Unless you bought coins during the ICO, your airdrop will always be tiny.

For example, there is person in the discussion forum who was earning 5-9 gemz a day from something like 150-200 referrals.

A realistic airdrop for someone who didn't participate in the ICO is probably less than 1 gemz. As the amount of airdrop participants grow, each person's share will diminish.

Instead of chastising new users, why not explain what you did to get 160 Gemz daily?

It was my understanding that the airdrop is almost entirely based on what you purchased during the ICO.

For instance, did you originally purchase around 13 btc of Gemz? That would give an estimated ~160/day based on the polling in the discussion group.

You can read the Q&A at the start of this thread for the original roadmap that has since been abandoned.

Nobody can tell you what's coming next and when.

What we do know is that GG's continued development is hinged on the success of Paykey (their new project), such that PK will ultimately fund GG.

At the moment, the company is shopping PK around for further funding. If the VC's don't bite, both projects are likely dead.

1) The value of gemz sharply declined following PK's announcement.

2) The decline in value was accompanied by the outcry of many upset investors.

Anyone can verify this by looking at historic price charts and the conversations in this thread, starting from around November 1st, 2015.


Daniel has told us on multiple occasions that the company's focus is now on PayKey, as PK's future profits will be needed to fund GG.

For example, he is currently seeking 6 additional people to work on PK: https://www.paykey.com/#/jobs

Even more important: how many users are specifically interested in GG features, versus those who are just trying to get on the Telegram network?
 
The app only accelerated in downloads after being renamed from "Getgems" to "Telegram with Getgems", and thus being positioned closer to the official Telegram app in the two app stores.

If there was genuine interest in GG from 100k people, you'd expect a lot more referral links and general chatter on social media.

Daniel likes to post download counts, but he should also report referral stats, and how many users are regularly claiming daily bonus/airdrops.

Is there a reason to keep these metrics private, even from investors?

You can look through my post history, which almost exclusively covers this controversy in detail.

In short, the result of PK is the current market value of gemz. It is worth less than 1/2 of its cheapest ICO sale price. The token rapidly lost value after PK was announced at the end of Oct, 2015. It has yet to recover.

Do you have evidence that growth has been fuelled by referrals?

As I posted earlier:


Hopefully Daniel will post referral stats. He's never explained the discrepancy between iOS and Android downloads, which is quite an anomaly.

Apparently, even diehard apologists find this statement hard to swallow.

For they now must believe that the company was forced to create a banking app to save GG, mere months after starting the project, which implies the crowdfunding was a total failure.

Following this logic, they must also believe that $1.2 million in funding was only enough to re-skin Telegram and take babysteps towards adding new features.

Of course there's a much more plausible explanation: The company switched focus to pursue what they believe to be a superior opportunity at the expense of their original project.

Since PayKey was unveiled, GG has received airdrops (raining tokens via a simple algorithm) and an advertisement channel (a regular Telegram group with a twist).

Is that reasonable for 5 months of development? What are the operating costs over this period, salaries, etc?

We're at a time when the company's track record is speaking for itself. Some people can see it, some people can't.

Then there are those who entertain their delusions to avoid confronting the truth.

The explosion in GG downloads followed the renaming of the app as “Telegram with Getgems” to exploit app store search rankings.

This is why GG for iOS has a lot more users compared to Android. GG ranks significantly higher in the Apple App Store when searching for “Telegram”.

100k downloads is paraded around as if it’s indicative of the app’s merit beyond being a Telegram clone. But the rise in downloads appears to be entirely the result of this simple SEO trick.

What is troubling is that the recent rise in downloads did not produce a large bump in social media activity.

This is what you’d expect if new users are downloading GG to get on the Telegram network, and have no interest or knowledge of GG’s unique features.

Getting downloads, through any means, is certainly an important step for this project. But the real work is developing GG's promised services and convincing people to use them.

After 15 months, GG's standout features are underwhelming to say the least, and we’ve been told that continued development is now dependent on acquiring more VC money... that’s not even intended for the GG project.

Regularly posting download counts is a distraction to mask the shortcomings of any meaningful work towards building the AE as described in the whitepaper.

Owners of the Telegram network have more to celebrate from our 100k downloads than GG supporters. It'll be the same story when we hit 200k.

GG's future depends on getting more VC money to develop PK.

It might not be what I wanted to hear, but I got my answers.

Thank you.

A lot of the friction here might be due to cultural differences.

