, as the contract stipulated.A shrewd move on pirateat40's behalf, and one which contained a large degree of calculated risk. I reckon if it hadn't worked out that he would have just absconded with the coins, but it has worked out (so far), so he can now pay his investors back and save face in the community, enabling him to effectively wash, rinse and repeat this process under another guise. (It remains to be seen, of course, whether he actually pays anyone back or not - he was supposed to begin doing this yesterday and so far nobody has been paid back yet. The scam / Ponzi possibility is still very much open.)Again though, it's an investment and as such it's inherently risky. The first rule of investing is that you never risk more money than you can afford to lose. I fear many people ignored this rule, and if this turns out in the worst way possible, then there are going to be a lot of very broke, very angry people out there. Greed is, has, and always will be, humanity's downfall - both on an individual and collective level.- grahamgreene