GAW / Josh Garza discussion Paycoin XPY xpy.io ION ionomy. ALWAYS MAKE MONEY :)

[suchmoon]

DOJ wire fraud case against Garza
Garza sentenced to 21 months in prison

Archived court documents

GARZA & FRASER class action
(case on hold)
Garza throws Fraser under the bus
Archived court documents

SEC vs GARZA court case
(case closed, Garza ordered to pay ~$10m)
Archived court documents

This post was last updated September 13, 2018

Let's talk about Geniuses at Work Corporation (GAW) and its subsidiaries such as Business Technology for Cryptocurrency LLC (BTC), GAW Miners LLC, Paybase LLC, GAW High Speed Internet (HSI/GAWSPEED), as well as their products and services - ZenMiner, ZenCloud, Hashlet, Paycoin (XPY), Hashstaker. These businesses and services were owned and promoted by Homero Joshua (Josh) Garza, also known by his online aliases GAWCEO, MrCEO, josg21, minerorigin. Let's also take a look at extensions of Garza's projects and people behind them, such as Carmelo Millian and his BTCLend/LendCoin, or the XPY.io group and their ionomy platform.

If you are new to this thread I would like to suggest to read this post first and read the last 10 or so pages to catch up with the current events.

The discussion in this thread often gets heated and even borderline NSFW at times. Learning to use the "Ignore" list might be advisable.

Known legal actions involving GAW and related persons:

SEC issues a subpoena
Mississippi Power Company sues GAW and wins by default
Two former customers sue GAW and Paybase
SEC sues Carlos Garza - brother of GAW CEO Homero Garza - to compel him to testify
SEC files fraud charges against Homero Garza
Class action lawsuit filed against Homero Garza and Stuart Fraser
Homero Garza pleads guilty in a DOJ wire fraud case

Below is a brief overview of main events in GAW history in reverse chronological order.

Recent events

January 4, 2019. Garza begins serving his sentence.

September 13, 2018. Homero Joshua Garza has been sentenced to 21 months in prison for wire fraud.

January 2018. Garza's sentencing, originally scheduled for January 5, has been postponed.

July 2017. Homero Joshua Garza pleads guilty to wire fraud charges and awaits sentencing.

June 2016. A civil lawsuit has been filed against GAW, ZenMiner, Josh Garza, and Stuart Fraser. The plaintiffs are seeking class action certification.

April 2016. The latest SEC lawsuit update stayed (halted) Garza's case for 6 months.

April 2016. A new fully pre-mined coin (ION) is replacing XPY. Former XPY supporters are now admitting failure in their year-long attempts to rescue the coin.

December 2015. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has charged Homero Joshua Garza with three counts of securities fraud, mainly focusing on hashlets having been sold as an unregistered security and structured as a ponzi scheme.

November 2015. BTCLend appears to be having financial issues. Its forum BTCLendTalk.org has been shut down and its owner Carmelo Milian is not communicating with his customers.

September 2015. A new Bitcoin lending site BitLend.io has been announced. It employs former GAW employees and other related persons and is headed by the lead litigant in a group lawsuit against GAW.

August 2015. BTCLend have released their own cryptocurrency LendCoin (LNC) intended as a replacement for XPY. Initial source code analysis shows serious privacy and security issues, such as transferring unencrypted private keys to a central server.

August 2015. Josh Garza's brother Carlos was sued by the SEC to compel him to respond in the ongoing GAW investigation. The lawsuit was prompted by Carlos' refusal to answer even the most basic questions and refusal to invoke the 5th amendment.

August 2015. Mississippi Power Company (MPC) has won a $346k default judgement in a lawsuit against GAW Miners.

July 2015. GAW Miners has been sued by two customers for "deceptive business practices and materially false and misleading statements to get Plaintiffs and thousands of others to invest in a non-registered investment scheme or business opportunity by misrepresentations and/or omissions of material facts... " etc.

July 2015. A local newspaper in Brattleboro VT published an article about problems in GAW High Speed Internet (HSI), a company started by Garza before GAW Miners.