A kibbutz is an insular low-trust community — think of an extreme form of a stereotypical Greek/Italian/Korean family — where in-group loyalty is highly regarded.

But the strong commitment that binds low-trust groups tends to come at the expense of trusting outsiders. In this case, that’s you, me, and 1500 other ICO buyers.

In many low-trust societies one is expected to exploit outsiders, just as they’d expect outsiders to try and exploit them. From food market haggling to big business negotiations, this assumption is ever present.

Entire books have been written on this topic:
http://www.amazon.com/Trust-Social-Virtues-Creation-Prosperity/dp/0684825252

So no, I don’t believe Daniel's kibbutz will see this endeavour as anything but a cunningly executed transfer of $800k into the possession of one of its members.

I’ve grown to suspect that Daniel doesn’t see his actions as anything but fair and ordinary. Ex: He believes that he communicates sufficiently. Ex: He believes that he's over-delivered on his promises. Ex: He never apologies for anything.

Where his reputation might begin to concern him is when he is dealing with PayKey's future customers. Trust is a highly regarded trait in the banking community.

The question:


The response:


An excuse-laden peregrination that not only avoids answering the question, but lacks any useful information.

I can’t fault Daniel for his lack of experience and competence. He never claimed to have either.

But I sure as hell will call him out on his deception and lack of integrity.

So this is your example of how to ask a non-hostile question:

Start and finish your comment with self-doubt, and address it to "someone".

Either summon the courage to ask Daniel a direct question, or step aside and allow others to do so.

Please rewrite my questions so that they are non-hostile. Otherwise I have no idea what you're talking about.

Daniel, can you please answer the following questions:

Is what you have been calling the Attention Economy currently the "GetGems Advertising" group?

Do you have a commitment to fund Getgems with PayKey's profits?

When did co-founder Eitan Rousso leave the company, and what was the reason for his departure?

Is PayKey a separate business entity?

Are you hiring people to specifically work on PayKey?

You’re essentially saying that people might choose gemz over btc as their crypto investment/store of value.

It doesn’t make any sense.

What does gemz offer than bitcoin can’t?

Gemz has only one selling point that I know of: It is the currency of the AE.

If you believe the AE is coming and will be everything Daniel promised it to be, then that is the only reality where it’d make sense to hold any gemz.

Also, how many of our first 85k downloaders have shown any interest in acquiring gemz?

The only people asking for in-app purchase are existing coinholders (mostly the ICO crowd).

If these people truly believed in Daniel’s commitment to the project, they’d stay quiet and buy up every “cheap” coin that they could afford -- the illiquidity would be a godsend.

We don't need in-app purchase like we didn't need PayKey for Gemz. We need the AE built with whatever's left of the funding. Everything else is a bandaid, or a distraction, and was never on the roadmap to begin with.

This is a great find.

CTO Eitan Rousso was replaced by CTO Offer Markovich.

That is, the listed co-founder of PayKey replaced a co-founder of Getgems.

One might suspect that Markovich is the actual originator of the PK concept, and was hired for that reason.

Is this somehow linked to Rousso leaving the company?

Why else would GG's co-founder silently abandon the project, just months after it was successfully funded?

Some major event took place. Perhaps it was the decision to prioritize PK over GG when Markovich was hired in the summer of 2015.

Whatever the case, it's another important clue in figuring out this whole mess.

Or, you know, the company could just speak openly of these matters as they've previously promised to do so.

Paykey’s Vision statement at https://www.paykey.com/#/vision


Getgems profile at http://www.magmavc.com/portfolio/portfolio-companies/item/198-getgems.html


Both writeups are virtually identical. They pledge support for a number of competing social networks, but there's no mention of their own network (Getgems).

Even PayKey for Gemz isn’t mentioned anywhere on the PK website, and it's their only functional PK product.

They can’t hide nor downplay this massive pivot any further. That's why we're getting the communication blackout.

Expect the next blog update to boast about app downloads, the ad group, or some award they've recently won...

Anything to distract from this blatant bait-and-switch.

The prevailing defence of the company is to claim that PK's profits, should it generate any, will be in rolled back into GG.

I can't seem to find a statement to confirm this.

So let's ask Daniel and other stakeholders in the company directly:

What percentage of PK's revenue will you commit to fund GG's development?

I've actually been transparent with my coins. Here's what I wrote almost exactly a year ago:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=758004.msg10607735#msg10607735


1) I sold at a profit.

2) I smelt the bullshit early.