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As for this scam hurting cryptocurrencies in general - well, I'm of the opposite view. We need a couple of more scams and security breaches (Stellar?) in altcoins and altblockchains so people get the point with the Bitcoin network. Stop the altcoins, do sidechains if you need bells and whistles.
Very well put post; I think you hit GAW's issues dead on.
That's also a very interesting point of view about scams in crypto; I wonder if all of these altcoin scams will eventually push more people / developers into using the BTC blockchain? It will be interesting to see what the altcoin scene will look like by December 2015.