Topic: Do you think you were scammed by GAW? Tell Ars Technica - page 3. (Read 14550 times)

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.

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 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.

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/

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.

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.

PoW, nuff said.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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

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.

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.

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?

h8 moar pl0x thx.

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.

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.

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.