Bitcoin Forum

Hey guys,

Cyrus Farivar here. I'm a reporter with Ars Technica working on a story about GAW and Garza. I spoke with him by phone yesterday and would love to speak with anyone that has had direct dealings with the company and/or has direct knowledge of financials of similar companies. He made some claims that sound wild to me, but I want to check.

My previous work: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/04/digging-for-answers-the-strong-smell-of-fraud-from-one-bitcoin-miner-maker/

EMAIL ME:

cyrus.farivar [AT] arstechnica.com

PGP/OTR: http://arstechnica.com/ars-staff-pgp-keys/#cyrus-farivar

https://github.com/cfarivar/crypto-details/blob/master/README.md

you still ask?
cant see it?

You want to go here for the information you see:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=857670.16220

Best place to get information about GAW.  Many of the users over there have done lots of research and here is a link to some stuff I have been archiving.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Y9qBOX-VUfsR3femQ9ggmqvgepksImqag1R2SPVUiNk/edit#gid=0

Cyrus, is Josh (or his lawyer/editor whatever) referring to you in this post:

https://hashtalk.org/topic/28975


I thought it was funny how he felt the need to have this sort of "preemptive strike", probably trying to invalidate anything that reporter might publish.

Anyway, I'm sorry I don't have any hard numbers or insight into financials, but please take a look at a brief summary I tried to put together here - maybe you'll find something that could help you dig deeper:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=857670.msg9544806#msg9544806

Now THIS is definitely for you  ;D

https://hashtalk.org/topic/29007

Sir, I have had dealings with Gaw and Mr. Garza since the days when they offered asic scrypt miners.  I've purchased a hosted black widow, a hosted fury, a non hosted fury, and many hashlets from Gawminers.  I've ROI'd on each and made money on top of each.  With the latest Paycoin buy back, I will stand to ROI on my purchased Hash Stakers as well as profit from my converted prime hashlets.  I do not think I was scammed.

so, why does a reporter on cryptocurrency only JUST created a bitcointalk account?
guess he's so up on cryptos he's never needed to be here before.

wow, the fact that you are here trying to only look for bad stories on GAW shows how much integrity you have. You call yourself a Journalist?.Pm me some of these "wild claims" and I'll happily set you straight.

Sad

Is this a joke? I know when I read my news stories I always look for the ones that state they use anonymous users from BCT talk. I figure that has to be the most reliable source from a great reporter. What is the world coming too? Everyone gets to be a reporter. Just post a bunch of crap that will get people worked up on both sides.

yup, it's telling he tweeted a request for negative comments, and not asked for positive ones, or "any" comments. he only wants the one side for his foxnews like reporting.

GAW is a good company mind you there may have been somethings that where misinterpreted by some people. That being Said the major users of this site bitcointalk.org have spread FUD and continue to do so as they see Paycoin as being a threat to there precious Bitcoin which has seen it value drop rapidly since the start of paycoin. That being said at the start of Paycoin mining there where large mining farms turning there vast mining power on to paycoin these farms which would normally mine BTC. As markets started taking Paycoin for Fiat there where large dumps being made causing Paycoin to go from $20 value to under $5 dollers that market was flooded to try and protect Bitcoin. The so called price was based on the fact that the coin would reach $20 in market value and did not factor in for illicit players tampering and short selling on the exchanges. You can get the deta from any major exchange that is trading XPY.    

I have been with GAW for 4 months and have made ROI on every purchase I have made. Unbiased journalism should investigate all corners NOT just at the place where GAW is hated the most ;)

and he wants it spoonfed directly to himself. not even willing to hang around and do some actual reading.
lazy ass 'journalist.'

Oh come on now. You had the throw the Fox news in there?  ::)

the dunce homero is whining about scam and fraud while some one other than him writes it for him.

Sounds good to me. Wild claims, get used to it. You're dealing with GAW and Paycoin community.

Genius at Work: if ever the single time to refute claims of fraud and scam, would be now and written in his own words by him. not some cheap loquacious high school English major copy-writer.  The fool just does not get it. Never has never will.

He should hire someone over at GAW to keep his keyboard away from him.

INCOMING! HT airdrop!

You guys are funny. If you don't like this the worst thing you can do is keep bumping this thread with personal attacks against the OP. Despite what you've been told by your great leader, this will NOT make XPY look any better. But don't let me get in your way. Carry on.

riiigggght discourage those personal attacks... yup, you are really convincing there.

@cfarivar

Hi,
I'm GAW customer since march 2014 when I purchased for first time Gridseed USB Dual miners (in march) and 2x GAWMiners The Fury 1.3Mh miners (at june). So far I haven't been any problems with GAW. I'm never been scammed. So far they have not scammed anyone. I purchased digital miners (Hashlets) and got my daily payouts. I'm not complaining because I got my ROI back. For me GAW is honest company..True story.


Sorry for my bad english.

I think that's what they've done already. Trouble is, they gave the keyboard to someone with an even worse case of verbal diarrhea.

Didn't take long for the "GAW Army" to arrive...

http://www.threestooges.net/albums/misc/richard%20fiske.jpg

I have certainly not been scammed, far from it.  In a sea of cloud mining scams I managed to find the one boat without a bloody hole in it.

Here is my take on GAW. They have done some good things. When they sold hardware they went way above any other company to try and help stack the odds in the customer’s favors. All other mining companies would have said thought luck you preordered this and it is outdated by the time you got it. Not our problem. GAW tried to help people out by giving various upgrades. Hashlets, I bought a lot of them and they were great for a few months. Much like all mining then went down the tubes. GAW came up with a solution allowing us to mine their reward pts redeemable for their new coin. They could have said tough luck and shut it down like every other cloud miner out there. Instead they gave you an option to try and make money. Paycoin well it has had some good things and some bad things. They are new to the development of a coin and it shows. They have not scammed anyone out of money yet so you can’t call them a scam. They are trying different things to try and make paycoin profitable for the holders. Will it work? Only time will tell. They bought a company that would allow you to use the coins to purchase form most stores on the internet. It looks like they underestimated how much work that plug in needed. They made some bold claims that they have not lived up to yet. However if you step back you can see what they are doing and it is not they are trying to scam everyone. They need to be better job on their announcements because the way they have said things made people believe one thing. They said you would be able to use paycoin to buy from Amazon, Best Buy, and Target….. People immediately assumed this meant GAW was saying they have a relationship with all of these companies. When in reality the relationship is they bought a company that made a plug in that would allow you to purchase form these sites. The floor, they messed up on that one. But with the recent announcement they are at least trying to fix it. So many other companies would say tough. We tried it sold to fast so now we will move on. Was this last announcement great? Not really mind blowing in my opinion. They could have and should have done more but that is for them to figure out. We will have to wait and see how it works out.

TL;DR- GAW has done a lot in it’s past to help out its customers when other companies would no do the same. GAW has made some big mistakes and is trying to correct them. So far they have not scammed anyone. Time will tell about this new honors program.

They offer at the moment the best deal for hardware rigs, 550 USD for a S4 2 TH ;) And even an S3 with a power supply !

http://gawminers.go2cloud.org/SHH8 (http://gawminers.go2cloud.org/SHH8)

Eeengleesh lesson for Homero  :o

pho·ny

adjective
1. not genuine; fraudulent.


https://writemyessayz.com/

Expect a flood of Josh's brainwashed minions.... Their fearless leader posted this....

https://hashtalk.org/topic/29007/an-open-letter-to-cyrus-farivar-reportage-conducted-by-a-star-chamber

and this...

https://hashtalk.org/topic/29010/paybase-story-readers-of-ars-technica-deserve-solid-journalism/4

HOW IS THAT CNN INTERVIEW COMING ALONG?



 :D :D :D :D :D

Nope , not been scammed at all.
Very happy with my decision to be part of Paycoin.

Josh doesn't have enough confidence in his own scam abilities anymore... He's hired a professional to represent him...

I'm not discouraging anything. I'm actually encouraging you. Come on, don't be shy, this is Bitcointalk, anything goes. It's all for the greater good of XPY, right?

Give me a break. That is like I saying it didn’t take long for the BTC trolls to show up. It is pointless to call each other names. We have all had different experiences with GAW. I am not a mindless person so I do not care if he wants us to come here or not. That is not why I posted here. Same with the other thread. I do not call you guy’s trolls because the people in that thread believe what they are saying. Just like most people from HT. Yes both sides have some trolls. But both sides have people that are smart and think on their own. We just have differing opinions. I am not 100% happy with GAW. Far from it. However I am giving them time to fix some things and I try not to abandon ship because they aren’t doing it how I want. This thing might go to nothing. But it also could succeed. There are things I like and dislike about this coin. (Includes planned things) Right now the things I like outweigh the things I don’t like.

First Thanks for looking into the facts and not just reading the rumors and stories from people who are afraid of Paycoin and watching their Bitcoins slowly disappear!


I've been a customer for almost a year and started with GAW Fury's and then went to cloud miners and then to mining Hashpoints for Paycoins. It has always been profitable and support and service have always been great!

