So ,you think pirate is not shaking up a volatile market and making money by doing so .......

You think he has designed the BTCST to be a ponzi right  from the start ?

Micon, so what about the .5%-2.5% per week schemes?  Those are legit right?

link me to example.  likely just a slower ponzi. 

remember Bernie Madoff returned 1% each month like clockwork.  every month 1%.  likely slowest and biggest ponzi ever. 

definition of a ponzi scheme -

can have no underlying business unit to make money, i.e. payments to "investors" must come from new "investors"

i run donkdown poker forum

site pro at sealswithclubs

did thriller dance at WSOP pro poker player 2x WSOP FT's

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-mBUA-uUDM

fully legit guy here and wore a BTC button during all WSOP, check the pokernews pix

I also am 33 yrs old and have been scammed before when I was younger and ppl try to scam me all the time here in Vegas.  Seen a ton of scams and how they go down and some of you younger kids could learn a bit.

Do you also have a credit card charging you 3000% APR (without grace periods) and use it to buy all those ceiling clips and never pay the balance off?

With ponzis it is all not so much about earning whatever crazy stuff as about continuing buying the capital at insane prices.

The only missing ingredient is how

I have "invested" money in goods and sold them on ebay before making 100-300% (although it took a bit longer  )  so 0.5 to 2.5% is more than achievable IF there is something legitimate behind it

you cant prove its a ponzi without knowing whats behind the scenes

I've invested a bit of money in Bitcoinmax.  Not much, but some.  I may be fairly new to Bitcoin, but I'm rather adept at life.  I certainly have enough real-life experience under my belt to understand how to mitigate a high risk transaction.  I'm sure that a 6.9% compounded interest rate is not sustainable in the long term, but for now, it seems to be working fine, no?  Of course the whole thing may collapse tomorrow (or sooner), but that's a risk I'm willing to take.  

And, come-on.  Just *getting* into Bitcoin (educating yourself about it, transferring funds, exchanging funds for Bitcoins, setting up wallets, etc...) probably means you have a better than average understanding of risk management.  

Services like Bitcoinmax have value.  They allow people (for various reasons...I'll explain mine in a moment) to do some heavy speculating.  Sometimes that works out, sometimes it doesn't.  It's the individual's responsibility to mitigate the risks.  If Bitcoinmax fails tomorrow (or sooner), I have nobody to blame but myself.  He plainly states that he doesn't guarantee deposits.  He plainly states that all of the risk lies with the depositor.  So, what's the problem, here?  

I take a bit of umbrage when people come around and insist telling me that I'm being scammed.  If I were being lied to, or the risks of the speculation were hidden from me, that may well be the case.  I don't see that happening, here.  

I plan on watching my deposit on a daily basis and start mitigating the risk of said deposit as soon as possible.  This can be done any number of ways, but the important thing is, I'm taking responsibility for my own actions.  

I love Bitcoin and these forums because they are generally anarchistic and unregulated.  I enjoy seeing mutual cooperation come together to solve problems in a void.  There are ways of of determining scams, and the serious people on these boards seem to be coming up with good counters to those scams all the time.  This is how a free, unregulated market is supposed to work.  

I'm not a child.  I understand the risks.  I want to swim in these waters, and I wouldn't have it any other way.

**The reason I'm speculating in Bitcoinmax at the moment is to get my "feet wet" and to attempt to grow a large enough stake where I can start doing lending of my own.  This is a learning process for me.  If I lose my stake, I'll chalk it up as a price of admission.

And, that's all I have to say about that.

Rofl... you can get 0.5%/week if you just buy some mining hardware
Because GPU's and FPGA's are ponzi schemes.

It may not make sense *to you*, but it obviously makes sense to others.  Here's a hint.  We aren't a collectivized entity.  We each approach these things as individuals, assess the risks, and act accordingly.  In other words, people work and play on the margins all the time.  This is how the margins get pushed back to make room for the rest of us.  The people who work and play out there either understand the risks and act accordingly, or they quickly get burned.

OP is fundamentally incorrect, for the very reasons I stated.  If someone is offering me a very risky service, which may well result in me losing capital, and is completely upfront about all the risks involved, how in the world can that be classified as a "scam?"

So many people were burned on the original Ponzi scheme (and later with Bernie Madoff) because those two people really *were* scamming people.  They did not disclose the risks.  They guaranteed things which could not be guaranteed, and they blatantly lied to the people who gave them money. 

Like I said upstream, I've put money into Bitcoinmax.  I'm well aware of the risks.  I know nothing is guaranteed me, and I'm fairly confident I'm not being lied to. 

Am I being scammed? 

Words mean things.  You can't just throw them around without consequence. 

This is all ironic because the OP accuses those of offering and accepting these services of being "kiddies." 

Yet, it's those who misappropriate language and fail to understand that words have consequences who are acting like children.