I don't think that is necessarily it. I think there is a decent size group of people here who simply ride the waves. They follow troll boxes, see a new coin listed, see the hype, see a pump ... and jump in. They aren't looking to find the next bitcoin, they are hoping for a 2-10x increase in investment in a very short period of time.

When that new coin turns out to be a scam, they then go into cry-mode.  Or I should also add, if they lose money, they also go into cry-mode. People scream scam here for not only true scams, but sometimes coins they lose money on ... guess it's sort of human nature. The fault isn't their own by making a foolish investment decision, so it must be that shit/scam coin they jumped into, in the middle of a pump.

There are signs to look for, like the fellow you mentioned above. Large premines, devs associated with other iffy coins, and so on. But we can't control other people's behavior.

If enough people get burned, market forces should hopefully take care of things at least a little bit.

Could be a whale simply trying to push the price down. Or a lot of nervous investors. Usually when I see an unusually high order a bit back in the pack, I just assume price manipulation.

Mp hasn't quite stopped it yet, but stopped taking paid votes and believe they plan to end it entirely by Sept. 1.

Either they plan to go the Bittrex route and start accepting newer coins earlier, or just got tired of dead/dying coins getting listed based on votes, pumping once, then dying completely.

Cryptsy already started adding some newer coins, ie Bittrex-style, so I guess they are feeling the pinch and want to catch some of that new coin hype. To me, that would be a big negative if they really go that route, as it just makes cryptsy yet another exchange, nothing special about it.

As for communities/donations, I believe someone here already mentioned food pantries or food to the homeless? That would make sense. And of course I mean literal food, not Plankton food, as it's unlikely they have computers or a way to even use Plankton.

Feed the Children also would make sense, fits the Food theme, and donating to kids is sort of a nice thing to do. http://www.feedthechildren.org/

MP has stopped the pay per vote thing. Not sure if Cryptsy has or not, and Polo voting doesn't take payments. That doesn't mean there aren't under the table sorts of payments going on, but not much anyone can do about that even if there is.

I am curious about one thing... how would people here define a scamcoin?

A coin that pushes a community to vote wouldn't necessarily be a scamcoin to me. It may not be the best coin in the the world, but it doesn't mean the dev is out to scam anyone.

A scamcoin to me is when a dev promises something and doesn't come close to delivering, when a dev abandons a coin, when a dev runs an ipo and doesn't even provide coins to people, hidden premines, or giant premines where the devs dump, and that sort of thing.

An iffy coin with a low number of unique features, perhaps a hired gun as a coder, and asking its community to vote wouldn't qualify as a scam to me. I mean, who is being scammed? It may not be the best investment, but it's not really hurting anyone.

I think the problem is that the coin got moved to a real exchange too quickly (as odd as that sounds). Usually with cheapo/freebie types of coins they linger on allcoin/crypt/whatever for several weeks, at least, where all the weak hands sell off for a couple of sats. So by the time the coin gets to bittrex or a real exchange, there isn't so much dumping.

Here it didn't spend very long on the dinky exchanges before going right to bittrex, so all of those .01 ipo people started to get impatient.

People also hold if they start MintPal voting, with the idea it'll pump even more once it gets there. But with MP stopping the voting thing, it's Polo or Cryptsy, and Polo voting tends to be a bit weird (one per user and that's it). Don't think people have the patience to wait for that.

You probably need to add some inherent value to the coin, if you really want to see it move up. These contests and such are fine, but absent any unique code features in the coin, you need to create a purpose for it. Coinpayments, some site accepting it as a currency, something. Based on the number of coins, it certainly should be worth more than it currently is. But it needs more than plankton images, however nice they may be, and contests.

Same size, and the giveaway is the fact the name of the coin is around the border for each coin. Incredibly lazy on the dev's part.

Not in this case. Look at the coin logos for this and Conceal... that's all you need to do really.

The only potential problem with such a requirement is that there could be real devs who simply don't post here a lot, and wish to create a coin. But a reasonable requirement, like 25 posts or so, may at least slow down the pace of new coins a little bit. Not sure if it'd make a big difference in the longrun, or devs will simply prepare ahead of time with dozens of puppet accounts created in advance.

What would work, but will never happen -- all the major exchanges require identification of the dev for any coin listed on their exchange, similar to Polo's new ICD rules. It won't happen because they are greedy.

Bittrex in fact just listed vastcoin, and there is pretty decent proof it's the same dev as concealcoin, who just pulled a scam by running out on the coin. Doesn't matter, it gets listed anyway.

And if you read the vastcoin thread, you see that to some people it doesn't matter if it's a scam. So long as they make money, they don't care. And that is another problem here, there is a lack of morals of course with tons of scammy devs, but also a lack of morals amongst many of the 'investors' here.
Scam or not, it doesn't matter to them. It's difficult to protect people from something they don't even want to be protected from.

Look at the coin icon images on the ann page for Conceal and Vast. Compare the sizes and text in the borders.

Either it's a one in a million coincidence, or... well, the obvious... same dev for both coins.