Please do yourself a favor and stop reading the lies and crap from people who have never been a customer and look into the FACTS!! Believe me, You don't want to be left behind at this point!!  ;)

well not everyone can have the same luxury as you having a mother upstairs taking care of your shit for free.

Start by asking properly your question.
The real journalistic question is : What do you think about your Gaw investment? Are you satisfied or did you feel abused?

And the response is that GAW has always done what is the best for his customer. His main problem is that GAW is a big dreamer who want to think big. And it's not always easy to make all properly after that.

Is GAW is not buying back all the paycoin for 20$ after all?

Stop trying to make your opinion a reality and start to ask for facts !

There is absolutely no way Homero Garza typed that message. Kudos to his attorney for using the word "truncheon".

See a little contradiction here? GAW is not buying "all" (or any) Paycoin for $20. GAW is offering to take your Paycoin in exchange for a promise to pay an unspecified monthly amount for an unspecified length of time. Big difference. That's what you would get if you took your own advice and looked at facts.

I've been with gaw since you can buy the prime hashlets at 16. I've made some good money with them. The only thing that I don't like is the mystery hype about paybase. I could of done without "INCOMING" and just a hey guys we are using this service for that feature. In the end I'm still at a profit with paycoin being at 3 usd +

NO, GAW is NOT buying back all the Paycoins for $20 each ya effing moron. They are promising to buy a miniscule fraction of them per month starting a couple months from now. Taking an investment from many people with the promise of an extravagant return and then paying out said return fractionally over a period of time from the investors pool of money is exactly how a Ponzi is pulled, FYI. The whole Paycoin scam has gone from being an in your face yet denied Ponzi scam to an in your face and openly admitted to Ponzi scam.

LOL!!!!!! MA! they're picking on me on the forums again!!

Why not say what wild claims you are talking about Cyrus?
A bit more info would be nice

How do you figure Ponzi scheme?? Gaw customers mined Points for Paycoins at 4.00 each? None of us have lost any money and most have already made ROI? I could sell everything now and make ROI but holding out for a larger ROI.. How is your bitcoin mining going??  :)

I find it interesting Garza's alter-ego ghost writer posts a message for the shills to come here with their new accounts to discredit the OP.

Do those of you who blindly follow your Fearless [not] Leader or his coverts ever take just a moment's pause to think about how you're being played like puppets?

At any rate, to the OP, yes, Garza and his GAW, Inc. derivatives are, in my opinion, a collection of failed ideas compiled together in order to facilitate an elaborate Ponzi type scheme. The proof is there if you follow the money and talk with the those who lost significant amounts of FIAT and/or crypto in order to feed the upper 2-3 tiers of the pyramid who are still hyping up the unsustainable engine of fallacies under the guise of a legitimate "movement". Multiple federal agencies are investigating the allegations many have made and multiple unbiased [and not owned by GAW] publications are reporting on a weekly bases the shortcomings of Garza et al.

Pull up a chair, have some popcorn, and enjoy the defunct XPY drama.

Scott-

I actually thanked him for looking into the FACTS and not just blindly posting wild speculation of ponzi and pump and dump schemes as um.. some people seem to do with zero facts to back up their claims..

as soon as i saw this i knew you were leaning one way already. Passively dismissing/disrespecting the person you want to hear about, setting an under tone. A professional, would have said Mr. or Josh, not just a sophomoric...Garza like hes some clown your trying to get.

     Now the answer,  NO. I have not felt scammed. More disappointed in some of the bad actors that dumped coin on an early release of paybase, which initially was really to be kind and let HashPoint mining folks get a little reward for dedicating so much time. After weeks and weeks of mining the public got to come in and completely nullify all our work...Which added to more dumps because they had nothing invested but a quick buck for a week or so, and then leave. Further shitting on the dedication and support we all put in.
     The site wasnt ready. Coding issues etc. Since we all know how new this is and GAW blazing trails, typically the trail blazers are gonna be the ones finding sleeping bears, if ya know what i mean. So some jurisdiction issues (that nobody can agree on in the "legal" dept of the world), popped up. Within a month of shtf, GAW and Josh Garza came up with a plan to appreciate the support from the dedicated investors. Some whom felt they were done dirty or felt scammed. I dont have the numbers of actual HashPoint mining investors or the quick buck public miners as far as whose been making the most complaints. Which could be something to look at.
     Somehow i feel though, all the detractors and fire alarmists will claim due to the diligence of their own and backbones of steel, somehow they are responsible for holding Josh accountable and we should thank them for making sure everyone got there 20$ exit.

Ive made back my money and substantially more with GAW. I feel for those that enter any market and lose. I know others have lost big time with other similar services and havent received an ounce of what GAW received. This is what innovators face. Also I havent seen one innovator in the world, and we can talk M$oft, Apple, Dell (hooking all of us up with cheap comps back in the day) Car manufactures, the list goes on...but i havent seen 1 of them be perfect every time. In products nor marketing. Believe me i want my damn 20$ exit too. Yes this issue is the 20 bucks, i know, but having the inability to wait a damn minute for things to cool off and have some dust settle is mind boggling, especially in an industry where we're waiting for shit coin after shit coin to develop its wallets and tech.

I was sceptical of the Paycoin honors program and my posts were deleted from Hashtalk.org:
http://www.cryptozoid.me/gaw.html

Excellent. I have had the facts and evidence for months, all of which has already been forwarded to the appropriate agencies, so regardless of the empty legal threats against me and others by Garza's single Los Angeles attorney, I welcome the legal scrutiny and look forward to the wave of depositions on BOTH sides. Maybe then, we will get some honest answers out of Garza directly and not his alter-ego shills protecting him.

Scott-

Alright Enough People. This Spreading of FUD is making thing bad for Bitcoin and for Paycoin as well as all Crypto. If you have not noticed since the flame war started here on Bitcointalk BTC has Plummeted in value and has caused everyone to look bad LTC suffered the worst fate so far and Thing just keep getting worse. Be Civil people. This is tiring and I baleave it is in the best interest of everyone to call a truce as none of this is helping anyone and cause both coins to lose value.      

You've been a customer for "almost a year" even though GAW fury's went up for sale last May? Seems like a bit of an exaggeration. (like the $100 million floor)

Here are some FACTS for you:

Hashlets were advertised as:

- Always Profitable
- Reducing maintenance fees
- Never obsolete

In reality you got

- Profit for 2 months (and an extra month if you switched to hashpoints)
- Never reduced maintenance fees
- World first miner to become obsolete.

Anyone who didn't trade their "digital miners" for "cloud stakers" is currently enjoying a total earnings of 1 satoshis per day. Maybe in 30 years they will have enough satoshis to pay for the transaction fee.

Hashstakers were all sold based on the lie that there would be a $20 floor. At $5/paycoin, hashstakers are looking at more than a 50% loss. GAW blames the CFTC and says a $20 floor would be manipulation but apparently it's completely fine if they have a $20 floor buyback program that stretches the payments over months/years. (for a limited time only)

Keep in mind, there's nothing wrong with a high risk investment being unprofitable, unless you're like GAW and promising profit.

As for Vaultbreakers, Looks like everything went according to plan:

http://i.snag.gy/2izhc.jpg

Well, Thank you! I like facts and to know more of whats going on so I can decide for myself. I'm not a big investor and yes I believe I bought in around May and not March. I bought gridseeds from a different company before Gaw. We are all crypto addicts and all want to profit from our hobbies so let's get all the facts out there! Thanks again!

cyrus.farivar ask Cantor Fitzgerald if they are involved with this or is it only an executive who works there that is.

Don't settle for speaking with their marketing dept. or any low level spokesperson. Insist to speak to Howard Lutnick or Shawn Matthews only.

A definitive statement is required, is the individual quoted here speaking on behalf of the company or not.

http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2014/11/25/bitbeat-gaw-miners-to-launch-bitcoin-challenger-paycoin/

The individual is the father of Garza's friend, who has backed him personally in earlier ventures. Garza has been trading off this and their name since day one to lure his victims into his scheme, that is 100 million VC funding behind his coin.

On the Cantor Fitzgerald technology investment site there is no indication of them being involved with Garza or his current scheme.

http://www.cantorventures.com/portfolio

http://www.cgtglobal.com/

So, I believe only the primes were advertised as never obsolete.. I may be in a bit of a different category also because I bought all Zen miners and Primes and made decent bitcoins a day until the hashpoints. At that point I was making around 2.5 paycoins a day in points. I've converted all of my miners to hashstakers and they are paying 1.25 coins a day and our prime hashstakers never expire!

The 20.00 floor was not a lie but a figure they came up with based on..? Also all of the details have not come out on the buyback program yet, but I agree that part sucks and could take a long time to complete..