May 2015. BTCLend, a peer-to-peer lending site and online wallet linked to Mr. Garza has been involved in questionable activity, including "illegal" XPY staking, Coinbase API issue resulting in losses for customers, and attempts to cover up such incidents.

May 2015. Bitcoinist launched a news portal on btc.com, a domain controlled by GAW . It is being claimed that there is a long term lease for the domain between Bitcoinist and GAW Miners LLC, however it has not been clarified if Homero Joshua Garza is personally involved in the new site. Update: Mr. Garza failed to pay for the domain and the site is no longer functional.

April 2015. Multiple e-mail, document, and chat leaks have occurred. Among the highlights of revealed information:

• Josh Garza has close financial (debt) and personal ties with Stuart Fraser, Vice Chairman of Cantor Fitzgerald.
• Former business efforts of Josh Garza such as GAW HSI (internet provider) and GAW mining hardware sales may have been not as successful as Josh Garza previously claimed.
• Financial problems at GAW Miners have been mentioned as early as May-June 2014.
• Hosted and cloud mining services were misrepresented to customers and were not adequately (if at all) backed by mining hardware.
• Josh Garza appears to have lied even to his closest friends, family, lawyers, customers, business partners.
• Hundreds of thousands of XPY have been sold by GAW and/or Josh Garza.

March 2015. GAW CEO Josh Garza attempted to promote two new projects that he claimed are not related to GAW: CoinStand and Mineral.

• CoinStand is an online store that allows to purchase Amazon products and pay with Paycoin. It is only available to a few invited individuals, some of whom were able to use Paycoin at a $20 exchange rate, i.e. purchase up to $1000 worth of products for 50 XPY (worth less than $10 at the time of this post). Purchases were later revealed to come labeled by Amazon as "A gift from Homero Garza".
• Mineral was claimed to be a "fastest growing" crypto currency exchange and a replacement for Paybase, however it has not shown any significant trading volume.

March 2015. GAW fired most of its staff including all developers.

February 2015. There has been a massive leak of GAW e-mails and documents, including communication with customers, overdue bills, SEC subpoena, etc. The discussion starts around here and archives are here and here.

January 2015. Updated: Paybase blog announced a buy back plan to honor the $20 Paycoin price guarantee. The plan will require Paycoin holders to put the coins into escrow and GAW is committing to paying out a minimum of 100 thousand USD per month to gradually buy those coins at $20 each. It is not known yet as to who will handle the escrow, how long will it take the buy back to complete, and other important details. Registration for the buyback program did not start as scheduled on February 1st due to waiting for an SEC approval according to Mr.Garza (later edited to a more generic "government" approval). This news led to a 50%+ drop in the XPY/BTC exchange rate, which later recovered to about 25% down.

January 2015. Multiple GAW employees are reported to have left the company.

January 2015. A new feature called Payflash was released to Paybase. I allowed to buy Gyft gift cards for major retailers using XPY. Shortly after the release the price of XPY on Paybase crashed as low as $0.01. This may have been caused by Payflash selling XPY for BTC pay Gyft, and a combination of other issues. Full official explanation has not been released yet and GAW CEO has cancelled his appearance in TNABC as a result of the issue.

January 2015. GAW CEO Josh Garza is backing out of a debate with Litecoin Association Director Andrew Vegetabile. Mr. Garza initially proposed an open public debate in person online as a way to address the Association's decision to pull Litecoin out of GAW-owned exchange Coin-swap.net. Now Mr. Garza is suggesting an e-mail correspondence instead.

January 2015. Paybase used payment processor Stripe to accept credit cards for XPY sales. It may be violating Stripe's Terms of Service, which has a list of prohibited businesses that includes virtual currency sales. Credit card purchasing is disabled at this time.

Information below was "current" as of January 2015. It is being retained as a historic reference but is no longer accurate and most of the websites/services mentioned below are no longer functional. Please see the regularly updated timeline above.

Paybase

Launched in the last days of 2014 Paybase is Paycoin (XPY) online wallet, crypto currency exchange, and payment processing platform. It's name and functionality seems to be modeled after Coinbase, a major Bitcoin payment platform.

