Good analysis. I disagree about the XPY valuation. The price of XPY crashed to the 1800-2000 sat level only after they shut down the XPY purchasing. That was nail in the coffin for XPY. But before that it was mostly above 5000 sats. At the time BTC was probably worth closer to $420, so it would have been about 2.1 cents/XPY. That would make the lowest purchase price about 16 cents per ION. But who knows, there were probably a lot of people who paid a lot more for the XPY than two cents. Some of them probably bought in at $4 or more, so I wouldn't expect 1.25 million dumped on the open market.

@boki15 I am a trader, not an investor. I will probably trade ION if it has any volume and volatility. I don't really care what a coin's background is or its history as long as I can find a profitable trade.

I know there are some people who will get in early and take the risks. That's not really how I would do it as a trader.  We could speculate though about possible outcomes. Obviously some people who got in early at the lower price can dump to anyone who got in later at a higher price.

At a coin tech level, they could try to profit off proof of stake. If they can double the amount of ION they bought in a couple years, they'd break even if the coin price drops 50% from the initial purchase price. Price could crash if the company flees with the BTC. Or if the company could dumps their own ION into the market. But that's kind of what an ICO is anyhow (dumping their own coin into the market).

Is this technology worth as much as a DASH? I haven't looked at the numbers (coin supply, market price, market cap) to compare them.

Makes sense as a bottom line: It's never a good idea to invest in something or someone you don't trust.

It still seems like a big difference if Matlack was an employee and scammer or an investor who got taken. Maybe @ionomy can give some answers about that?

@phildo wrote:

@ionomy can you answer some of this? Did Matlack fail in whatever they were doing before? What are xpybits? Did it go as planned for the people who bought them? If Matlack failed in his previous company, what's to make anyone think he'd stick around when his next company fails?

OK, @boki15, I found  an article that says the motion for default judgment against GAW was granted:

http://www.helenabitcoinmining.com/2015/08/11/gaw-miners-lawsuit-ends-with-340k-default-judgement/

That's August 2015. Dead before or after that? I don't know. But looks like a defunct company.

If you think I'm trying to change the history, tell me where I've got it wrong.

@phildo I had not heard or read that Garza went to the same church as Matlack. I thought that Garza went to some megachurch in Connecticut? I started to research, but nothing yet.

You wrote, "The truth is somewhere in those details, but why find it?"

Do you really believe that the truth doesn't matter? I think it does. It's hard to sort out, but if the truth doesn't matter the we might as well all act like Garza.

@phildo ah, so the the mrcoins guy is their cheerleader, got it.

What was Matlack's role in GAW? I found an article that linked to a video in which he says he is the President and Chairman of the Paycoin Foundation. He said its purpose was to advocate for the investor base, to do what's positive for the coin and the community and focus on the "charity aspect." I don't really know what that means. But that wasn't GAW was it?

Here's the video link for reference:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=toYbyLd6v5s

I don't have time to watch the whole thing but the quote comes about 1:45.

So was he an employee of GAW?

@boki15 you said

"It's still going on since 2014, pretty long isnt it?"

Do you mean the GAW scam is still going on? I thought the company shut down. I was just reading that they were sued and they didn't even show up to court. Obviously Paycoin (XPY) still exists and is being traded. But it looks like a dead coin — kind of a typical altcoin. Besides its bad history (and plenty of alts have bad history), it looks like the result of a scam. But is it still really a scam? Seems like no one is buying it. Volume is dead. Not a good scam if it's a scam.

And ION is not anything. They say it doesn't even exist yet. No genesis block mined yet.

This ICO is almost over — ends May 16th. It's. The company claims to have sold 2,582,768 out of 5 million ICO coins. If it's true that they let some XPY holders buy in and accepted XPY, then that means 10000000/8 = 1,250,000 ION distributed to that crew. So that means 1,332,768 sold for between 20 cents and 23 cents. So they've sold under $300,000 or so. It looks like about 3.3 million XPY changed hands in the BIttrex market in April. It's not clear what that means yet. I'd have to take a closer look.

If I understand it right, the point of this thread is that there's a lot we don't know about ionomy.com and ION and there's no escrow or public BTC address, and if they're a registered company it's not clear what or where.

The company doesn't really seem that interested in giving information or answering questions that might make give people more reason to invest. It's a high risk investment for anyone who wants to take it. I don't really care if anyone invests in it or not. I hope they don't invest more than they can afford to lose. But that's on them.

The company doesn't give a lot of information, and I suppose that's their choice, too. They aren't promising a $20 floor. They aren't promising they won't abscond with the BTC on May 17th. They're not saying they're backed by Wall Street or that they have contracts with Amazon. They aren't even promising success. They're not saying their names, except somehow Adam Matlack is involved. What's his role, exactly?

Yet people seem to be giving them money. Why should anyone care? I mean one reason is to make sure others don't get scammed. But the comply is giving a a pretty soft pitch. With Paycoin/GAW, Garza's marketing was intense. He made tons of promises and most of them he knew, or should have known, he couldn't deliver. Marketing for ION and ionomy is pretty anemic. They don't even bother to respond to 26 pages of questions. Maybe Garza wouldn't either, but Garza was pretty heavy handed with manipulating his private forums. And he manipulated the mass media. Anyone remember the Wall Streeet Journal article about GAW? It actually made GAW look like it had some credibility. Why crickets from these ionomy people.

I know this is a separate topic, but what did you all think of Neucoin? Were the critics as vocal about Neucoin? I mean, what a scam. What a sad pump and dump. What a waste. I'm just curious about what seems like disproportionate emotional investment in criticizing this ION ICO. It took like 5 months for Neucoin to hit 26 pages of posts.

Anyhow, I'm not about to throw my BTC at ION but if it's a scam, it's a different flavor of scam than what Garza pulled. I'm all for more information, but is this ICO the biggest threat to the world? Meh