The pump and dump era is now over – and I hope it never reappears.
Over? Ohh young grashopper. Its not over. Just look at Paycoin.
Pump and dumps haven't gone anywhere. They've just had to adapt. Its all about who can lie better and better. Who can deceive more convincingly.
First it was the Government of Iceland on board with Auroracoin. That had lots of people believing.
Now its Amazon, Walmart, and whoever - supposedly on board with Paycoin.
-B-
So true. Scam coins have run out of funny names, countries, animals, algorithms, anon features, drugs, and fertilizers to pump themselves around. Now they are trying to be great payment methods, messengers, or some other digital commercial service. The scam coins have upped the game, up the development costs, but they are still scamming and leaving bag holders.
It is a shame because occasionally one service does come along and they are really trying to do something awesome and innovative but they are drowned out and copied by scammers to the extent that they don't get the support that they deserve.
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2014 was all around a good year for Bitcoin. Yes, it saw lots of scandals, top of which was Mt. Gox, and numerous of which were in alt coins and/or people using Bitcoins illegally, but lots of development was made in the Bitcoin world with legitimate companies, start-ups, apps, services, hardware, infrastructure, users and merchants.