...I have done a ton of research and privately investigated GAW, H Josh Garza and know associates. IPO 1 was very expensive and you need to do your homework to assess the risk. His current holdings, company, and patents offers an assets to offset risk I am asked to take. After reverse engineering his plans, I have a really good picture and did invest. I do not expect 5 fold return, but a very steady dividend from the mining operation. Price of $XPY is irrelevant.
It sounds like you are talking about an investment in GAW stock, rather than buying Hashlets, XPY in ICO and/or Hashtakers. You are referring to IPO but do you really mean private offering because there was no IPO...
The risk on investment in GAW stock would be much lower versus investing in XPY coins or Hashlets. I could see an investor looking at GAW and making an investment especially with control, audit and diligence rights usually associated with private placements. What is crazy is making an investment in the coin XPY wihtout any control, audit or diligence. The average BTC'er doesn't have any ability to get at GAW's assets, patents, or home addresses to sue. XPY is a flashpan scam box until proven otherwise at least to the public. Investing in GAW's mining operation may make sense - its why I initially bought hashlets under the false pretense that I was investing in GAW's mining (turned out to be a lie though); investing in XPY does not make sense.
BTC lacks leadership and an entrepreneur with assets, Mr Garza believes he can do better.
History to date has shown otherwise. In your due diligence, I hope you looked at the historical pattern. If you did not, here is a quick summary of my experience:
(1) May 2014 GAW announced hosted mining. You can buy scrypt miners from GAW and have them activated and hashing in 24 hours. I buy a bunch of miners between May and July. Repeated problems exist with network, power resulting in outtages. Miners are not activated timely. No response to support tickets.
(2) May-June 2014 repeated problems result in some people complaining on bitcointalk about hosting issues. Posts are deleted by Josh and Josh PM's asking me not to post with problems and promises compensation/payoff to keep my issues with GAW private. Compensation paid in form of GAW loyalty points and agreement to provde me with "Founder" privileges including free hosting for life. Founder privileges never granted. All of this recorded in PMs I still have.
(3) July-August problems with hosting continue, on and off again. Promised updates to hosting platform (to expand compatibility with pools that do not work with GAw hosting, eliminate power outtages, etc.) and expand reporting so that problems can be isolated and fixed, never materialize.
(4) August 2014 GAW announces beta program to move VIP customers over to Zenminer (still hosted) which is described as an entirely new DC wiht power and network issues all worked out. Pools limited, but promise that pools will be expanded once out of beta program. I move all of my miners over with the press of a button. Miraculously (note: sarcasm), (1) the miners are moved virtually instantaneously despite fact that moving a physical miner would have required at least 1 day; and (2) after moving, the miners exhibit unprecedented (read: impossible and not real) 100% uptime and nearly 0% variation from stated hash rates.
(5) I am skipping the whole mess with Zeus, as well as the Vaultbreaker mess since I was not a part of that... but its part of the pattern of making out promises to deliver what GAW cannot possibly deliver.
(6) Instead of moving Zenminer out of beta and expanding the hosting program as promised, only a few weeks later GAW/Josh announces the Hashlet as "always profitable," "maintenance fees that reduce over time" and describes a grandiose plan where hashlet owners will get a piece of GAW's massive mining operation in exchange for converting the hosted miners to hashlets.
(7) Weeks after converting to hashlets, Josh reveals that his zenpool really isn't mining (or at least not 1:1) and that profits come from a variety of other sources - making hashlets clearly an illegal unregistered security (at best) as discussed previously here. Zenpool profits crash after only a few weeks (making it very likely that such profits never existed and were just loss leaders to get everyone to convert their hosted miners).
(
After duping everyone to convert their hosted miners and buy new Prime Hashlets, zenpool returns (which by his own later admission are based on some mysterious profits from coin ICOs and rentals that Josh unilaterally elects to assign to zenpool) crash and Josh's promises to bring back zenpool profits are never fulfilled. No explanation is given other than a failure to secure rentals for GAW's rigs (which makes no economic sense anyway). Hashlet maintenance stays at higher than market rates making all hashlets virtually unprofitable. (9) After several weeks of hashlet sales, it becomes clear that GAW is selling WAY more hashpower than could possibly exist in Scrypt mining. GAW refuses to respond to allegations that it is a ponzi scheme, and offers no explanation for the obvious impossibility of having more scrypt hashpower sold than exists on the network. Much later (only a few weeks ago), the explanation becomes that GAW was never really providing Scrypt mining but instead was always hashing away with SHA256 and paying the equivalent in mining from its SHA256 mining profits. Aside from the fact that this is obviously a post-hoc grasp at straws (e.g., GAW could have just said that was what they were doing back in September, if it were true back then, and provided proof back then of its hashpower), it was a huge misrepresentation (at best) to sell hashlets as "scrypt" hashpower.
(10) Josh had promised that Prime Hashlets (converted from hosted miners and bough in initial offering for 16 per mhs) would be salable in an open market. Although the market for other miners opened, GAW allegedly was unable to get the market for Primes working for several weeks. Private sales of Prime Hashlets were common far below the $49 "market price" that GAW was trying to establish with its new sales. GAW then claims for "security" reasons that private sales are banned leaving Prime Hashlet owners with no way out. This ensured that anyone purchasing Primes would pay $49 from GAW or its resellers rather than $25 on the private market though it was marketed as a move to improve security.
(11) On the day (the hour!) that GAW finally agrees to allow Prime Hashlet sales on the market, there are mysterious hackers who eventually cause a shutdown of the market and a freeze on BTC withdrawals.
(12) Since the day that GAW began to allow Prime owners to cash out via the market and/or via offers to repurchase the Prime Hashlets, GAW has experienced mysterious security issues that have caused freezes in the ability to withdraw BTC.
(13) GAW claims to stop selling Primes, but later (as I predicted) resellers are able to sell Primes and GAW recently admitted that it has sold Primes from "stock" (realize that this is a joke since there is no stock of a virtual miner) on the market quietly.
(14) GAW announces new Paycoin/Paybase scheme. Promises relating to profitability improvements on zenpool and reduction in maintenance fees for hashlets suddenly forgotten... but its all okay because you can just upgrade to a Hashtaker!
(15) Problems plague almost every major update of the virtual hashlets. Paycoin crashes on its first release and has to be hardforked. A bug that cannot be fixed without hardforking exists because difficulty adjustments are made based on only 2 past adjustment periods rather than weeks as in Bitcoin resulting in wild difficulty adjustment swings that may yet prove to make Paycoin too unstable for large scale use (without a hardfork to resolve the bug). Promised features like hyperflex and wallet based staking are not present (requiring another hardfork to fix).
I really wanted to believe in Josh. He is a fantastic salesman. But every time I start to have any hope that Paycoin could be a success, I look back over this history and that cures me. I do not know if Josh is just overambitious and prone to massive overpromising, or if he is really a bad apple. Time and likely litigation will tell the truth. I doubt any succesful business could be built on such a muddy foundation however.
