Happy New Year
So far, the start of 2015 has been a dramatic one for Crypto. In the world of scandals, an old saying goes, “There is no such thing as bad publicity.” These last three days had an avalanche of bad press for PayCoin – the altcoin backed by Josh Garza/GAW miners. But, in the Bitcoin world, negative publicity means a loss of 70% in value within 72 hours. Whilst the management of PayCoin have associated the plunge in price with an “internal security issue“, several Bitcoin users have unequivocally called it a ponzi scheme. This event has brought the integrity of these independent news sources under public scrutiny.
But even before its IPO which took place on the 17th of Dec, Josh Garza purchased a cryptocurrency news publication and refuses to publicly state the name of the acquired press outlet. Several Bitcoin enthusiasts on Reddit demanded a public statement of every news blog to publicly declare their association with Josh and openly deny their ownership from him. Many representatives from several publications responded to this allegation. Here’s an example:
“I am Stan Higgins, a staff reporter for CoinDesk. We are not owned, operated, sponsored, influenced, directed or guided by GAW. Swap out any applicable verbs you’d like in there, but the facts are the same.”
Choosing sides
History is often known to repeat itself. In any scandal, there are three types of players surrounding it. The ones who try to expose it, the ones who try to conceal it and then ones that choose a diplomatic approach and stay silent. Admittedly, PayCoin is an alt-coin at the end of the day, and the news encompassing it should not gain attention of Bitcoin–centric publications. Fair enough.
An article published by NewsBTC calls out every PayCoin hater to be a ‘crypto-extremist‘. This is a very bold move to take given the current animosity towards Josh Garza. However, this should not be surprising looking at their website.
CCN (CryptoCoinsNews) recently did a full blown interview of Josh Garza on their website. This article was published at the time when the market was still in a ‘pump’.
“We can look to PayCoin as a barometer of what the public thinks of us as a measuring stick. We have been criticised on everything happening inside a bubble, and now the coin is out there. People are seeing it exceed in the market, and you cannot fool the market.”
One certainly can not fool the market. The steep decline in the price of PayCoin serves as evidence to his statement. Once again, judging by the sponsored ads spanning the background of CCN, it come as no surprise why they don’t highlight PayCoin in a negative light.
Conclusion
The Bitcoin community in general has never been more united for a common cause. To some it may serve as an impending doom ever since the downfall of MTGox earlier in 2014. In contrast, some believe the whole GAW miners and PayCoin fiasco has nothing to do with Bitcoin and it should be dealt separately as an alt-coin. The debacle may seem to be getting out of control, but it speaks a lot about the self-policing nature of the Bitcoin community, which serves to protect it against bad players. If you liked this article follow us on twitter @btc_feed