  

Don't know why you would bring up a Known Scam group such as KNCminer to try to prove some point. You people need to do your market research to see what happened to the Floor as bigtime miners dug under it and caused it to collapse. Also making a 'Market floor' is highly illegal in commodity trading so we could not make a floor. There were big dumps on the exchanges of XPY  at the start which caused the rapid price drop. This should not happen as often now as the coin is mineable through POS only now. Having the POW stage last as long as it did and not limiting the amount of hashrate was a mistake as I beleave there were big mining co. that used there power to mine XPY and cause a huge XPY serge to cause a price drop. This action of purposeful abuse and illegal market manipulation by the BTC community as they felt threatened by XPY being a better long term alternative and we as a community beleave it is still the better long term option as the Current upcomeing crash of BTC is showing it multiple weaknesses.          

cyrus.farivar check directly with CNN if this Garza individual had any contact with them regarding an interview.

Nope.

https://i.imgur.com/Mgnf1EH.png

Excellent points! Mining bitcoin is not earth friendly and with the increasing power costs and difficulties, how can it be sustained now?? Paycoin is so much faster and has so much more functionality.. I honestly believe that they are going in the right direction and this is not a scam.. Look, they could have sold all their pre-mine coins and made millions and been long gone way before now?? This is a better choice for the future, but the coin launch did not go as planned otherwise the coin would be over 20 by now, IMHO.

Did your mom let you use the computer again kid?

You speak so much filth it hurts me to read it.

Don't be sad, we will think of you when we are looking back at history and the outcome of this ridiculous show, which you my friend are the 'court jester'

have a nice day!  oh and it's getting late,  make sure you get enough rest for school ..."your" bus picks you up pretty early in the morning I hear. Don't want to sound like a fool in school now. :)

why don't YOU check?

are you not allowed to use the phone yet?

get some sleep, it might be past your bedtime.

^  https://hashtalk.org/user/buckrogers


 ::)

Did you not read what Josh Garza posted on KNC's forum? He lays out how he thinks KNC is scamming them, then actually creates the scam himself.



Maybe you should do some market research before spouting nonsense.

There were a total of ~350k xpy mined in the sha-256 phase and from what I could tell ~50k was mined by GAW (could be more).

If 100% of the leftover 300k xpy was dumped on the market, then that would eat through only $6m of their whopping $100m floor.

The real cause of the collapse was GAW only putting up half a million dollars to hold the floor instead of $100m.


Please do provide a source for this.

I'd also love to know how GAW's latest investment scheme buyback program gets around that law.


You're telling me it's illegal to mine xpy and then sell it later?

#innovation #revolutionary

yes and your point?

im happy you can use the internet, now why don't you use in a positive way instead of trying to wreak havoc in these forums?

 :'(

cyrus.farivar check with any web developer whether a browser plugin in any way shape or from, allows you to buy directly from amazon.com or walmart.com

And while you are about it ask them what they think the meaning of partnership is.


https://archive.today/SWQth 




Check with those web developers what their recommended punishment should be for liars.

That was a post by Josh Garza on KnC forums, and it is directly relevant to the "point".

"bigtime miners" may have owned merely ~300k XPY out of ~12.3+ million, i.e. less than 3%. The rest of your post is full of contradictions as well. So was the promised floor illegal or not? Was GAW's attempt to manipulate the market with the floor illegal or not? How does it now become "illegal market manipulation by the BTC community"? I know these are all popular myths on HT but when you put them all together they don't sound any more credible. If you have sources to back it all up, please do.

Why don't you take your own advice.

Maybe he has plenty of people who are satisfied, he is looking for people who really feel like they were "scammed"?

Maybe you should write a similar story and see if you can do a better job. I'd read it with an unbiased opinion, just like I would read the OP's piece, and make my own decision.

Thanks, I will, I am done with trying to talk to children with an agenda.

You guys can play by yourselves in your own treehouse conspiracy club.

Do you have a link as to where this came from?
(@GAWCEO said: I can confirm that I personally verified the original announcement and the word "partnership" was never used) I can't find the "original announcement" either if you have that..

Why?

Don't believe him?

https://archive.today/1wY88

Thanks! No, I just wanted to see the facts for myself.. :) Any chance you have a link to the original announcement??

All you need is right there including all originals. The rest is hidden in their hidey-hole, username and password required.

You better start writing about LTCgear.com. They are almost a confirmed scam and if they are, they are running with millions of dollars as we speak!
Maybe there is still time to save those funds before they are long gone. They are still a very hot subject:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=759743.0
https://litecointalk.org/index.php?topic=6401.0
https://litecointalk.org/index.php?topic=22563.0

GAW is probably one of the few legit cloud mining companies in crypto industry so i would suggest you to leave them alone for now.

Yes, I found it, thanks..

I do believe they are legit even though some things don't go as planned.. A large scale POS coin with merchants and a debit card and much faster transaction times sounds more like the future rather than to keep building expensive energy sucking electronics to make a small amount of btc a day..

I'm sorry, which coin is that?

Ummm.. XPY It's still being built!

Scammed?  ???

I have coins in an offline wallet that are steadily paying interest whilst also increasing in value.
I have coins online that, whilst not at the much maligned $20 floor, can be escrowed for a guaranteed $20 on February 1st

If I were to sell all of my coins NOW I would have ROI - even at current prices.

Try measuring BTC to those standards and you will find that currency sadly lacking - I've lost thousands in offline mining & online scams.

What is it about a coin designed to introduce everyday people to cryptocurrency that so incenses the bitcoin community?

My journey with GAW has had some pitfalls, but has been far more profitable than some of the gouging I suffered at the hands of some of the biggest BTC cloudminers ... try looking there for a story! CEX & their ever-increasing fees have destroyed many first-time miners...

I'm disappointed that Paycoin has not been an instant success - but with the vitriol poured upon it by reddit, so-called journalists & the btc-centric community - I'm happy to stick with innovation and gradually reap the rewards.

A satisfied GAW customer since the beginnings.

There is nothing of that sort. If you were honest about that question you'd find that most criticism around XPY does not involve BTC in any way, shape, or form, except for one glaring fact - GAW itself does not take XPY as payment for any of its products or services, but happily takes BTC and USD. Think about that for a minute.

Let me ask you instead - why does XPY need its supporters to denigrate bitcoin? Shouldn't the currency so advanced and innovative be able to stand on its own merits?

OK...where are the FAMOUS "Hashlet(s)" ...that are "most profitable...ALWAYS MAKES MONEY" "innovations of your Homero... ???

ZiG

You paid 4 paycoins for something that will generate 1.75 paycoins over 6 months. (you were scammed)


Translation: you can invest your money once again for the promise of 500% profit but it might take months/years to payout.*

*Assuming GAW doesn't declare bankruptcy.


The crypto community has absolutely nothing wrong with coins designed for everyday people.

We have a problem with:

- Coins designed to entice people via get-rich-quick schemes
- Repeated false advertising/broken promises
- Featureless shitcoins claiming innovation

GAW Founder here.

I've been with GAW since they sold Gridseeds. I had them hosted, and I bought 2 of the war machines. GAW had alot of bumps along the road with hosting and the ASIC business. My hosted miners were down more than they were up, but GAW made it up to me by refunding any lost mining time in excess.

When given the opportunity to convert my two purchased vaultbreakers, I chose it. I instantly had 1500MH of "Hashlets". I continued to buy them while they were $16 each until I hit over 2GH of hashlets. My hashlets paid me over a 2 BTC a day and I ROI'd within 2 months on my vaultbreaker purchases (even though the vaultbreaker never came to fruition). Enter the double-dip. The double dips put me over 3 BTC a day for a long time until BTC started tanking. Whether these were actually mining, I could care less. They brought me steady stable BTC and my house didnt feel like africa when I was running 75 280xs.

All and all, I ROI'd 2x over on just mined earnings, and earned well over $75,000 in BTC when my hashpoints converted to paycoin and I sold a large portion on the pre paybase run up. I am staking the remaining 5000 XPY I have in stakers.

GAW has nothing but make me money since my initial gridseed orb purchases. I can't thank them enough. And while I am disappointed with the way paycoin is turning out (and upset like make of you that certain promises have not been delivered) I cannot complain about the money I have made and GAW has earned my loyalty. If I didn't stick it out through the bad Gridseed orbs, Hosted War Machines (Crap), and vaultbreaker fiasco I would not be in the financial position I am in now because of them.

This forum is full of butthurt miners who have been scammed by shitty scrypt asic companies that make it damn near impossible to ROI.. If you have been with GAW from the beginning of zeusminers/vaultbreaker/hashlet era it would have been god damn hard for you to not ROI.

I believe GAW was scammed by the Reddit and Bitcointalk community on launch. You should do a story on how Reddit and Bitcointalk came together to shut out a community that is constantly being scammed by the aforementioned obstructionists. And how they have profited by GAW's attempts to make the Crypto community become mainstream

So, in other words, you are on the top tier of the Ponzi. I will make a note of that.

Scott-

With all due respect, you're delusional.

Next...

