suchmoon, I was just going to post this from you, think it sums up where we are perfectly.
Unfulfilled promise of a $20 “floor”, or guaranteed buy back and stability of Paycoin.
Original promise (note “will buy”):
Amended promise (note “will manage”):
(archived)
Subsequent attempts to back out:
https://hashtalk.org/topic/26931(archived)
Community responses:
Shapeshift drops Paycoin
Litecoin requests to be removed from GAW-owned exchange coin-swap.net
Current price well below $20:
Unfulfilled promise of merchant adoption of Paycoin:
100k merchants
(archived)
Ability to use Paycoin at Amazon:
https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/josh-garza-speaks-paybase-launch-amazon-shopping-using-paycoin/As of now there is no way to spend Paycoin directly, except a couple of obscure merchants such as Meganet and PexPeppers.
Claimed but not implemented technology innovations in Paycoin.
Note “beyond the powers of nearly every developer”
Link to whitepaper (see chapter 5):
Source code analysis, for example, hard coded Prime Controllers without voting features described in the whitepaper:
https://hashtalk.org/topic/24790Most of the other promised features either don’t exist in the code or are implemented in a similar haphazard fashion.
Claimed but unproven $100 million investment. Not a single investor has come forward, which is unusual for such a presumably innovative project. GAW has not fulfilled promises based on those investments, such as the “floor” promise above, and Paycoin/Paybase development has been underwhelming for such a large investment.
Investment claims:
http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2014/11/25/bitbeat-gaw-miners-to-launch-bitcoin-challenger-paycoin/https://hashtalk.org/topic/22975(archived)
Guaranteed but questionable profitability of HashStakers.
Link to announcement:
http://www.gawminers.com/pages/official-hashstaker-announcement(archived)
(note “everyone who owns one will be profitable.”)
At the current exchange rate and slightly less than 1% daily payout HashStakers would not recover the $10-$20 cost:
At $5 exchange rate the payout is less than $0.05 per day, or less than $4.50 per 90 days. 90-day HashStaker cost between $10-12.
At $5 exchange rate the payout is less than $0.05 per day, or less than $9.00 per 180 days. 180-day HashStaker cost between $18-20.
The exchange rate would need to stay above $10 for HashStaker owners to break even.
Other arithmetically questionable claims:
ZenPool hashrate back in August was reported to be in excess of 250 GH/s (Scrypt). This would have been more than 1/3 of Litecoin network. This level of activity was never visible on Litecoin network.
Third party stats:
https://xively.com/feeds/1229182496ZenPool removed their stats page after criticism:
https://www.zenminer.com/pool/#pool-statsIt has been claimed that 60% of Paycoins were distributed to HashPoint miners. This would result in even more unbelievable stats – 2500 GH/s, or 10 times more than the August estimate:
Claim (archived)
Math:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=857670.msg9833591#msg9833591GAW has never provided cryptographic proof of mining either Scrypt or SHA256 coins, which calls the above claims into question.