Paybase - current status

Currently Paybase allows to deposit Paycoin, withdraw Paycoin, exchange Paycoin into BTC and BTC into Paycoin. XPY/BTC exchange rate roughly matches the rate on other exchanges (e.g. Cryptsy). There is a simplified buy/sell option that has a much larger spread, somewhat obfuscated by displaying USD values even for XPY/BTC conversions, and also a more conventional bid/ask peer-to-peer market similar to other crypto currency exchanges.

Paybase - promises

Future features may include a debit card linked to a Paycoin wallet, bill payment, online shopping, multi-coin exchange, crypto-fiat exchange. These features are currently not implemented or not fully implemented. The ability to purchase XPY for fiat using a credit card was available briefly, as noted in the "Recent events" section above. Online shopping can be done indirectly by purchasing gift cards on Paybase.

Some of the earlier promises have been later amended and postponed due to AML/KYC requirements.

Paycoin

Paycoin (initial code name HashCoin, symbol XPY) is a crypto currency created by GAW with a goal of bringing wide acceptance, price stability, advanced features, and other benefits. It had a short POW phase using SHA256 (same as Bitcoin) algorithm, and is currently in a POS phase. 12 million coins (more than 97% of total supply) were premined by GAW.

Paycoin - current status

Paycoin is currently trading on most major exchanges and can be exchanged to/from BTC on Paybase. It can be used with the HashStaker product to gain 0.972% daily interest. Options to spend the coin directly are very limited.

Paycoin - promises

A major selling point for Paycoin since its introduction was a $20 "floor", i.e. GAW maintaining a USD reserve fund and using it to buy XPY at $20 each on Paybase. The "floor" has now been rescinded and XPY is trading at market prices.

Removal of the "floor" puts into doubt another widely promoted advantage of Paycoin over other crypto currencies - price stability. In addition to that it has been revealed that Paycoin source code contains special exceptions for certain wallets that can stake - or generate new coins - at rates in excess of 3000% annually, which would create hyperinflation.

Paycoin was also promised to launch "with more merchant acceptance than any other cryptocurrency in history". There is no widespread acceptance as of yet. One of the options to spend XPY includes PaySave (formerly known as ZincSave) - a Chrome browser plugin that would intercept the checkout process at online shopping sites such as Amazon or Walmart and allow the buyer to pay with Paycoin. There may be some issues with this approach as the merchants don't seem to be supporting it and consumer's rights might be affected. PaySave is not functional yet.

Another spending option is a debit card linked to a Paycoin wallet. Originally expected to be released in December 2014 it is not available yet.

Paycoin was promoted as having technical innovations in its development, such as instant transaction confirmations and blockchain compression. The actual coin seems to be a clone of Peercoin with few modifications and almost none of the promised features. Some additional features were implemented a week after the original launch.

HashStaker

A big part of Paycoin infrastructure is the online staking wallet - HashStaker. It is hosted on GAW's ZenMiner Cloud site and pays out 0.00972 XPY daily for 1 XPY deposited into it. A HashStaker wallet expires in 3 or 6 months. The 3-month version sold for 10-12 USD, the 6-month version sold for 18-20 USD. Paycoin deposited into a HashStaker cannot be withdrawn during the 3 or 6 month period.

It has been implied that there are 2.4 million HashStakers (one HashStaker can hold one XPY).

HashStaker - current status

It has been calculated that for HashStakers to be profitable the XPY exchange rate needs to be at least $10-15, depending on the HashStaker purchase price. Currently the XPY rate is very volatile but with the $20 "floor" no longer supported it puts the profitability of retail-purchased HashStakers at risk. It has been announced that 90% of Hashlets have been converted to Hashstakers. This option might still be profitable, as some Hashlets were cheaper than HashStakers.  

If there are 2.4 million HashStakers the daily payouts would be approximately 23 thousand XPY. At $5 to $20 per XPY that is between 115-460 thousand USD daily, but at this time there is no evidence of GAW generating such amounts of revenue to sustain these payouts.

HashStaker - promises

It has been announced that HashStakers will be available to trade on the ZenMiner Cloud Market (like Hashlets), however this option is not available yet.