Scott-

Cyrus,
I started ordering from GAW the first week they opened for business on the 18 March 2014. On their new Web site they made a pretty wild claim: they would double your earnings for whatever mining power hardware you bought from them for one week (you get your hardware to mine plus they would pay you what it would earn for a week). Back then it was Gridseed ASICs and I didn't even understand how they could deliver on that wild claim. Well several weeks later, I along with all the other early customers were contacted and asked where we wanted our bitcoins sent. Plus, GAW doubled the already unbelievable offer for those of us who ordered the first week and gave us the equivalent bitcoins for two weeks of mining for the hardware I bought.
From Gridseeds GAW offered a range of scrypt miners up to 54 Meg (an unheard of speed that seemed a wild claim at the time) for a good price. After all of us ordered and paid good prices, GAW notified us that they had negotiated even better prices and would refund us all a pretty significant price difference; which they promptly did.  
Next up was the wild claim that they would deliver a 500 Meg Vault Breaker -- understand this was back when Butterfly labs had been promising new hardware for close to a year and not delivering anything new. GAW even made the wild claim that they were not going to be beaten to market by their competitors and would pay for cloud mining if a competitor shipped before them. And, no sooner did we order vault breakers rated at 500 Meg, than GAW contacted us all and made the wild claim that they would upgrade our vault breakers to 750 Meg script hashing power for the same price; and they did: they added 50% to the power and delivered ahead of competitors (Titan).
Next was the wild claim that hashlets would simplify mining so that anyone could do it. Understand that at the time to mine we were editing conf and bat files with cryptic commands (-I 13 -g 2 -w 256 --thread-concurrency 8192 --lookup-gap 2 --gpu-engine 1080 --gpu-memclock 1500). Yet GAW delivered simple hashlets that anyone with no technical knowledge could use to mine. And mine they did: hashlets earned bitcoins like crazy last Fall. With just the bitcoins the hashlets earned in Sept and October, all the money I had paid to date was more than made up. Another wild claim was that when the Genesis hashlets were not meeting GAW ROI goals they would add 50% to the Genesis, and they did at no additional cost.
The next wild claim was to move from the frustrating chase for faster and faster hashing hardware to a proof-of-stake model.  GAW would change the ROI on mining with a new approach and coin. The goal was for the coin to have a stable price targeted at $20 a coin, and be accepted as widely as credit cards with the ability to pay anyone in the world instantly. GAW is in the process of delivering on that. The coin is there, we are staking rather than hashing, and the infrastructure is being developed.  It is not all there yet and is taking longer than everyone (I assume even GAW) had hoped. But if you want to do an article on software development delays see Microsoft’s repeated delivery delays.
Cyrus, most of what I’m saying are not opinions. They are provable facts still in forums and available from snapshots of the GAWminers site at the WayBackMachine for you to see wild claims that GAW delivered on.
If you want to see a company that disappointed its customers you may want to look at Butterfly Labs where their August 2013 announcement of new hardware stayed as vaporware for a year and the US FTC actually took over receivership of them from September to December of last year.  
GAW grew fast, I think way faster than they expected and they had challenges meeting the high demand of all their new customers. But as you can see by reading the complaints, praises, questions, challenges and support at https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=529093.0 and hashtalk forums, when someone had a problem they worked to make it right. I’m not sure if you are just looking for dirt or want to get the facts on GAW, but I think you are missing out on what could be a very important story by focusing on the negative.
If GAW succeeds with the paycoin effort, there is going to be a simple crypto currency that anyone in the world can use to pay anyone anywhere. If you wanted an article translated, you could find someone anywhere in the world and instantly pay them with paycoins for that work. The number of cell phones in the world is rapidly approaching 2 billion. And anyone with a cell phone will be able to pay, receive money, and place orders from anyone else using a paycoin app. Never before in human history has there been a common currency available across borders that worked simply and instantly. Bitcoins can take over an hour to complete a transaction, few people use them, and there is not an organization working to integrate bitcoins into merchant processing systems and make them simple and easy to use. GAW has a vision and they are working on a system that that will reward the mining community for handling the transaction processing, merchants will save the percentage they have to pay to credit card companies, and people will be able to pay right from their paycoin wallet. I can’t believe you only want to look for scams rather that realizing the size of the story in front of you. It will be funny to look back if GAW succeeds and paycoin is adopted and really used throughout the world, to you missing the genesis of paycoins while asking about scams.
At a minimum you should change the title of your post to: What Do you think of GAW? Tell Ars Technica

https://i.imgur.com/4YdJtTo.jpg

Time to hold to the same burdens of proof - what "community" was shut out and what scams were perpetrated by the aforementioned obstructionists?

FACT ...: Vaultbreakers NEVER have been designed, manufactured and DELIVERED to anybody , including youself...NEVER ... ;)

You are presenting your wishful imagination as a Fact(s) ... ;D

Simply DON'T ...Capisco... ???

ZiG

Bought those paragraphs from Amazon.com using paycoins through paybase, didn't you?  ;)

I pointed hashpower at GAW's official, failed, PayCoin Pool during the PoW phase. I waited for almost a month for payout, but they did come through and paid more than I was owed.

I have been a customer since they purchased Zenminers. Every purchase and investment I made with them has been fair and well supported, and in fact they have held their value or made a return. Besides offering great value for early adopters, there were many opportunities to "take profit" and "upgrade" along the way, ie plenty of exit opportunities, often coming at just the right time before dramatic market turns.

They may have stumbled here and there like any other young, fast growing, innovative company, but they have always come through in the end and made things right. The proof of their legitimacy and good intentions is in their foresight of the decline of home mining and then cloud mining, and so began working on a path to the future, while in the meantime doing their best to provide ROI in the current climate and guide customers through the storms.

XPY may suffer temporarily with the rest of the market, but having stabilized above $3 and vying for 2nd place in marketcap and transaction volume, it has already proven GAW and its customers winners. What the broader market does short term is really out of their control and this seems to have been lost on critics. They can only move forward with their plans and build their next-gen platforms and networks. Rome was not built in a day.

This question is posed entirely wrong. How about ( show proof that you were scammed by GAW)

I have seen nothing but people making baseless accusations. I have been a happy customer all the way from gridseeds to hashlets to paycoin. While other companies kept trying to sell unprofitable, obsolete mining equipment to us we had GAW implementing Zencloud which by far was the most profitable cloud mining at the time for me.

I saw other companies trying to compete with their cloud mining platforms , but never had anything in comparison. Only GAW had the foresight to try something new like paycoin to offer to its users when scrypt and sha mining became less and less profitable. Whether paycoin sticks around or not at least they continue to try and adapt which I do not see other companies doing. Their philosophy should be supported by the crypto community whether you agree with everything they do or not.


What did companies like CEX.io offer ?


General Flynt

I've been with GAW for over 6 months and have had a great experience overall. Their hardware, of which I still have some hashing away was constructed with quality and attention to detail. Very few manufacturers of any mining equipment actually delivered on time, at all, or in working condition but GAW has on every occasion delivered on time, in working order, and over manufactured with a higher tolerance.

They were the one of the first to demonstrate integrity in this industry and they've been met with nothing but scorn from the ponzi artists that inhabit this "crypto" space. I've invested in group buys on bitcoin talk and have gotten burned. I've invested with GAW and have seen returns and support and attention to detail and talent.

It's no wonder those here willing to shout "ponzi" and "scam" are so inclined to do so readily. We're witnessing the experts in what they do best and are most familiar with.

 ::)

They've never manufactured a piece of hardware in their lives.

Only a fraction of companies designing hardware actually own the facilities or expertise to manufacture it.

Really guys?

Cex.io halts all scrypt operations, hashnest umisoo pool is 86%+ Fees and about to be shut down, pbmining was a scam, cryptodouble is finally gone bitstamp hacked and everyone is still trying to trash GAW?

Maybe themage will come in here and ask us not to sue ltcgear next like he is already doing on litecointalk... While bashing GAW lol...

Come on...

 ::)


They've never designed a piece of hardware in their lives.

YEAH!

Let's have a debate about that shall we. I propose we use carrier pigeons or a piece of string and tin cans at each end.

I'll say this, if I had taken the money I put in gaw and put it in any other cloud mining provider at the time I invested money into it, I would have gone broke by now and the company dissappeared/quit providing cloud mining.

I think GAW is the industry leader and the most solid company in it's industry. At least that's the only lesson I can conclude from following this industry for the past half year.

ps: if you disagree, and you can show me a cloud mining company that's more legit than GAW and would have made me more money had I put money in them +- 6 months ago, without it completely dissappearing now or me "unwillingly" forfitting my investment, by all means do so.

pps; all markets are down because of the high level of viciousness there is here among supporters of different cryptocurrencies, Imagine how unpleasant all this must look to outsiders of the industry? For blockchain techs sake, I hope somehow that changes in the future.

Don't care. Has their name on it, they made it.

"Don't care" as you said, is just showing your ignorance...The rest - your retardation... ;D

GAW never produce hardware ...They have been just a RE-SELLER, if you know what this means... ;)

GAW is/was reselling products, made by Gridseed, ZeusMiner, BitMain, Innosillicon etc...

Ask your favorite Homero J. Garza...

ZiG

Has their name on it, they stand behind it. They might as well manufacture it.

