Topic: GAW / Josh Garza discussion Paycoin XPY xpy.io ION ionomy. ALWAYS MAKE MONEY :) - page 2443. (Read 3377891 times)

Does a "Digital Cloud Miner (DCM)" fall under the definition?  From what I can tell the product is marketed as miner rental, not a security.  I have an "investment" in CoinTerra and BFL in that I own and operate their hardware, I don't see the wording here implying this is anything other than hardware rental (even if it might be rental of a rental).

Anywho, I must sleep, I'm off for a bit.

It's considered a security.

Securities Act of 1933:



http://www.gawminers.com/pages/hashlet/

I don't believe even by SEC definitions that Hashlets are securities.

Edit: I haven't yet researched that definition either, but that will be for tomorrow, it is 4:30am here, and I'm pretty wiped.  I'll be eager to look at it tomorrow if I have time during/after work.

While open to interpretation due to the nature of crypto, I don't see any evidence that GAW has ever sold any securities.

What about selling unregistered securities?

Well to put my cards on the table right off:
1: I am heavily invested in GAW miners Hashlets
2: I have been banned from hashtalk (for pointing out that one of their largest customers was engaging in what I believe to an illeagal acitvity on their site)

I think Garza has some very good and innovative ideas about moving crypto to the mainstream. He is young and makes some rookie blunders. His ego and temper are both a bit larger than average.
I have to admire his marketing genius. Say what you want, but he has changed the rules on his customers and instead of complaining they (by and large) are thanking him for the opportunity.
Now THAT is marketing.
I have yet to see any evidence of any securities violations, and I have spent nearly my entire career in the investment industry.
In my opinion hashlets and the new paycoin have a somewhat better than 50/50 chance of actually working.
I believe it largely depends on enough advertising and media coverage to get non-early adopters and non-technically minded people interested enough to give it a try.
In six months all of the haranguing and teeth gnashing will be moot.

Just my 2 Satoshis.

No they haven't. They resold dropshipped stuff.

It literally costed them $0 in capital. You buy something from GAW's store, Zeus ships it to them. They didn't buy hardware from Zeus, they just resold it getting a % of every sale with their own branded miners.


Read their terms of service first. They explicitly state that their hardware doesn't cover their miners and they 'may not' be mining. A 'may not' is always a negative inference.

@$username:

If he fails to back up his claims, he is commiting fraud and illegal profiteering on a mass scale.  It is unethical to mislead with false implications, it is illegal to mislead with explicitly false claims.

Edit:

@jimmothy:

I thought they had been in business longer than that ... when did Gridseeds come out?  I remember considering getting LTC miners from them a long while back, has it only been half a year?  I suppose I thought they were around when I could still use a BFL Single to mine ... I forget they are a lot more recent.

I'm starting to see more holes than I did before, but I'm also half asleep.  I'm not saying that the SEC is fast at handling things, but I can see enough of the tens of thousand customers starting civil or criminal lawsuits.

I wouldn't consider ~6 months "quite a while".


I have to disagree.

The SEC is not exactly known for their lightning paced scam busting.

It took them ~2 years to finally charge Trendon Shavers for his 700,000 btc ponzi scheme, and ~2 years to charge Erik Voorhees for selling unregistered securities.

There is no doubt that GAW is selling unregistered securities (via hashlets) and they are surely breaking SEC/FinCEN regulations with hashcoin.

If/when they collapse they will have plenty of time to pack up their bags/stacks of cash and move to their newly bought mansion on some remote tropical island.

Unethical != illegal.

GAW isn't going to run away and take your coins. You're just not going to earn a profit, except for token profits to get people to continue investing. See: ZenPool.

Great explanation, but I guarantee few (even here) understand the concept of fractional reserve well enough to realize fiat money literally is created and destroyed from nothing in loans and repaid debts.

While true for stocks in fiat money, note that crypto is not a zero sum game either, but for different reasons.

No, you don't get it.  By buying or selling, the price has changed.   The value of a company is the market cap that is simply (price * shares that exist).    In fact it is often impossible to do a transaction without changing the price.   The price changes for every share in existence.   It doesn't matter if you think it is an illusion, that is all the money really is.   However, everyone that holds shares of the stock traded see a new value.   It isn't a zero sum game.  