HashBase

HashBase was originally planned as a replacement for ZenMiner Cloud mining portal, with additional features such as coin exchange. Some of these features have been later re-branded as Paybase.

HashBase - current status

HashBase release scheduled for December 2014 has been delayed by a month. It is likely that this timeline will not be met as it has been indicated that GAW has focused most of their development effort on Paybase exchange.

HashBase - promises

GAW organized an application process for HashBase beta-testers. It was announced that 12 participants have been selected, however it is unknown who those testers are or if there was any testing done.

Hashlets

Hashlet is a "Digital Cloud Miner" introduced in August 2014 and no longer sold by GAW, but still available in ZenMiner Cloud Hash Market. It was sold as an amount of hashrate, available in 1 MH/s (Scrypt) or 10 GH/s (SHA256) slices. It does not have an expiration date. There is a daily maintenance cost of 0.08 USD per 1 MH/s (Scrypt) or 0.02 USD per 10 GH/s (SHA256). Hashlets were sold in several flavors, the most expensive of which was Prime Hashlet. Prime and Zen hashlets have exclusive access to ZenPool - "The World's Most Profitable Pool".

In October of 2014 hashlet mining profitability decreased significantly in part due to a sharp decline in BTC/USD exchange rate and the USD-based maintenance fees consuming between 40-100% of mining revenue. ZenPool revenue also declined due to what GAW described as negotiations with private hashrate renters. At that time GAW introduced an option to mine Hashpoints (HP). 1 MH/s Hashlet could earn 18-20 HP per day and there were no maintenance fees. Hashpoints were converted to Paycoin after it was launched in mid-December at a rate of 400 HP for 1 XPY and Hashpoint mining ended.

Hashpoint mining was initially available for Prime Hashlets, later expanded to Zen Hashlets, and in the last week before Paycoin launch to remaining Solo Hashlets. A Prime or Zen Hashlet could have mined 2-2.5 XPY during the Hashpoint mining period. A solo hashlet could have mined ~0.3 XPY.

Hashlets - current status

GAW provided an option to convert Hashlets into HashStakers. It has been announced that 90% of Hashlets have been converted. Most of the remaining Hashlets are unprofitable, except Genesis (SHA256) and Prime (due to a "Double Dip" feature that allows 12 hours per day of additional 1 MH/s mining without maintenance fees).

Hashlets - promises

Hashlet marketing included the following unfulfilled claims:

• Obsolete-Proof - Adjusts to always remains (sic) profitable & never breaks down.
  (no such adjustment ever happened and most hashlets have become unprofitable)
• Datacenter-Optimized - Engineered to take full advantage of economies of scale.
  (it was later claimed that large scale mining is more expensive due to additional costs)
• Depreciating Costs - Costs decline over time, keeping your Hashlet profitable.
  (no such cost decrease ever happened and most hashlets have become unprofitable)
• Additionally, for all Hashlet Solos, if your target pool disbands, your Solo will automatically retarget the next most profitable pool.
  (at least two of the pools are closed at this time - WafflePool and TradeMyBit - but continue to be listed on ZenMiner Cloud with fake payout rates)

Additionally it was promised that Prime Hashlets will be able to mine SHA256 and use many different "amps", of which only two have been implemented (Boost and Double Dip).

In an attempt to keep the profitability promise GAW is adjusting Hashlet revenues to be at least one satoshi (0.00000001 BTC) above maintenance fees, i.e. hashlets are still technically making money. However at this rate it might take about 10 thousand years to earn back the average price of a hashlet, which arguably fails any reasonable definition of profitability.

ZenMiner Cloud hosting

ZenMiner started by offering its ZenController product with GAW's Generation A (Zeus-based) miners. ZenController consisted of custom mining software running on a Raspberry Pi and connecting to ZenMiner website for remote management. The product was later abandoned.

In July 2014 ZenMiner started offering its Cloud hardware hosting platform, which became a successor to GAW's own hosting service. Later it included Hashlets and HashStakers. This thread originated as a list of questions and doubts about the ZenMiner Cloud, mainly focused on the lack of roof that actual customer-owned hardware was hosted and mining.