-DON'T CARE-

Complete RETARD

Semantics. Get used to that term, you'll here it a lot.

manufacturer   ::   reseller

browser plugin ::  direct shopping


bah, same thing.  ::)



Thank you for your testimony in the "Do you think you were scammed by GAW? " thread sir.

Why not seek information from the actual customers instead of in this forum????

They are an absolute scam, only interested in filling Josh's pockets with BTC.

I bought in after they repeatedly promised a $20 floor that "can not fail" because their fiat backing was "too large" for that to happen.

These statements he made are documented all over the place.

When it finally came down to it, I lost a good chunk of money. I wasn't one of the lucky ones that got in early on the ponzi with the $16 dollar primes.

I can feel your hatred, it's nice and warm. Let me turn on a fan next to you, I could use a little of that heat generation. :)

NO..........its as simple as that....GAW has seemed to come through for their customers..it is a big initiative and I have NEVER seen anything this large kickoff without bumps and curves. You have to be flexible to survive a new industry and I really shouldnt have to tell bitcoiners that. Some of what I have seen on line is ridiculous.....most of it is opinion.....and some of it is flat out lies.  I believe that this company has a good idea, that it is achievable with alot of work.
I think that the bitcoin community has been unfair in their accessment and at the same time I understand the fear with all the scams that have occured recently. But the answer to your question is NO.

More condensed version showing the evidence of fraud:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=900970.0

Seems to me that the positive reviews here are all from people who purchased HARDWARE miners from GAW. The HARDWARE which GAW did not manufacture and often simply drop shipped to users from China or spray painted their logo over white labeled miners from ZEUS. These are all tangible products which again, they were simply reselling.

Anyone care to post their hashlet experience? How about their XPY experience? You know, the non-tangible items that you can't see with your own eyes but require you to invoke some kind of trust in a guy that has a growing history of false promises and a background consisting of peddling resold (see a trend here?) wireless internet plans to rural Vermont residents.

How are you enjoying those 99.99% maintenance fees on your ALWAYS Profitable hashlet purchases that you were promised? Anyone? Hello?

GAW was a "cloud mining" company for an effective total of less than 100 days. If 0.000001 BTC/day is still profitable to any of you then so be it. Even then, there was/is no verifiable proof of their mining infrastructure. Add to that the numerous advertised commitments they never fulfilled while censoring the vast number of unhappy customers who called him/them out in Q3/Q4 of 2014. In summary, the scheme is constantly changing with new DBA's and what can be seen as dummy corp. registrations being formed to evade regulation. The proof is there and all you need to do is follow the money. Regardless, I nor anyone else will be able to convince those of you who choose to ignore the truth and blindly support your "fearless leader" in the name of $$, which in itself proves just about anyone can be bought.

Enjoy,

Scott-

I'm a bit late to the party, but enjoy this picture evidence of more fraud from Homero. You can talk about how Bitcoin is losing value all day. Personally I just use it as currency. I don't buy and speculate on it like stocks. There's Google stock for a reason if you want to buy and hold something. Anyways, I think I'll go shopping with BTC now at Microsoft, overstock, newegg, or the other thousands of merchants that accept Bitcoin. I think when I'm done I might buy some XPY to buy the one item that you can get with it, hotsauce. Good day.

https://i.imgur.com/yeLcKn8.png

https://i.imgur.com/8rwYupE.png


P.S. OP could be anybody who just made an account ;)

I bought $80 worth of Hashlet power from GAW in November. It started out fine. I was getting decent payouts that I would expect. I would defend them on this exact forum actually. I couldn't understand why people were upset, everything was great. Then, something very bad happened. All my power was only getting me 1 satoshi a day within two weeks. It sputtered before it went to complete 1 satoshi all day every day. Needless to say, this crashed the Hashlet market and I sold all my Hashlets for $40, half of my initial investment. Sure as hell was a cheap lesson to learn to never buy cloud mining ever again.

I did quite well with GAW, made more money with them than on bitcoin investments people were so enthusiastic about.

Can you tell me how much the Titans are producing? How about all the grid seeds? All mining is in the shitter. They are still paying people meaning it is a profit. Of course it sucks but at the time people didn’t think BTC and LTC would both fall so hard. So it was unwise to say always profitable. However they have done things to make up for it. They make mistakes just like any company. So far when they do they make of for it. The $20 floor was a big mistake on their part. But they are trying to make up for it. We might not like how they are doing it but they still are planning to make up for it. Heck program hasn’t even started so we can’t call it a fail at this point. It was just an underwhelming announcement.

My investment with GAW has been the most profitable out of all of my bitcoin ventures.

         I purchased 28 MH of Hashlet Primes and converted 1 War Machine and 2 Black Widows, a total of about 106MH of power (~$1500), generating daily about

0.072 BTC for a long while. Over time, the payout decreased, naturally, as is the nature of bitcoin mining.  But in those months of mining, I was able to generate

about 4 BTC, which was close to a 80% return on my investment already, not including the fact that I could sell them for $50 each anytime that I wanted to.

           And Josh had a plan, and he did his best to ensure profitability for his customers.  Hashpoint mining was initiated when the price of bitcoin fell so low that

maintenence fees were eating into our profits, mining Paycoin, long before its inception, was an ingenious way to hedge against that.  After many extensions, I was

able to mine about 500 Paycoins worth $10,000 at the $20 rate.  Now my Primes are Hashstakers and are creating 1 Paycoin a day.

          So even with Paycoin at $4 valuation, I've made much more than I've invested. Even today, if I sold those BTC and Paycoins, I would yield 4x$200 + 500x$4 =

$2800, almost double my original investment.  Of course, I've made back my investment long ago, and only am investing that which I am willing to lose.  So tell me,

how is it even possible that you guys didn't ROI or lost money on this?  I'd like to know.

probably the same way you just said you did?

if you consider that a profit, well I have $80 that I would like to give you for that $100 bill in your pocket.

I'm afraid you didn't finish reading my post:

Even today, if I sold those BTC and Paycoins, I would yield 4x$200 + 500x$4 =

$2800, almost double my original investment. 

no, I actually did read it. You threw in a ton of circumstances that had nothing to do with your initial investment into his cloud mining operation. The investment you made into his cloud miners returned 80% of your investment, correct?

What you did afterwards mining XPY or anything else has no bearing on that. What if I, or anyone else, invested heavily into the cloud miners and were promised that they were "always profitable" and then did not follow your exact path into XPY? We're stuck at 80% roi? Right. One action has absolutely nothing to do with the other.

You're spinning what you opted to do independently and convincing yourself you turned a profit from the cloud miners. They didn't.

You gave someone a pre-payment of bitcoin and he paid you back 80% of it over the span of weeks? months? That's not profit.

If I give you $80 for your $100 and then you turn that $80 into $105 on your own that doesn't change the fact that I shorted you 20% to begin with.

Good job, Jugashvilli ... ;D

I believe it was proved that when buying XPY on paybase with CC, the paycoins are actually coming from the premine. Of course they try to confuse the believers into thinking this is normal and they will "refill" those back from exchanges.

Also the 3000% interest in the special wallets only GAW has keys to, will of course kill this coin of the month sooner rather than later due to inflation.

keshuker
Have you ever been GAW customer? :) Are you angry because you missed Paycoin train?

This is going no where.  It's starting to remind me of xbox fan boys vs ps fan boys. 

keep your beliefs and move on with life. 

I hope BTC survives - I'm moving to Ethereum if not.  I hope paycoin does well...but whatever if not, that's just life.

Dude - I appreciate your perspective.  Man - this is exactly how I feel about GAW. 

Dude - you write flame work that bashes our industry.  Go write our flames already.

He was probably shadow banned like anyone else who asks uncomfortable questions on HT  ;)

A little late to the party, but I'm going to add my experience (not gut feelings, guesses, etc.).

I became a customer of GAW in March, 2014 because they were a US company, had an active BCT presence, and offered free shipping and good prices.

I bought a couple Gridseed Blades right before the prices starting dropping.

 - GAW gave a rebate to their customers to compensate for the price drop.

I pre-ordered Zeus miners from GAW (rather than directly from Zeus or any other supplier), because I had good experience with them from the GSB purchase and I wanted to deal with a local company rather than taking my chance on a pre-order from China.

- Before the miners even arrived, I received free Raspberry PI controllers, with pre-installed cloud management software
- The miners arrived within two days of expected delivery.
- When it was discovered that Zeus significantly underestimated the power/performance of the miners, I returned the Zeus miners for a full refund.
- I exchanged the Zeus miners for an Innosilicon A2, and I was compensated in BTC for the downtime!

As LTC difficulty increased, and home mining became harder to maintain, I bought into GAW's cloud hashlet mining service as soon as it was announced.

- For the same cost of what I paid in power for my home miners, I was able to get better mining returns with a completely hosted Hashlet without having to worry about noise, heat, or breaking components.

There's more to say, but I want to wrap it up with this. Do I get frustrated at hype, marketing, and delays? Sure. But I didn't base my decision to stay a customer and adopter of Paycoin on hype... I based it on my experience with Josh and GAW. My experience has been that they will fight to do what's right for their customers, even at great expense to themselves.

