Point of order on the "1% a week": Initially launched as btclending.com it was 1%/day, invite/referral only and payouts were every 3 days. Effectively it was 7

Point of order on the "1% a week": Initially launched as btclending.com it was 1%/day, invite/referral only and payouts were every 3 days. Effectively it was 7%/week, compound into something like 3300% APR. That being said as the website ui and backend transitioned from btclending.com to "First Pirate Savings & Trust" and ultimately btcst.com (Bitcoin Savings & Trust) more people started "getting in on the action" rules were changed, payouts went to once per week, blah blah... obviously a ponzi doesn't scale well. In the end minimum balances were required to stay in the "7%/week bracket" where balances <1000BTC were only earning 5.5%/week. If anyone that sets off your ponzi red flag detectors - well done. I can say that there were a handful of early GPU miners with truckloads of sub 5 dollar bitcoins and no where to invest them. GPU Miners who built mining rigs that literally ROI'd in days or weeks, not months. Did some people get burned? Obviously. Did others milk free interest? Most likely. Where I think Trendon and many others have ultimately failed - and this especially goes for Espinoza and his failed "bitcoin isn't money" argument - NOT PRACTICING KYC. There's a lot of smart people out there that know to walk from the transaction when the counterparty mentions tor/fraud/crime/buying stolen credit cards. Espinoza obviously didn't think facilitating the purchase of stolen credit cards was a problem (or didn't care) I'm not sure this specific article mentions it or not but the agents doing the undercover buy from localbitcoins told the seller Espinoza it was for fake credit cards. Huge Red flag for the bitcoin seller. In general though, I would agree with OP that bitcoin is some type of money already defined by precedent and Espinoza is getting reamed for no MSB license and not practicing KYC.