Do you think you were scammed by GAW? Tell Ars Technica

[ZiG]

which was close to a 80% return on my investment already

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 ...

[keshuker]

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.

[PEARSON1FIED]

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

[torontocoinexchange]

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.

[torontocoinexchange]

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.

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

[torontocoinexchange]

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

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

[clownius]

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

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

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

[blueminerneedsfoodbadly]

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...

[clownius]

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?

[markBG]

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.

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

[markBG]

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

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...

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-

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

[clownius]

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.

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

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.

[keshuker]

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.

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

Selling from premine: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

[Videlicet]

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.

[keshuker]

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

[Videlicet]

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.

[fonix232]

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

[keshuker]

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.

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

Actually 3290% interest

[keshuker]

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.

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

[coinGeek]

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.