Trading recently commenced with GAW's contentious Paycoin (XPY), which thus far has been volatile in typical crypto fashion.
The coin's website brands it as follows: "PayCoin™ - The People's Money," and "good for you. Bad for Banks." It goes on to claim: "Worldwide online retailers will accept PayCoin™ directly or through third party payment processors. We will give hundreds of thousands of businesses the ability to accept PayCoin™ with ease."
The coin's hashing algorithm is reportedly proof-of-stake, a fork of Peercoin.
A product of GAW Miners, a company already accused of Ponzi practices by members of the Bitcoin community, the coin's launch brings with it more controversy. Ninety-six percent of its 12.5 million coins are pre-mined. So in addition to apparently enriching its creators, demand for the small remaining portion of yet-to-be-mined coins drives up demand for compatible mining hardware.
CEO Josh Garza is apparently willing to back each coin with a price of $20, implying a total valuation of $250 million.
The coin is currently trading for 0.024 BTC ($7.56). Since launch, it has hit a high of 0.035 BTC ($11) and a low of 0.016 BTC ($5).
Cryptsy and Bittrex are among the better known exchanges where it is traded. It is also traded on an exchange called Coin-Swap, where over 95% of current trading volume is between XPY and BTC. XPY is also traded against DOGE. BTC pairings with lesser known alts comprise the rest of the volume.
Total XPY volume during the past 24 hours is equal to over $400,000. The currency ranks 16th in market cap, worth $2.9 million.
Paycoin has already been through at least one name and logo change. Its parent GAW has been increasingly shifting focus to the coin, which it claims to be superior to Bitcoin. GAW is reportedly looking to evolve away from its cloud mining business toward payment services. Depressed bitcoin prices have made it difficult for mining operations to generate a profit, a phenomenon reflected by a recent trend of decreases in network Hash Rate and difficulty.
GAW ("Geniuses at Work") itself is a reincarnation of GAW ("Great Auk Wireless"). According to Garza's LinkedIn page, he was CEO of the latter for nine years ending in 2012.