Vaultbreaker

The Vaultbreaker was GAW's attempt to compete with other vendors in producing next-generation Scrypt mining hardware. Originally announced as 500 MH/s 1.5 kW miner it was later upgraded to 750 MH/s with the same power consumption (a smaller 375 MH/s version was also offered), and was scheduled to be delivered at the end of third quarter - beginning of fourth quarter of 2014. Unconfirmed rumors linked Vaultbreaker development with Flower Tech, who failed to deliver their own hardware as originally planned.

GAW CEO made a famous promise to beat KnC and deliver the Vaultbreaker sooner than KnC would deliver its Titan. In August 2014 GAW offered to convert Vaulbreaker Batch 1 purchases to the recently announced Hashlets. In September 2014 a similar conversion program was offered for Batch 2. This was declared to fulfill the promise to beat KnC who started delivering their Titan in September 2014.

The actual Vaultbreaker hardware was never delivered, despite claims continuing up until mid-October 2014 that the project is still on time. In November 2014 GAW announced that due to problems with contracted vendors it will substitute the remaining Vaultbreakers with other hardware, which appear to be Alcheminer units with 7+ times higher power consumption.

GAW hosting

GAW started offering hosting options for their Scrypt hardware buyers in March 2014. Users were able to enter their own pools for the hosted hardware. The hosting service was somewhat unreliable, with problems often blamed on hardware issues. Despite numerous requests GAW never implemented automated monitoring and relied on users to monitor and report issues with their miners.

Hosting service was discontinued in October 2014. Users were offered a choice between having hardware shipped to them or converting it to ZenHashlets (valued at ~$10 per MH/s at the time). The shipping option could be replaced by a refund at GAW's discretion. This effectively cancelled free hosting plans, such as those offered to Founder's Club members.

Hardware sales

GAW Miners started as a reseller of Gridseed Scrypt miners in March 2014. It claimed to have become one of Gridseed's largest resellers in April 2014, but soon thereafter the relationship appeared to deteriorate due to pricing issues.

In May 2014 GAW announced their own line of Scrypt miners, which turned out to be rebranded Zeus hardware. It continued to sell Zeus miners including hosted hardware until Hashlets were announced in August 2014. GAW also sold hardware from other vendors such as Innosilicon and Bitmain. After transitioning to cloud mining it continued to sell used hardware through oneminer.com website.

[suchmoon]

This post contains links to sources used in the first post and other related information. Due to GAW often deleting referenced material under their control (such as Hashtalk posts) most sources have several links - original source, google cache, archive sites, page screenshot.

Promises and references related to the "$20 floor"

"Our floor, to keep it from going bellow $20, is too large at this point"
Original | Archive.org | archive.today | Screenshot

"We will buy your XPY for $20 each with NO verification and as soon as you open your account!"
archive.today | Screenshot

... later edited to "We will manage XPY to the $20 each with NO verification, as soon as you open your account!"
Original | Archive.org | archive.today | Screenshot


Data center pictures and locations

Likely original GAW hosting location - published August 19, 2014: https://hashtalk.org/topic/2040
Exterior picture #1 with location data in EXIF | Interior picture #1 with location data in EXIF | Google Maps | Google Street View | Interior picture #2 | Interior picture #3 | Interior picture #4 | Interior picture #5 | Interior picture #6 | Interior picture #7

Likely shipping warehouse later converted to a mining location - published August 19, 2014: https://hashtalk.org/topic/2040
Exterior picture #1 with location data in EXIF | Google Maps | Google Street View

Warehouse interior pictures - published September 8, 2014: http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2014/09/08/gaw-miners-bitcoin-arms-race-shifts-to-the-cloud-2
Interior picture #1 | Interior picture #2

Warehouse electric and cooling installation pictures - published xxx:

Warehouse pictures with Bitmain hardware - published xxx:

[suchmoon]

Some shortcuts if you would like to avoid reading the whole thread

miaviator is helping Google to make sense of it all:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=857670.msg11157896#msg11157896

vizique is feeling thankful:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=857670.msg10861153#msg10861153

