Quote from: defcon80 on July 21, 2012, 06:36 amQuote from: vlad1m1r on July 20, 2012, 04:25 pmQuote from: defcon80 on July 20, 2012, 08:18 amQuote from: sunny1 on July 19, 2012, 09:35 pmYou wouldn't happen to be the owner of that site would you? Just asking.>am i the only one doing anything this risky ? i would put in more coins if i trusted it 100% etcNice touch, showing a little skepticism.I dont own it ,i could sign in here with my silkroad vendor name but that wouldnt be too smart considering we are discussing investing BTC generated from SR drug sales in the real world the main owner/ investor is a guy called pirateat40 ,google him if you think im making thhis up (hes pretty famous over at the bitcoin forum )he is paying shitloads of interest but obviously he must be taking some pretty massive gambles with everyones ELSES money ,the only question is how long for ? if nobody else is dealing with him or any of his sub-investors id like to hear about it ,if not ,let the thread die thx all !As you'll see from the article I mentioned (http://www.thebitcointrader.com/2012/05/bitcoin-stock-market-miners-and-pirates.html) - there's no way he could be making money in the way as it claimed on the Bitcoin Talk Forums as far as I can see. The interest rates on loans from the Pirate Bank don't marry up with the promised rate of returns to Investors. Similarly making money from trading off the Bitcoin against various exchanges begs the question how he can avoid driving the Bitcoin price down through his very efforts.I personally don't use the bonds and never would - there are some mining pools listed on GLBSE which I've dabbled in and certainly the Asset Backed Securities look promising but anything else is your ass! I'm going to create a thread about my own investment program later which guarantees your principal (i.e your original investment), watch this space.V.However or wherever the money is coming from ,the interest is being payed out every week (yes ,i have withdrawn all the the coins to check if the pirate had plundered the loot or not )i was able to withhdraw about 1070 coins after the first week ,so whose 70 extra coins did i withdraw ? how many more times could i get 70+ free coins before it comes crashing down ?basically a free 700+ dollars a week per every 1000 BTC deposited ,how did i get 700 free dollars ? this puzzles me a lot because mathematically its impossible to pay 3400% interest a year ,many people have pulled out early ,nobody has lost anything yet that i know off and the interst is still being paid out at staggering rates if its a pyramid ,anyone care to guess what level is at at now ?Hi Defcon,Did you read the article I posted above from TheBitcoinTrader? As you say so far (I say so far!) the Pirate has paid up like clockwork. You would usually expect a pyramid scheme to teeter after a few months however some have existed for much longer. Midland Euro for instance ran for about four years - and of course Petters Group Worldwide ran for nearly fifteen.Several possibilities are listed in the article in question including that the Pirate may not be aware himself that he's investing cash in a Russian pyramid scheme outside the Bitcoin network. There's also the possibility that he's making use of several such schemes and is simply reinvesting clients money in newer ones as older ones start to go bad.My (limited) experience of such firms is that they are not usually entirely reliant on Ponzi schemes to make money but will also bolster their funds through legitimate trading, if only so they can justify the huge returns promised.You're absolutely right in thinking of the scheme in these terms though i.e whose 70 Bitcoins are you getting. If this is a Ponzi, then the answer is that you're getting them from earlier investors in the scheme. The question for me is when the whole house of cards comes crashing down. I have talked about this with my Mentor who has worked in my department (Hedge Funds) for nearly thirty years and he says that this kind of scheme is unsustainable - does anyone really believe that if they invested USD 1000 they'd be a millionaire within two years? I don't promise this but I can promise to keep your original investment safe! :-)V.