If consistently going above and beyond the rest of the industry to provide value to customers and the community is a "scam", we can only hope that GAW continues such a "shady" business practice.

Edit (01/30/15): I can no longer, in good conscience, leave this post standing. All of the above *was* true pre-Paycoin. I didn't even have a problem with the virtual mining model of Hashlets. But things changed dramatically with Paycoin. I have seen no evidence that leads me to believe that any of the things proposed for Hashpoints and Paycoin were anything much beyond a concept in the mind of the CEO. At some point a couple weeks ago, my pragmatism overcame my optimism, and I was forced to admit that I was among the deluded. My hat is off to those who saw it earlier. Now, I'm off to find myself a crow sandwich...

Hmm whats with all these sub 10 activity accounts appearing to sing Homeros praises?

Coincidence?  A call to arms for the faithful (and stupid)? Or is someone spamming new accounts to post a story that always seems to be the same with almost no variation?

do you have any proof that there is 3000% interest rate and what do you mean is $special wallets?
and how is proved that they selling a premine

GAWminers was not a reseler
they are OEM
Original equipment manufacturer (OEM)
you can see more about that on wiki

Check the blockchain for both

Their special "testing" wallet they for some reason are running on the live blockchain is staking for just under 1% per day compounding!  Do the maths its about 3000% when you work it out.
Check the richlist its the one not listed as a Prime Controller

Multiple sales have been traced on the blockchain.  They can be traced back to the 12m XPY second block that GAW premined.  None yet has shown to be from any XPY sold on an exchange.  So yes the XPY brought from paybase is coming from the premine block.  Either they are dumping premine on customers or they are selling the escrowed funds of investors.  Take your pick either is downright bad.

Selling from premine:https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=857670.msg10094537#msg10094537 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=857670.msg10094537#msg10094537)
All "prime controllers" are special wallets with special interest rate and also this very special one: https://chainz.cryptoid.info/xpy/address.dws?119166.htm (https://chainz.cryptoid.info/xpy/address.dws?119166.htm)

Apparently nobody reads the source code.

It never lies.
There is no innovation in it - and claimed innovation by GAW.

I don't see how reality could be any clearer [3.5 X Inflation Yearly]
https://github.com/GAWMiners/paycoin/blob/master/src/main.cpp#L972

Good to know I'm not the only one that sees it:
http://www.reddit.com/r/peercoin/comments/2r5ks7/yet_another_sad_cryptostory_paycoin/

This code base is identical to PPC with private POS at 350%,
Viz.

The special wallets get as high as 1% compounded daily, totalling over 3000% per annum

Your mathematics is incorrect, 1% daily x 365 days is 365% per annum.
The actual numbers from source code is 350%, 100%, 20%, 10%, and public 5%.

Wealth distribution is 99% of XPY in 100 addresses.
Viz.

That just-under-1% seems to be the HashStakers - it is incredibly close to their ROI.


So what if they're selling the pre-mined? They have 12m+ XPY, and it is possibly in one big HD wallet, which is behind the PayBase purchases. The fact is, we cannot say for sure which coin was bought by GAW, or if they bought any.

All we can do is sit, and wait out. So far, on all my purchases, GAW delivered. I've bought a single Hashlet, 10GH, back in September maybe. That worked enough so that it was upped into a 15GH one without activating auto-buy.

Ever since, all the money I put into GAW was returned full, and a little more. Yes, I was stupid, I was selling-buying hashlets like crazy, but at the end, I came out in the red, and I had myself two nice HashStakers (one 1XPY 180 day, and one 2XPY 90day). I had my HashPoints converted into XPY, put em into the money-makers, and so far I have 0.56XPY in a bit less than a month's time. Yes, a bit (a lot) less than the daily 1%, mainly because I did not have the exact 3XPY to begin with, only 1.5, and put it back nice and tight every day. The 90-day 2XPY one has been running for 23 days, and the 1XPY 180-day one has been running for 19 days. And I still receive daily 0.027-0.028XPY, without ever touching anything.

And yes, my account is not exactly active - I mostly come here to read, and I can do that logged out, without commenting.


How did you get that number again? Daily 1% means, in total, 365% a year (if you do not count the rising base). If you do count the increasing base value (which would not be used in my understanding, as each coin, to be staked, must sit without any movement for 30 days first) would indeed be at 3700%. But then again, most of the coin wouldn't even be the base of calculation because of the 30 day sitting rule.

Nope, if you get 1% a day, it will be a LOT more than 365%/annum

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=857670.msg10033269#msg10033269 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=857670.msg10033269#msg10033269)

Actually 3290% interest

Im pretty sure they changed the "sitting rule" to some hours, but I'm sure you can find it if needed

The question you should ask is: What is GAW's principle source of income?

Hashlets, paycoins, stakers, and all the outer recent products are nothing more than pictures on a web page and entries in a database or blockchain. GAW makes a large income promoting and selling intangible objects as investments. There is no evidence of any other income large enough to pay the dividends on all these investments.

So, for every winner crowing about unbelievable returns there must be losers still hoping for returns that will never come.

That's a scam.

You gawtards are hilarious!!  So fucking naive, no matter what is reported you'll always agree with that piece of trailer trash behind it. 

FYI - Josh sent all his gawsheep over here to try to coerce you.  There's a lot of good info here as well OP: http://coinbrief.net/paycoin-succeeding-dangerous/

Exactly.

Scott-

Neither do apple mate, its all made in China... you didnt know this? their gonna take over the world ya no!

Most likely, the majority of the victims of this scam don't read bitcointalk or Ars Technica.  

Invalid logic is Invalid. Apple contracts to have THEIR designs manufactured by others. GAW purchased things designed and produced by other companies and put their sticker on it. Not the same thing ya effing fool.

I'm an investor in GAW and I found that article to be pretty good reading, I certainly wouldn't class my self as naive and I dont believe the word gawtard should be applied to anyone, a little too childish in my opinion.

I've done my homework on Josh personally and his past professional life.
I've also tried to keep up to date with all the goings on on this forum and I can understand that there are people in the Crypto industry/communities that take offence to the way GAW has done things and indeed some that would threaten to harm Josh and his Family.
We are all very different people and we all have a different take on things...
Some are content for the time being.
Some are FAAAR TO HAPPY for their own good
Some are not to happy
Some just want the whole world to burn.
I've made my money back I'm not over the moon with some of the decisions that have been made but i'm content.

If you have nothing of worth to add there is no reason just to add bollocks to an already large pile of bollocks

Andy

I been hearing numerous complaints only due to fees and how much you only get w. GAW.

+1

has anyone showed up yet with an intangible investment story that's positive?

I bought hashlets, mined for a month and sold on the marketplace. Withdrew almost 130% of my original investment. Before the btc dump in September there was no better paying mining site.
A lot of bitcointalk users did the same, you should dig out some GAW ROI tracking threads ;)

You're assuming that I am not a hashlet owner myself.

Again, another person that had some outside circumstance affect their profit. You "withdrew almost 130%" AFTER YOU SOLD the hashlet. What did the hashlet itself return to you? I don't care who you suckered into buying it afterwards. That has nothing to do with your profit from the product itself as designed.

And no, there were plenty of mining sites paying much much better. You know, the ones that are free to mine at... that you didn't pay upfront money to use. Also, their btc/mh/day rates were highly exaggerated as they were presented pre-maintenance fee deductions.

Anyone else?

Suckered into? You don't know what a free market is, do you? Oh, and looks like you're not an owner since you don't know GAW offered buyback option for hashlets ;)

Free to mine at? You must mean pools, while I meant "best paying cloud mining company". I never owned any hardware so those "free sites" were of no use to me.

You didn't answer my question. What did the hashlet itself return to you? Not what you recouped after you sold it to the next idiot. The actual return from the hashlet.

Joe, I'm sorry to say but this not going to yield any result. You're talking to a member of GAW's fanpuppetclub, there is no logic or sense that can be applied to anything she says. Leave it as is otherwise it will just escalate.

h8 moar pl0x thx. ;)

I know but, what exactly could it escalate into? them actually providing an answer to a question? isn't that what they were sent here to do by their supreme leader of vagueness?

Nope, answers are not how GAW operates. Deflection, PR copy-paste, straw man arguments, ad hominem, that's how it usually goes with these guys.

Hating is all he can do. If you have other opinion you're a fanatic, or from GAW. You have to be incredibly close minded to think every positive comment has to be made by someone from GAW.
If you go to his hate thread and dare to say something positibe they'll accuse you of being GAW CEO himself (I've actually seen this happen).


I'd have to compare the numbers but it was about 20%. The price of hashlets skyrocketed so I decided to sell after about 5 weeks for instant ROI.
Gaw offered buybacks so even if there was nobody left to buy the ROI was guaranteed after mining for 2 months and selling it back to GAW.

That's very Paul Revere like, except that it isn't. But how would you know, you just like the name.

Guys, just please fucking stop it. It is getting out of hand.