-Redacted- posted a list of GAW's lies:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=857670.msg10700993#msg10700993

skinnyboy collected a list of issues and broken promises:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=857670.msg10618633#msg10618633

mcni77 pleaded for common sense:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=857670.msg10274960#msg10274960

torelle summarized the issue with Payflash gift card sales and Paybase exchange rate collapse:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=857670.msg10222836#msg10222836

vancefox provided some analysis of Paycoin source code:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=857670.msg10029201#msg10029201

eightcylinders posted a great overview of GAW's evolution:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=857670.msg9868670#msg9868670 (updated)
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=857670.msg9749458#msg9749458 (older version)

T0urist sums up the essence of this thread in a few short paragraphs:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=857670.msg9884850#msg9884850

crushed shares his/her experience with GAW:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=857670.msg9937149#msg9937149

interstellar describes Hashtalk forum:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=857670.msg9998548#msg9998548

GAW CEO and some Hashtalk members visited this thread and answered some questions, starts around here, 10 pages or so:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=857670.msg9612554#msg9612554

TBC

Some notable links from the old thread.

Summary
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=720844.msg9544260#msg9544260

Hashrate and revenue estimates:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=720844.msg9516019#msg9516019

Theories and predictions
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=720844.msg9449020#msg9449020
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=720844.msg9440587#msg9440587
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=720844.msg9525048#msg9525048

TOS Archive

TBD

demonz posted a review of HashStaker risk disclosures as of December 12, 2014:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=857670.msg9818250#msg9818250

Old OP:

Code:

November 14, 2014

Let's talk about Hashlets, [s]Hashcoin[/s] PayCoin, and other products and services offered by [url=http://www.gawminers.com/]GAW Miners[/url].

This thread continues the discussion started here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=720844.0

[u][b]Hashlet[/b][/u]

[url=http://www.gawminers.com/pages/hashlet/]Hashlet[/url] is a "Digital Cloud Miner". It is sold as an amount of hashrate, available in 1 MH/s (Scrypt) or 10 GH/s (SHA256) slices. It does not have an expiration date. There is a daily maintenance cost of 0.08 USD per 1 MH/s (Scrypt) or 0.01 USD per 5 GH/s (SHA256), which GAW has claimed may go down in the future to ensure hashlet's continuing profitability.

Hashlets are sold in several flavors, the most expensive of which is Prime Hashlet. It is designed to be an integral part of the network supporting GAW's crypto currency, [url=https://paycoin.com/]PayCoin[/url], scheduled to launch in the coming months. Prime is supposed an advantage over other PayCoin miners, possibly getting a share of profits from Prime Controllers.

In October of 2014 hashlet mining profitability decreased significantly in part due to a sharp decline in BTC/USD exchange rate and the USD-based maintenance fees consuming between 40-100% of mining revenue. At that time GAW introduced an option to mine Hashpoints that may be exchanged to PayCoin in the future but are not convertible or spendable at the moment. Hashpoint mining is available for Zen and Prime hashlets and does not incur maintenance fees.

[u][b]PayCoin - details subject to change as more information becomes available[/b][/u]

GAW officially announced [url=https://paycoin.com/]PayCoin[/url] (provisionally named Hashcoin) by releasing a white paper draft on October 31, 2014. It is designed to increase crypto currency adoption by solving what GAW considers to be issues with existing crypto currencies such as Bitcoin. Some of the promised features include faster confirmation, wide merchant support at launch, exchange rate stability. [url=https://c91475e716c8925e05c6-d2659d433205cf4410415f8dd63807af.ssl.cf5.rackcdn.com/paycoinwhitepaper.pdf]Latest draft[/url] was released November 17, 2014 and more changes are likely to follow.

PayCoin will use SHA256 block hashing algorithm (like Bitcoin) and will be mined by GAW using their [url=https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=827552.0]recent acquisition[/url] of 5 PH/s of mining hardware from Bitmain. It may be available to other miners as well. PayCoin will have an initial coin offering (ICO) consisting of several rounds disbursing up to 5.5 million coins valued between $4 and $20 each. Round 3 of the ICO has been [url=https://twitter.com/gawceo/status/531549875226546176]cancelled[/url] and the [url=https://hashcoin.com/img/timeline@2x.png]timeline of the launch[/url] beyond November 24, 2014 is not clear yet.

