Over the past few weeks, we’ve seen Paycoin’s crypto market cap rise to the third spot globally, behind only Ripple and Bitcoin itself. Paycoin/Paybase CEO Josh Garza accomplished this primarily by saying that early investors would be handsomely rewarded when the (97% pre-mined) coin went live, and guaranteed a $20 floor price. (In other words, if you bought in at $10, you effectively double your money by dumping as soon as it went live.) Further, he claimed that you would be able to shop online on Amazon, Walmart, Target, et al using Paycoin, a feat that even Bitcoin has yet to accomplish.

On launch day, the $20 price was indeed reached, but only for a few minutes, and the altcoin promptly crashed immediately thereafter. It is trading at roughly $5 at the time of writing. The much-lauded Amazon payment integration has not materialized, even though this marketing piece already includes customer testimonials.

The word “scam” has been thrown around many times, and many shirts were lost.

As if that wasn’t enough, some additional background information has surfaced about Josh Garza, pre-PayCoin. Garza was allegedly involved in some Ebay fraud earlier in the year, written up in detail here and here.

Recently, the drama has escalated to include the North American Bitcoin Conference, which is happening in 2 weeks. Event director Moe Levin went on record saying that Josh Garza’s speaking slot would be extended to include a 30-minute Q&A. Some bitcoiners quickly called for a full event boycott. Others argued that boycotting an entire event because it had one controversial speaker was an overreaction.

It is worth mentioning that Paybase is a premier sponsor at the NABC, meaning that a significant portion of the event’s funds have likely originated from Garza. It’s possible that the organizers did not feel it was financially feasible to remove Paybase from the sponsors list, and Garza from the speakers.

On the other hand, they are wilfully accepting money from a known fraudster, under the guise of objectivity. This is ludicrous on the face of it, as it creates a false balance between the two sides of the argument. Giving Garza airtime implies that there is even a legitimate debate to be had, which makes about as much sense as a “flat earth” debate at this point. At best, the Q&A session will devolve into a quasi-kangaroo court, and take media attention away from the more relevant tracks at the event.

The simplest way to think about it is this: if you badly needed money, and I offered to give you some, would you accept it if you knew I had stolen it from someone else?

In the interest of maintaining its integrity, the conference’s position should have been simply to distance themselves from scammers, instead of embracing the spectacle.