Yes, there are people who like GAW, and people who do not. There are even extremists, GAW fanatics, and GAW haters.

But you cannot just go on on a public forum and discredit people by calling names. First of all, it is against the rules, and second, only a weak man (or a man with a weak argument) fights the opponent directly, instead of the opponent's stance.

Also, about discrediting information - there *might* be some people here who disseminate false returns. Mine are not, I can assure you. I am ready to prove it with some details from my ZenMiner account. And I believe many others are not scams either.

I understand that many here want their stance, their statements, their view to be true. But the fact is, we can never be 100% sure about something, unless we know all the information - which we do not. We can speculate, we can extrapolate, we can draw conclusions which are likely, but those are NOT FACTS, let it be on any side.


However let me tell you a FACT. Yes, a REAL fact. It is pretty simple - I made money with GAW's offerings so far. Not much, because I did not invest much - but right now I'm standing at an approx. 250% ROI (I've already got back the money I invested in Hashlets, and my HashStakers are making XPY as we speak. All the requirements were from re-investing what I've earned, and I have 0.58XPY in there.

The Hashlets generated about 80% of their purchase price, and then I was mostly selling-buying Hashlets based on the prices going up and down. Then put it all in HashStakers. From my end, it was not an investment, and personally, I have no other attachments to GAW. It was a 0-input investment, which might or might not return some good money. Time will tell.

So please stop hating on each other. We all have our own views, and it is to be respected, as each of us are entitled for that. You  can agree or disagree, like or hate, but you must respect it!

The bolded part is how much you made from "GAW's offerings". The rest of it is from other GAW customers. I hope you can see the difference.

Indeed. BUT! It is a free market. If I were to sell you a handful of dog feces, and you offered 100.000 USD for it, it would still be a valid exchange.
Besides, I did not make money "off of them". You know it is called demand and supply. Or based on your statement, all trades that carry any kind of gain for any of the parties should be stopped immediately?

The trade was simple - someone (whom I do not know - the hashlet market is anonymous for the buyer) wanted a hashlet. I sold it for way under the official price (Zen Hashlets were going for 14.99 at that time, I sold mine for 7.59 minus the fees), and made about 2$ on the trade. The buyer was happy as he received an item at half the official price, while I was happy as I had 2 extra dollars in my pocket. Is it a win-win?

EDIT:
And before you take my first paragraph as me calling GAW products sh*t, I have to state, it was meant purely in a twisted-out metaphorical way.

I'm not against free market, and I support everyone's right to lose their money however they deem appropriate.

However hashlets were never a true free market. Who in their right mind would pay $50 for 1 MH/s of Scrypt mining, or even $20? The only reason these products had that value was because GAW had a monopoly on them, hyped them beyond belief, and yes - lied about them. Always profitable at 1 satoshi. Zens that you mentioned are now trading at $2. Who covered $7.59 to $2 and why? Not a win-win as far as I can see.

Now I'm not arguing that you didn't make ROI or that you personally somehow cheated the buyers. All I'm saying is that whoever bought the hashlets from you did so while being misled by GAW as to their true value and likely lost or will lose money. In other words you making money with GAW isn't the only fact in this story, there is the ugly other side.

Even if we give GAW the benefit of the doubt and assume that they had mining power to back the hashlets (that would be where your 80% came from), there doesn't seem to be any real revenue entering the system now. Neither HashStakers nor XPY have any real value, it's all speculative based on GAW's promises, and we can see from the Zen example, or the $20 floor example, how well that works. Also facts.

PoW, nuff said.

That is the freaking definition of free market, dammit. There's a main supplier (GAW) who sets the price, and there are individuals, trading it. Besides, it was never 50$ for 1MH as far as I know - the most expensive regular Hashlet was 15$ per MH, and if you bought more, the price went down.

The market was also a place to go if you wanted cheap hashlets. Most sold around 60-70% of original price, but this of course depended on other factors.

And indeed, the Hashlets were hyped, and did not bring the level of hype. It is not a lie if you underperform because of the unaccounted circumstances.  A great example would be Half-Life 3 - it is so hyped, no matter what it is when it comes out, many people will be disappointed.

Zens are trading at 2$ now, indeed. Why? Because everyone is on the Stakers now, and nobody cares about the simple mining equipment any more. Also the bad press resulted in a large amount of people breaking up their Hashlets and selling them at outrageous prices, bringing down the overall market.


It is quite interesting that you say people were misled and lost money - I'm yet to meet one who truly owned a Hashlet and lost money on it (except if re-sold it after a week, at third the price, to get rid of it fast). GAW proved multiple times that they do have the mining capacity: there were multiple pictures, non-doctored ones, showing their mining park set up in a warehouse (or was it an old airplane hangar? I can't recall, but it had a quite large internal height).

The 20$ floor is another example of GAW taking a bigger bite than they could handle. It is quite simple, if you check the exchanges - the price was indeed at 20$ initially, then the dumping began. Many who received XPY from their HashPoints started cashing out, at a lower price than the market (so that they would get the money faster), and it was at a rate that GAW could not counterbalance. We are talking about daily trading of 1000BTC value - at that time, it would've cost GAW daily 250-300k USD to buy up the cheap ones and re-sell it at the floor price.

I understand that my reasoning sounds like a "fanatic" speech to you, but it is simply a different perspective. You see this as a scam, because there were many like it, and many fell. And *IF* GAW is legit, they will fall too, because of the anti-hype generated by these exact discussions and speculations.

I never called you a fanatic, nor did I ever call GAW a scam. You are cherry-picking however.

Prime hashlets cost $50 and even $70 for a brief time. Not sure why you want to exclude them. They were 1 MH/s, alright, 1.5 MH/s miners if you include double dip. What else did they do? Absolutely nothing, pure hype.

Abusing monopoly power is not free market, although you could argue that there were other cloud mining alternatives, so I'll give you that.

You didn't answer the question - who covered the loss of value from $7.59 to $2? Or even from $22 or $15 to $2? All hashlets were originally sold at retail price, and GAW collected 10% on each market sale as well, so who covered those price drops and fees? And let's face it, at 1 satoshi even $2 is overpriced. The value of the hashlet is roughly 0, and if someone is paying any money for it, that's based entirely on the lingering hope that GAW will make good on their promises. Euthanizing those hashlets would be more humane at this point.

I lost money on Zens if you want an example. Bought a pair at $11 in the Market to track their profitability, now completely pointless. Also had some Primes that converted to HashStakers, almost certainly will lose money on those. Probably made some money on the other Primes that I didn't convert, and whoever bought those Primes from me will almost certainly lose money on them. Now I'm not an average GAW customer by any means, but you said you haven't met anyone who lost money on Hashlets - pleased to meet you too.

Proof of mining has been discussed extensively and it's far from what you're describing, but I already said I'm ready to give the benefit of the doubt here. It's largely irrelevant now anyway.

The "floor" was ridiculed for weeks before the fiasco actually happened. One had to be blind and deaf to not see that coming. The was no mysterious unexpected dumping, the whole hashtalk forum was buzzing with anticipation of being able to cash out at $20, so of course GAW had to either put a substantial amount of money to support it or not promise it. What they did was put out a few hundred BTC (if that) for a brief moment, then claim it failed for reasons beyond their control.

More importantly, there is blockchain proof that GAW is dumping the premine, do you truly believe their explanation that they accidentally borrowed investors' money?

No quite sure I understand your last sentence. If GAW is legit criticism won't hurt it in the long run.

The problem is you are selling dog feces along with the PROMISE of making money off of it.

Fact is, all hashlets earned dust for anyone who didn't get in during the first few weeks of zencloud or switch to mining IOU's.

This leaves all those people hoping to get rich quick stuck in a situation where they can only profit if they pass on their unprofitable investment to another naive/greedy cryptonoob. So we have a thing that will produce maybe $5 over it's lifetime, valued at $40 because a horde of greedy cryptonoobs must hype the shit out of it to see their money back.

It's a free market yes, but it's all just people passing on their shit to the next unsuspecting victim.


I can buy this excuse for the first time the mistake happens. Maybe even the second time. But GAW has over promised and failed to deliver over and over again with no signs of stopping.

How many other companies make so many "mistakes" which always reward them with massive profit?

The fact that these "mistakes" happen and GAW tries to go back and erase/modify history as shapeshift says "This moves it from fool's errand to the realm of deception"


GAW proved they have mining capacity, not THE mining capacity they claimed to have.

They claimed to have 40 PH/s+ worth of hardware. They have so far proven they own a single row of bitmain miners (~0.1 PH/s) and a SINGLE 5 PH/s order with bitmain.

Sure, this is easily enough hardware to payout everyone currently mining 1 satoshi per day (might only require an S4 or two) but the chances they actually have 40 PH/s sha-256 or ~1000 GH/s scrypt are slim to none.


6 month hashstakers will, according to the rules, produce no more than ~1.75 xpy.

You were sold hashstakers for $20 based on the promise that xpy would be worth $20.