[u][b]Questions and some answers[/b][/u]

[b]Q:[/b] Will the coin have wide merchant adoption at lauch as initially promised?
[b]A:[/b] Work in progress. In the early announcements GAW mentioned partnerships with major retailers such was Amazon and Walmart, however later it was explained as still being negotiated.
[b]Sources[/b]
GAW removed initial Hashtalk announcement(s). Sources on other sites:
http://coinbrief.net/gawminers-hashcoin-hashbase-hashpool/
https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/hashcoin-hashbase-will-bring-bitcoin-mainstream-interview-with-gawminers-josh-garza/
[b]Backtracking[/b]
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:l774YDjo38IJ:https://hashtalk.org/topic/16399/some-thoughts-on-merchant-adoption/80+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us
https://hashtalk.org/topic/16606
https://hashtalk.org/topic/17485
https://hashtalk.org/topic/17245

[b]Q:[/b] Is the coin's initial market cap realistic and will it be able to support the assumed $20 exchange rate?
[b]A:[/b] Unlikely without severe restrictions on exchanging/redeeming the coin.
[b]Sources[/b]
https://hashtalk.org/topic/17070

[b]Q:[/b] Does the Prime Controller feature imply centralization?
[b]A:[/b] It may. GAW would likely control most or all Prime Controllers and thus could be able to control transaction confirmations. This may be clarified in future white paper updates.
[b]Sources[/b]
https://hashtalk.org/topic/17657
https://hashtalk.org/topic/17943

[b]Q:[/b] What is the future for Solo hashlets?
[b]A:[/b] Zen probably will remain the most profitable of "Scrypt" hashlets (other than Prime). Genesis should be safe as its tied to BTC mining and will be as profitable as any other Bitcoin miner. Other hashlets may become unprofitable. A new hashlet for PayCoin may be introduced.
[b]Sources[/b]
https://hashtalk.org/topic/18023
https://twitter.com/gawceo/status/533057085861552129

[u][b]Red flags, old and new[/b][/u]

[b]Proof of mining.[/b] GAW ordered 5 PH/s of SHA256 hardware from Bitmain. This was revealed two months after hashlet sales started and may be insufficient to sustain payouts for the amount of sold hashrate, estimated to be between 500-1000 GH/s Scrypt-equivalent. There is no proof in the form of a mining address.

[b]Value of Hashpoints.[/b] At the same time when a significant drop in BTC payouts occured and fee-free Hashpoint mining option was announced GAW also removed the ability to redeem Hashpoints for new Hashlets. The value of Hashpoints relies entirely on the success of PayCoin ICO and the promised 5-fold increase in their value.

[b]Change of course.[/b] Many users feel that some original Hashlet promises have not been fulfilled, such as ZenPool being the most profitable pool or maintenance fee reduction. Hashlets were marketed as Bitcoin or even Scrypt miners, but the focus is now shifting towards PayCoin with even heavier dependence on GAW's ability to deliver on promises.

[b]Control of information.[/b] Some long-time Hashtalk forum members have been banned from the forum for asking "inappropriate" questions. Customer support questions and complaints are not allowed on the forum anymore. Some of GAW's past announcements have been modified, removed, or moved out of public view. Some critics have been threatened with legal action.

[hr]

This thread continues the discussion started here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=720844.0

[Stargazer]

I couldn't answer in the previous thread, so here it goes

Getting paid doesn't mean they exist.

How can a share, which is an agreement between 2 people, not exist?

[suchmoon]

I couldn't answer in the previous thread, so here it goes

Getting paid doesn't mean they exist.

How can a share, which is an agreement between 2 people, not exist?

Here is my take on this from back in September and I think I still stand by it:

The hashlet almost certainly does not exist as a hardware device depicted on GAW's website. It may exist as a slice of a larger hardware device. It does exist as an investment vehicle that produces daily payouts, however the source of these payouts is not fully known.

[Chris_Sabian]

Hashcoin is going to be a terrible failure at launch or very close to it.

