I stayed out of paycoin, and I stayed out of this one as well. Most of the ICOs are scams as well, massive valuations with almost nothing to show for it other than lofty promises, fancy graphics and a white paper.
Even established coins like DASH have a somewhat questionable history (early premine), but I suppose that is a matter of opinion.
I personally think Dash's launch may be a scam. You see, they did not do an ICO to avoid US laws... but if you throw a bug in the code that lets the founders launch it and mine it themselves for a few hours and accumulate a huge amount, it is like they had an ICO. That's how I view it. Maybe it was a bug even, whatever the case Evan owns some Dash and I prefer that as an investor because it gives him skin in the game to see Dash succeed. I actually do not like projects where the devs have no stake in the system... it actually makes zero sense to operate on that model. It's dangerous if the developers work for free, they could make more profits shorting a coin and putting a bug in the code, or various other issues with centralized development.
You're not the only one. Many people feel that DASH was launched unfairly by Evan, but with all the price pumps, most investors just turned a blind eye and looked the other way.
What is not a scam in your opinion?