It wouldn't be at all surprising if they're so close to broke that they are struggling to make payroll each month.
Did you hear something to that effect? Just wondering what prompted this comment or if I missed something in this thread somewhere.
I don't know anything that isn't public, I was just saying that it wouldn't be surprising.
They never had $100 million in funding, or anything close to it. They're obviously not spending much on development or anything else. When a company loses a number of high-level employees at the same time it's often a sign that they're in deep financial trouble.
Also, the buyback makes no sense as a long-term commitment. It would cost a lot of BTC and/or fiat, and as a one-time thing it does nothing positive for them once it's under way. It's a long-term liability with little or no long-term benefit. It does, however, make sense as an exit strategy. It props the price up temporarily, and promises cost nothing.
The things they've done lately have all been weaker than usual. Asking the HT community to come up with ideas for increasing XPY acceptance. Touting various things that cost very little, like getting added to some page of links or whatever it was. New badges! Announcements like "we're still here" that say nothing at all. It's not what you'd expect from a company with active on-going development, it is what you'd see from a company that is running on fumes.
The 200,000 XPY that moved from premine coins to cryptsy yesterday could be the sort of thing you'd see if they're scrambling for ways to raise cash. (I didn't see any more news about that. I assume if they'd sold those coins someone would have posted about it.)
Just stuff like that. A lot that's going on makes sense if they're a company that's out of cash and desperate. No proof.
I believe this is the case as well. Everyone has been pointing to their business practices from the beginning, such as them overstating mining power & speculation that they were pointing their pools to mine BTC. I believe some even speculated that customers were probably not even mining anything at all since it is just numbers on a webpage that they see, while GAW mined BTC to make the payouts. Then, shortly after, the customers cloud miners that were supposed to be future proof, upgradeable & always profitable, started paying out practically nothing. Even in the face of customer outrage, Josh refused to provide any details or proof backing up his claims. So why would anyone not expect the same secrecy surrounding the buyback program? High level staff has been leaving left & right. The forums are a ghost town, which I suspect is because staff ran shill accounts & paid mods while other team players also managed multiple accounts in order to control the conversations surrounding all things GAW, now that they are gone, the only ones left are the members who were actually dumb enough to buy into all this. Then the Paycoin launch was an absolute failure & Josh has been behaving stranger by the day. Josh has always been less than forthcoming & routinely refuses to answer the most basic questions from customers or the community at large. But lately, his posts & behavior wreak of desperation & confusion. Just look at his behavior leading up to & during BTC Miami, the debate challenge, the 30 days of transparency or his numerous incoherent forum posts.
Personally, based on what I am witnessing, along with everyone else, I believe the whole virtual, always profitable miners (hashlets?) was a ponzi scheme that did not go as planned because people figured it out sooner than Josh expected, but he managed to keep everyone on board & the company going with exxagerated promises of large Paycoin profits & maybe Josh managed to even get a small investor or two with those promises. He was using the little press he recieved, like blog posts at WSJ & throwing some pretty big names out there, like Target, Macy's & Walmart. Then when Paycoin not only fell flat, but also felt the wrath of the crypto community & was exposed as a scam, it all came crashing down. Now I think Josh is selling off mining hardware & the buyback is his last payday on the backs of the GAW faithful. This is why I think sales of used miners resuming, while sales of hashlets or whatever they are have stopped.
My only question at this point is whether the buyback is being done because his lawyers are making him do it in the hopes it will keep him out of prison, pretty much pre-preparing a defense OR if Josh is doing the buyback to get one last big payday. Either way, I believe GAW will be filing for bankruptcy at some point after the buyback program begins. In my mind, the only difference between the 2 scenarios, is if his lawyers are making him do this, perhaps the bankruptcy may be delayed while they figure out if Josh will be charged or the conclusion of his trial if he is charged. So perhaps participants in the buyback MAY get their paycoins or the USD value at the time they were deposited into escrow back as part of a plea arrangement or bankruptcy proceedings. However, I believe that if this buyback program is part of some scheme Josh cooked up in some last ditch effort to make more money, after the buyback starts, Josh will dump a shitload of XPY until it hits $0. Then he'll file for bankruptcy, leaving the GAW faithful holding the bag while he drives away in his Ferrari, laughing all the way to the bank.
Regardless, I guarantee that this buyback program is going to go horribly wrong, like everything usually does over at GAW. Just look at Josh's track record! Has Josh EVER done ANYTHING without some sort of "gotcha" attached to it? GAW hasn't managed to launch so much as a new button on the GAW website without encountering some delay followed by an unforeseen issue & lunacy by the CEO. Even Josh renaming the member badges last night on his forum was a fiasco! The event was hyped, full of drama & incoherent finger-pointing by the CEO, while the GAW faithful cheered him on & sung his praises. I can't even believe this is a real company, GAW reminds me of some shady business or cult I might see on the Simpsons or South Park.
If I had any holdings in XPY, I would wait for the next pump by one of Josh's bots, dump them for the + or - $2.50 & cut my losses. Regardless if I am
That's just my 50,000 paycoins, in other words, that's just my 2¢