Nice catch. First thing I noticed was that the coin graphics are nearly exactly the same size on the ann page, for both coins. There may be other hints in the text, didn't read through them in detail to see if it was the same writing style or not. Oh, and both coin icons have their name repeated in the border.

All that proves is he's not dead and a 'hospital excuse' won't work if he ever shows up again. He'd actually be better off not logging in at all, then if he returns he could make up an excuse like family problems/health issues/broken pc/bad internet/etc.

Since he's logged in, it's actually worse than if he didn't.

Agreed. For blatant scams, I'd suggest the same as the other poster -- just post why something is a scam in the forums. Don't use FUD, don't use giant red letters, just state the case and either people will take heed or not... up to them.

Unfortunately a lot of the larger scams aren't known scams until after the fact. A dev vanishes on a coin ... how would decreasing its price via some price manipulation plan, help the situation any? And obviously we can't post about a vanishing dev until he actually vanishes.

An exchange goes under, takes everyone's coins with them. Again, there is no way to really do much about it.

A dev promises grand things, yet just has a whitepaper. Is it a scam? Very possibly, but nobody can say for certain.

A coin runs an ipo... people cry about devs possibly running away with the funds. Scam or not? Again, very possible, but we can't say with certainty until after the fact.

My point being, there is only so much anyone can do about a lot of scammy behavior. So yeah, it could be useful to point out blatant scams, giant premines, iffy devs and potentially scammy behavior, but I'm not entirely sure how effective any course of action would be. Only so much can be done.

It's probably past the point of no return for the coin. Even if the dev shows up now, nobody would trust him. He waited too long.

That said, since he went this far, and assuming he is even accumulating coins, he might as well take it as far as it can go. Meaning stay quiet a week, wait until the price hits around 100 sats or less. Gobble up tons of coins, then return and make up some lame excuse. Nobody would believe him, but he may be able to get a rise to 500-1000 out of it -- plenty of profit.

I've suggested education as a way to combat scam coins/shady behavior in several threads here, including that shitcoin killing thread. Some folks have gone around in threads pointing out shady behavior, but more often or not it's people just going around like a maniac spreading FUD. The noise gets drowned out.

Sometimes I think half the people here just like to complain. They got cheated by some coin, so they want to lash out... against every coin out there... it doesn't matter what method they use, or if it'll even work. Or they think that killing new coins will somehow make the older, more established alt they are holding worth more.

Problems arise when nobody can define what a 'scamcoin/shitcoin' even is. Determining a scamcoin after the scam is meaningless. Bias creeps in, and one person's treasure is another person's scamcoin. It basically turns into: the shitcoins I am holding are fine, but everything else is a scam.

And that probably explains why Cryptsy took on several non-established coins recently. Bittrex and new coin hype is eating into their profits.

The problem with this sort of plan is first expecting profits to begin with. It's not a sure-thing that people can pick out what coins are going to go to a larger exchange, and even if they do, it's no guarantee than they can dump for a profit there. Quite often the profitable pumps occur before a coin hits a larger exchange. And unless you just happened to buy in cheaper, jumping into a pump is also no guarantee of a profit ... quite often the opposite.

But say we assume people can pick scam coins before they are on a larger exchange and sell for a profit. First off, how do they determine what is a scam before it's even a scam? If a coin has high volume, looks like it's going to a bigger exchange, why would someone automatically say, hey, this coin must be a scam? If it's overly shady, scammy behavior, dev not about, etc of course it's a sign the coin is a scam. But by then it's too late.

You also expect people to forgo profits in order to drive the price of a coin down. I'm extremely doubtful that is even possible, as you'd need an extremely large bankroll and a willingness to sell a coin for peanuts. And then hope that other people wouldn't simply gobble up the cheap coins and wait out the dumpers ... hence why I said I don't think it'd work.

There will always be more people buying than selling, assuming people are selling at really low prices like you advocate here. All it will accomplish is those buying the dumps will make more money, while those who try this plan break even or lose money.

And how many true altruists do you think are on this forum anyway? I'd say zero.

Although you certainly would make money if the dev returns, I'm not so sure of any sort of skyrocketing price. Too many people have been burned and his behavior would look scammy, regardless of what excuse he uses at this point. The time for him to return was yesterday, coin was still around 1200-1500ish, and he could have made up some excuse, family problems, PC issues, whatever. I think people will be less forgiving now, and less so the longer he waits.

The more likely scenario appears to be just a scam. Then it's a question of a community takeover, but by then the price may be 100ish or less.

Odd, but not unheard of. The QBC dev pulled a similar stunt, while sitting on a huge premine. He took his 20 BTC or so from the IPO, posted once in a rare while, not saying much at all, and just vanished. If he was even semi-active, he could have made much more, especially if he tried to cash in the premine. I guess sometimes whatever they get initially is enough for them, then they move on.

His gameplan was to destroy his own credibility, lose investors tons of money, and sink his own coin to a level it'll probably never fully recover from? If so, I don't think he really thought things out.

Devs can profit from simply being quiet, but typically its when the price lowers only to a certain degree. Too low, and it's past the point of no return. People simply won't trust that dev again.

More likely it was a simple scam. One reason he hasn't returned could be he has nothing to return with ... no white paper, no way to do anything he actually said he would.