thats what i thought.
maybe the US gov is buying up the bitcoins, b/c they know USD is going to be worthless!

and a bit scary. imaging the gov bought up all the BTC, which they would essentially killed the currency.
Then, we would have to create yet another BTC fork, and make the gov buy it up again. lol

They would only have to borrow more money from China to do it.

Nope, the gov has gotten smarter than that. It's called quantitative easing.... essentially creating money out of thin air.
It is too expensive to borrow from China.
This is what my econ professor once said:
US borrows $100 from China, and pays 5% interest rate.
US use that $100 to buy $100 worth of raw materials from China.
US then use that $100 worth of materials to print $100 bills. It costs $0.02 to print one $100 bill.
The US then repays China 5% interest, using the $100 bill created using $0.02 of materials.
The cost for US to borrow $100 from china at 5% rate is thus calculated as $0.02 x 5% = $0.001.
And how does the US pay that $0.001? You guessed it, the US borrow another $100 from China, to buy $100 worth of materials, and to print $100 bills that cost $0.02.
There, he said that is why US cannot go bankrupt, as long as USD is the world reserve currency.

As the market suffers a correction, pirate runs out of room again!  Time to send all your money to my side business

Yes.  If he wants to get greedy about it, I know some people above him in line

I might know someone too. 

Ok, so be it First Pirate Savings and Trust it is!  I like the sound of that.

It also just bothers me because consolidating lenders, in some sense, hurts pirateat40 (and all his lenders, by extension). For example, if I were his sole lender, and decided on a whim to withdraw one day, and he was in an awkward short position or something, he'd be forced to buy back coins at a disadvantageous rate. If people keep consolidating the lending I'd imagine pirateat40 might have to start instituting more rules to restrict withdrawals and such, so he covers his bases. There are book-keeping downsides to dealing with loads of lenders, but there are downsides to having too few, too.

I just hope this good thing doesn't turn into a tragedy of the commons where everyone looks out for themselves and forces pirateat40 to step in to restrict things more for everyone. Perhaps he doesn't care, but this behavior, taken to the extreme, is bad for everyone.

Thanks for the response. I really need some help figuring out the morality of this.
Perhaps the person selling their space could talk to pirate and set restrictions on themselves (and those who lend through them, of course) to only withdraw something like 20%/day.
Everybody had an opportunity to get in on this investment opportunity; shouldn't those who "took the risk" be rewarded?