In any case, I agree that Andrew's position on Paycoin is ill-conceived. If Litecoin had any of the same traits as Paycoin, I'd say kill it too. Difference is that Charlie Lee is not a sociopathic fucker hellbent on deception and gaining money by falsities, bleeding a company and its fans dry and then blaming random people on the internet for it. He's just a software guy who figured he could do an Scrypt algorithm coin better than Tenebrix. Now he works at Coinbase. Coinbase doesn't accept Litecoin, and that's a problem.

But Paycoin? Kill Paycoin. It has never for a minute been a legitimate or viable idea. If the people who lost through it end up leaving the community, that's their decision. Plenty of people who never traded anything but Bitcoin have wound up leaving due to overwhelming losses. Crypto is not for the feint of heart, it is not for the cautious investor. It is, however, and I don't mean to be too mean to them, but it is for the moderately intelligent. You have to be able to spot the difference between hype and technology. Examine Paycoin for five minutes with a rational mind, not infected by your feelings toward a particular individual, and you can see that it offers nothing that other proof of stake coins do except ridiculous awards to a select few and a lot of foolish names for things. "Prime Staker" is nothing but "premine 2.0."


Present rate, these coins are worth $209 USD. At the height of Litecoin, they were worth less than $8k.

This cannot be said about Paycoin. The investigation in this thread has thoroughly revealed that from its inception Paycoin was designed to prop up a failing company, and was indeed used for that various purpose. Further, it has been revealed that it was launched in bad faith, where an honest person, when realizing that their idea would surely not work, would have simply pulled back and started over.

It's no secret that I am a fan of Litecoin and have never owned a Paycoin. But objectively speaking, Andrew, you're doing yourself no favors by suggesting that anyone should do anything to save Paycoin. There will never be a market outside of that community which values the coin, and therefore it should be taken off the exchanges, since any time it is sold on them, it is done for the very purpose of enriching the callow or foolish, neither of which are things which the cryptocurrency community has a need to promote.

What in the world are you talking about? Paycoin is NOT a company, it is a cryptocurrency, and the coins are not shares. This is the absurd non-sense that the spiderman unperpants clad clowns on Hashtalk think. You stated that GAW owns Paycoin, and I asked you to prove this and you flat out refused to even try. Some debater. I do not personally see any legal difference in taking someone else's property, regardless of whether that entity is a person or corporation, and the law agrees. In reality, corporations have stronger legal ownership rights than individuals here in the USA.  Even if Paycoin were a company, shareholders do not have the legal or moral right to hold a majority shareholder meeting and vote to eliminate the other 49% of shares. If that were the case, shareholders would do this over and over until just one person owned all of the shares- the idea is completely absurd. The people who bought into Paycoin and got scammed got scammed. It happened. It is a travesty. You pretending to have the power of court, judge, and jury will not change this.  Again, your position is hypocritical, illogical, and morally indefensible.

I just saw this additional reply from Crestington to this same debate, so I will add my reply here to try to reduce the Wall-O-Text that is developing.


No, I did not say that. We are not talking about a company here, we are talking about a crypto currency called Paycoin.


Paycoin was created. It is what it is. People have various amounts in their wallets. It is legal property. If fraud was perpetrated by GAW (And I do believe it was), this does not suddenly make it legal to take someone elses property because you have decided that you think someone else did something wrong.  If there was wrongdoing, that is for a court to decide, not some self proclaimed crypto do gooder or the gang of criminals (ALL associated with the same criminal from whom you and Mage say it is ok to steal from, no less) who you and Mage say should take property from other people. If a court orders property to be seized from either GAW or Josh, that is legal. A group of people deciding they will do that is criminal. Fact. There is simply no way around this fact.

I do not recall saying that Cryptsy should delist Paycoin. Maybe I did, maybe I didn't, but at any rate I do not see the relevance to this discussion about whether it is legal and moral to decide that it is ok to take someone else's property.

There is also the issue of determining exactly which coins belong to Josh and or GAW, and then how do you prove, and I mean PROVE, that coins belong to someone else? It would be a simple matter to fake identities and move coins through exchanges and such, I will not list what I think would be best and easiest ways, but I am sure that some (HUGE) amount of this has already been going on. Then there is the issue of whether or not the gang of criminals that helped create Paycoin and run this scam are now "Not Josh". I for one do not buy that part at all. I think all or most of them are still just Josh's stooges. The best way I see for Josh to get his due is to let Paycoin go where it is already heading. Salvaging it for him would at the very least be a public image victory, and most likely a huge financial win as well.

Fuck that asshole Hashking, Fuck GAW, and Fuck Paycoin. (been catching up on Game of Thrones- saw the Blackwater Siege episode last night)

You keep saying that blacklisting coins through a hard fork, or blacklisting addresses (same thing in your analysis I think) is "taking someone elses property". 

Aside from the merits or demerits of whether such is a good idea (and I am on the fence on that), I strongly disagree with your legal analysis.  In order to make the claim that you make, you would have to be able to show that U.S. law would allow you to sue for fork that disenfranchised [GAWCEO's] coins.  What would your legal theory be? 

Theft/Conversion?  What property was taken from [GAWCEO]?  You still have the old coins in the original blockchain before the fork.  No one "took" anything.  Its just that the majority decided to proceed down a different blockchain that excluded you from participating.  Hard to see any property conversion on those facts, absent an act of destruction of the original blockchain or coins.

Breach of contract?  First off, you would have to demonstrate a contract.  Who were the parties?  Who would you sue?  Everyone participating in the new blockchain?  Every wallet that decided to follow the new fork?

The fact is, crypto is a consensus currency.  If the consensus changes, so does the coin.  If the consensus changes so as to exclude one party or their coins in an old blockchain, then the new consensus forms a new "contract" (if you want to use that theory).  The old "contract" consensus doesn't go away (there is no breach of contract, because the old block can continue), but the coins in the old consensus likely lose all their value as a result of lack of interest/support.  The new fork creates a new consensus, new contract.

I fail to see any legal problem with this.  That is not to say I don't see the practical problems and the precedential problems (e.g., it might set a bad precedent and decrease confidence in crypto generally if people think their coins can be "taken" like that).  But I don't think a legal claim of conversion of "property rights" or breach of contract would lie.

Crypto currency is considered property by the United States Federal Government. Taking or destroying someone else's property is a criminal act.

I am well aware that forking to remove coins can and has been done, but this does not make it legal or morally right.