[wdl1908]

Hashcoin is going to be a terrible failure at launch or very close to it.

Can you elaborate on that? Like why or how?

[NeonTranceBadger]

Edit needs to be done to the Hashlet section so that it says $.08 maintenance fee per 1MH/s and $.01 maintenance fee per 5GH/s for Hashlet Genesis.

[tf315]

Sigh. Guess I was shadow banned on Hashtalk. Can't see my posts unless logged on so I'm guessing they're hidden. Would be nice to know when and why this happens. Nothing on my profile says I'm banned or my posts will be hidden.

[knowhow]

we can be on the begining but the sucess of it will be affected by gaw :

if only primes would be able to mine this new coin
if primes and a new haslets will be able to mine it
if the hardware from btc users will be able to mine some of it too

soo too many if ,we will know i hope till end of the year the answers about this (IF)

[suchmoon]

Edit needs to be done to the Hashlet section so that it says $.08 maintenance fee per 1MH/s and $.01 maintenance fee per 5GH/s for Hashlet Genesis.

Thank you, done.

[suchmoon]

Sigh. Guess I was shadow banned on Hashtalk. Can't see my posts unless logged on so I'm guessing they're hidden. Would be nice to know when and why this happens. Nothing on my profile says I'm banned or my posts will be hidden.

That's the goal of the shadow ban, to NOT make the banned user aware of it. I think this was supposed to be used on spammers so that they would continue to spam unaware that nobody is buying their Viagra. Apparently works quite well for other purposes too (the shadow ban, not the Viagra).

[Oldminer]

It was this guys first and only post on hashtalk. The "helpful" community banned him within 5 minutes.....poor guy.

Stay away from GAW.

[suchmoon]

Here is an official response as to why these super cheap sales can't be prevented:


Edited 2020-11-28 to fix a broken image

[NeonTranceBadger]

It was this guys first and only post on hashtalk. The "helpful" community banned him within 5 minutes.....poor guy.

Stay away from GAW.

I always wondered if the reason no one at GAW helped these people who accidentally did this was that GAW was actually the ones buying them.  I sold a 80MH/s ZenHashlet on the market and not more than 3 seconds after I click the final accept button it was gone and I sold it for about $1 per MH/s under market value.  

[DiCE1904]

Like the new OP here, well done.

Thankfully after Josh unlocked my account last night both my accounts area almost completely sold off. Im now free 

[elrugrim]

GAW is scamming its customers by autobuying lowball offers.....   Ok, we are at tinfoil hat time on page one.   It's a GAWSpiracy, bro.

[Chris_Sabian]

Hashcoin is going to be a terrible failure at launch or very close to it.

Can you elaborate on that? Like why or how?

Sure.

1. GAW says that major companies will accept Hashcoin
very few major companies accept bitcoin which has been around for almost 6 years.  No company will accept such a new coin

2. GAW says that only primes can mine hashcoin
so much for decentralization or a valid blockchain

3. GAW says white that the hashcoin whitepaper is revolutionary
the actual white paper is terrible and doesn't explain anything


There has been no major increase in alt-coin hashrates.  Where is all of the alleged hashing power from hashlets going?

I think that hashcoin is the end-game for GAW and it is a last ditch effort for them to save face and cash-out before the whole thing collapses.

[kebabman]

I'll just leave these here.  

Some history of Homero's* past performance:

http://www.topix.com/forum/city/canaan-vt/THJFBNV4MIFIR075C

Not only did GAW leave all their directory listings open, how embarrassing, seems they are also selling the coins in the ICO for $2 and claiming now $100 a coin. That puts the market cap at ~$100billion, so HashCoin will be worth roughly 20x Bitcoin.  

https://hashtalk.org/topic/18130/is-80-100-the-original-or-new-price-target-for-hc



*Homero is Josh's real name incase anyone didn't know.

[bitgeek]

Not only did GAW leave all their directory listings open, how embarressing, seems they are also selling the coins in the ICO for $2 and claiming now $100 a coin.

That's even more embarrassing.

*Homero is Josh's real name incase anyone didn't know.

He has 2 names and both are real.