Only Do Business with Those You Trust

Today’s life lesson is this: only do business with those you trust. If you do business with those you can’t trust then you may find yourself missing large quantities of money:

An invite-only online hedge fund that promised lucrative returns for investors called the Bitcoin Savings & Trust has shut down, and with it have disappeared the service’s administrator — a user known in the digital currency community as pirateat40 — as well as millions of dollars’ worth of the cryptocash, currently valued at around $11 USD per coin.

Pirateat40 claimed that Bitcoin Savings & Trust had collected from investors roughly 500,000 worth of the currency, or around $5.49 million in US dollars, but not before disappearing off the face of the Web. The virtual hedge fund went offline this month following pirateat40’s announcement that the site would be shutting down soon, but the investors that had their own Bitcoins tied up in BS&T say that they think the e-bankster in charge has bolted with their money.

From what I can gather nobody involved with the ponzi scheme actually knew who Pirateat40 was. Why would you trust a person you’ve never met with your money? More importantly, why would you trust a person whose identity is concealed from you with your money? The answer to both questions is you shouldn’t.

One thought on “Only Do Business with Those You Trust”

  1. Better question – why would you invest with someone who goes by a handle that includes the term “pirate”? He was giving away his intention as theft!

    “why would you trust a person whose identity is concealed from you with your money?”

    Probably some asinine justification about how the entire purpose of Bitcoin is anonymity and so forth.

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