Now that xpy is worth ~$4, you paid ~5 xpy for a thing that can produce 1.75 xpy over 6 months.

You were misled and lost money.


You could visit the bitcointalk thread. 90% of the "trolls" are actually former GAW customers who feel they've been scammed.

Otherwise there's this forum where the former hashtalk trusted members have taken refuge (tankjr, rootdude, daffy, allen1980, redacted, etc)

http://forum.gethashing.com/t/xpy-paycoin-discussion/90/

So which is it? Trading or mining? How many GAW customers made money from mining with GAW, which is how they heavily marketed their business up until November perhaps, when the CEO himself proclaimed "skill-based" trading model. Shortly thereafter it became whatever it is now.

And yes, that's the same CEO who also trivialized the departure of "old members" like you just did. It's not about whether a specific person lost money. Most likely early "investors" did not lose money, the question is - why, if mining was not profitable?

Since the company does not generate any viable outside revenue (except the unprofitable mining operation), the source of income allowing those early investors including yourself to exit with profit had to come from later investors. Does that really not concern you? You were lucky to exit at a good point, yet you're saying "if you played along you made money". How about those who played along and got stuck with HashStakers?

By the way, do some math on that picture and match it with GAW's sales claims. I know it doesn't matter now since you made your money, just curious if you can be honest with yourself and admit the possibility of fractional mining here, not to mention the date when that picture was taken.

I partially agree with you, but we still come back to the basis of free market - the match-making of supply and demand.
If you have a product that ONLY you make, can ANYONE make you change the price just because they don't like it? No, of course not.

And yes, indeed, GAW used this very tactic to market their legendary hashlets - which, turned out, can be converted into a timeless HashStaker, which might just prove profitable (the price of PayCoin will fluctuate, but should stabilize in a few weeks, hopefully).


If you buy a miner for 5000$, and two months later the same sells for 2000$, who will cover the loss of value? Nobody. This is capitalism, the value of each product changes basically every second. And the seller won't refund the buyer because the product's value lessened over the time.

Tell me ONE product, or ONE currency that does that - if they did, it would lead to bankruptcy in pretty much no time. When you buy something, you expect it to lose value over time - it can be a day, or a week, a month, a year, a decade. But it WILL lose value, even if it is digital (e.g. a videogame). And nobody will cover the loss of value for you.


Well, that way we can say you lost money buying your computer you're typing from - you bought it for x USD say, a year ago, and now its worth only half of it, if you were to sell it.  Also let me guess, you bought your hashlets, then when the price suddenly dropped, you panicked and sold most of them for a low price, to save yourself from further losses, amirite?  Basically you screwed up on trading stocks (the base is pretty much the same, so...)

Any way, we will see the legitimacy of GAW on the long run - given how much spotlight they got, people who've invested in GAW will get their money back any way (if they are not legit, there will be a huge lawsuit, all who've lost, been lied to, etc., will be able to reclaim their losses; and if they are legit, the system will pay out).

So now you have me confused, because you said this: "It is quite interesting that you say people were misled and lost money - I'm yet to meet one who truly owned a Hashlet and lost money on it (except if re-sold it after a week, at third the price, to get rid of it fast)." Are you saying that GAW did or did not mislead its customers? Could the Hashlet be sold as "always profitable" or not?


You're making assumptions again, without even reading my post properly. I bought a Zen at $11, I did not panic sell it, now it's worth $2 if that, and making a satoshi per day.

I bought a Prime at $17, it never made the $17 back, I did not panic sell it, converted to the worthless hashstaker.

Which of these actions is not following GAW's grand plan? And what does it have to do with stocks? A big part of accusations against GAW is about selling unregistered securities and they have always insisted their hashlets are mining. Which is it?

And check on their latest stunts - releasing an untested feature to Paybase, messing up trading, reversing XPY purchases. CEO bailing from the Miami conference. Lawsuits won't help if there is no money.

Well said +1

Thank You,
Viz.

GAW is a scum organization run by scumbags preying on the greedy and gullible. He will be going to jail but the law takes time to do its thing.

https://i.imgur.com/9p6rApW.jpg?1

To the Gawtards - everybody pray to the Man.

Well that makes you look both intelligent and well intentioned.

Or I'm being sarcastic. I'll let you decide with your powerful and well read intellect.

Like I said...scum..

SEC is a coming. Just like I predicted. Not just after the Dear Leader but after his underlinings and including forum Mods. They are scrubbing at a fever pitch now but it is too late.

Intellect...you decide:

https://coinfire.cf/2015/01/19/sec-investigation-of-gaw-miners-underway/ (https://coinfire.cf/2015/01/19/sec-investigation-of-gaw-miners-underway/)

Oh yeah baby, I feel the hate. How's your blood pressure? ;) Hateraid more Mr. "...scum.." Hahahahaha!

Blood pressure is fine. I do not hate this guy. Not worth the energy. That does not change the fact that the scumminess oozes from him and his legion of Gawtards.

I'll let the rest of the world decide. Your single opinion is just that.

And 881 pages of more opinions with over 99% agreeing with me.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=857670.0

881 pages of opinions all written by not more than 20 people while GAW's customers can be counted in thousands. A nice hater lounge you have there, full of newbies posting memes all day :D

Apparently the SEC doesn't:


I like how coinfire doesn't agree with the statement made by the SEC by attempting to give no credence to his "sources". Guess they don't like their "sources" opinion on the matter either. Wonder where that's going to take them...

Another thrilling, heart pounding and brilliant comment by none other than our very own "Paul Revere".

I can't wait for your next novel.

^^^^^THIS^^^^^

Man, I already read this, and I paid 19.95 + 2.95 shipping. What a rip. :( I'm never buying another one of your works again, very unsatisfied.

It isn't the first time you expected something to be worth $20, is it?

If his book is 20 dollars, I pay 20 dollars. But his book sucks, it's the same work he did 3 years ago with a different cover. Typical pump and dump tactic used on just about every crypto currency.

Something you should be very familiar with.

I guess the fictional stories I am outlining based on this GAWdawful stockpile of juicy material will not be on your bookshelf then.  :'( However, if this story plays out the way that logic, math, and history say it likely will and there is an arrest/suicide/murder involved, then the actual true story might make for a salable made for TV movie and you can catch it after Ow My Balls when you are done Batin'!

https://tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com/2014/05/idiocracy.jpg?w=738

Fictional is correct. Your true nature knows yourself better that you think it does.

I am afraid you have lost me here, old chap.

I'm sorry, who's pumping and who's dumping what and why should I be familiar with something like that? You lost me there.

so much confusion. smh.

Wow another GAW thread to read whoopee!  :D lol

I smell a buttgeek.
I can not believe this shill shirt seller still has FAITH in Josh, Lol.
Hopefully bubba and enimo can share some information with ARS.
This GAWSCAM will end soon.

Ars published an article:

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/01/bitcoin-startup-gaw-miners-reportedly-under-sec-investigation/

Hashtalk condemns:

https://hashtalk.org/topic/29807

GAW CTO missing:

http://i.snag.gy/NpIhg.jpg
(was: http://snag.gy/uBxbf.jpg )

If I add up all the hateraid brains on this thread, would I get barely half a brain?

Typical shill behavior. Attack the messenger when you have no argument to counter the message. We win and you lose. Deal with it.

I doubt you can add, otherwise you wouldn't be shilling for a business that claims 10-15k new customers per day and 100k total - so GAW has been in business for about 10 days?

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/01/bitcoin-startup-gaw-miners-reportedly-under-sec-investigation/

It's not my fault you cannot read cointwats own admission. The argument is already over, you lost, have a beer and get over yourself.

There is no argument here - just reality.

If you can't see it - this might be a reason the world disagrees with you  ;)
Viz.

I remember that episode. The universe created with the mind of Beverly Crusher kept shrinking as her reality disintegrated. Much like the bubble universe on Bitcoin talk. Small world, gets smaller every day. The outer shell can only hold the vacuum so long from outside pressure. I'd suggest opening the hatch, but just a tiny bit to let the atmosphere enter slowly so you don't cause an atmospheric disturbance large enough to affect the weather patterns in Idaho.

I did and a stench permeated my lungs and burned my eyes. The stench of lies and deceit was GAWD awful.

 

No silly billy, I didn't say you should fart. Now you'll need to open that hatch or you'll die in your own methane.

Hahaha  :)

YO !

Wake up!

You should be asking this question right about now if you plan on winning that Pulitzer Prize   :D


https://hashtalk.org/topic/30841/how-much-money-have-you-lost-here/5

bumping now that the truth has been revealed :)

At the very least, I hope the trial makes known a complete list of shills and insider moderators, etc. , who were helping the operation along and making it as fucking creepy as it was. The air really was full on Cult .

XPOST:

P.S.  An SEC lawsuit demanding a trial by jury for running a Ponzi Scheme is not a "similar legal battle" to a bankruptcy.

No government agency sought to impose penalties on Hashfast or Cointerra for fraud or any other violation.

Cyrus, you desperately need a better editor and fact checker.

At this rate, you'll end up like Stephen Glass.

yes