I think that Reuters or Bloomberg would have been happy to pick up a story relating to Target and Amazon. Whilst I don't religiously look for bitcoin stories in these two sources, bitcoin articles generally have a fair amount of airtime as headlines on their home pages and I've never heard of any substantial deals being made in relation to any bitcoin companies, least of all GAWminers. Searching for 'gawminers' on bloomberg.com and reuters.com produces no results - seems obvious to think that if there was any truth in the story that these major retailers were involved these two main global business news sites would report on it. Indeed, if it was in any way material, both companies would have an obligation to release the information to their investors via the NYSE and from there it might get media air time... but no airtime, so nothing to see here it seems.
In general terms, the company and CEO have made some claims that smell like bullshit and if it smells like bullshit, it usually is bullshit. At the very least it is meaningless self-aggrandizement, at worst it's an attempt to misrepresent and defraud, either way, it's not the style of company that I'd be interested in doing business with.
As I've said before, I don't have any first-hand dealings with or knowledge of this company, but having seen and been caught by a couple of scams and suspicious 'business failures' ranging from BFL, TradeFortress, Bitfunder and MtGox, until this company offers substantial, verifiable and legitimate proof that it's not another ponzi or 'accident waiting to happen', then I'll be staying well away from it.
Too many people have lost too much money to take seriously any company which bullshits about deals with major retailers.
Why does this thread exist? - you can probably call it a 'bullshit detector'.
What came first, the bullshit or the thread? - obviously the bullshit came first or the thread would have nothing substantial to report.
There's other ways to get involved in bitcoin, do not throw your money away on schemes that promise the Earth and deliver nothing. You can also ignore crappy one liner rebuttals from sycophants, trolls or
gawpuppets hawking their wares, their comments are so weak they don't even present any evidence in support, so they are easily seen through as insubstantial, substandard and generally reflect badly on the retardation level of their authors.
Do your research, read every opinion and piece of information you can find, make up your own mind, but look before you leap, you'll be very glad you did.