Simple example.  I left my old company with about 1000 shares of stock in a 401k, it was worth less than $20,000 USD.    Every quarter that stock pays dividends and they used to be in the 10's of dollars, now they are in the hundreds of dollars.   Those dividends are reinvested in the stock providing more shares.   Now I have a bunch more shares and last week the market value of my shares was $68,000.   I could sell those, collect my $68,000 and that transaction would barely reduce the value of everyone else shares only for a few seconds and there is a lot of demand for the stock.    So where did the $48,000 USD come from if it is a zero sum game?   You can't explain that with your logic.  That money has simply just been created by the stock market.   Money isn't created/destroyed by printing paper, it is created/destroyed by markets and things like fractional reserve lending.   (I.E. Banks create money by lending out money they don't have and people destroy some of that money by paying of debt.)  

There is a very simple concept here that many don't get and it is the reason why we need something like bitcoin.    Fiat currency is just numbers, the money in your bank account is just numbers and the money in your paychecks is just numbers.   It only has value because we believe a government that it has value.   Stock markets change the numbers and the governments of the world back up those numbers and say they have value.  

There are zero sum games, stocks markets aren't one of them.

@jimmothy

The thing is GAW has been a legit business in mining equipment for quite a while, and the Garza won't get a slap on his wrist if this blows up in his face.

Either he isn't so much a terrible liar as he is pompous, or he and I are both soon to be disappointed, but him more than I.

Edit: I honestly had to look up the Neo & Bee bit.  I don't think that in the U.S. things will fall apart as nicely around the Garza as they did around Brewster.  (I am from the U.S. myself, as a disclaimer.)  If he has committed fraud of any kind, at the scale it would have to be at this point, he would likely be in a thousand times deeper shit than Brewster, and won't be able to just jump to the UK until it dies down.  Millions of dollars in fraud will grab the attention of SEC bloodhounds before he could disappear.

Who found out the Cantor Fitzgerald connection in the old thread? Sorry, I'm too lazy to look it up.

Well, congratulations, it's confirmed:

https://twitter.com/gawceo/status/534544726402564096

I think this sort of confirms my suspicion that the only real feature is the promise of success/profit.


You would be surprised at the amount of effort some people are willing to put in to bullshitting in order to pull off a good scam.

A good example would be Danny Brewster, the CEO of Neobee.

They had 6 months of nothing but good news/updates and everything seemed fine up until launch. They even had support from many trusted community members like Andreas Antonopoulos.

At the time of launch they had a brick and mortar store, something like a dozen full time employees, a local university signed up to use their service, and the entire country of Cyprus knew about them due to aggressive marketing.

Everything seemed to be going smoothly until one day the CEO disappeared along with all the money. He did not hide his identity and even moved back to the UK if I'm not mistaken. After the scamming took place it was discovered that he's had a history of failed businesses.

To me this looks like history repeating itself.

I would not mind a bit more transparency from GAW, and I think what Zues is doing is noble.

But as suchmoon and dyask have stated, there are likely business dealings still in the dark, because of the nature of what GAW is doing on a business to business scale.

Oh, look, I can write a comment that isn't a book!

@jimmothy:

For the same reason I'm an atheist, I don't use public restrooms if possible, and I think rock is better than rap.  It's an opinion I've developed from the evidence I've seen.

I can't deny that popping in $2 per coin alone would be a very great way to make a quick 900%, and I would guess that there will be a lot of dump come day 1.  I am not saying I have any sort of definitive proof that this will go well, nor that I tossed my life savings at it.  I do think Josh whatever-his-name-is Garza is an egocentric prick, but I don't think he's an idiot, and it seems most businessman that succeed are egocentric pricks anyhow.  He obviously has enough lawyers to tell him what laws he might or might not be breaking, and I think he's got at least a decent bit of business sense, GAW has been fairly successful thus far.

I do think that if a larger name investor might be in the game though, they would probably have it in their own best interest to keep their stake and drive up value of the coin they accept by accepting it as a merchant, especially if it is something along the lines of a large e-merchant.  (I doubt eBay or amazon or paypal, which hype at HT presumes.)  I think that the fact that GAW is already a fairly large company provides a decent amount of leverage to get possibly other online merchant portal investors on board with them, if not at least other merchants and investors.  He certainly has said enough that the investors must either be fairly open with the details or very pissed off at him now, but I think that there isn't enough to discredit him.

This of course assumes he isn't an idiot, because if things fall through and he doesn't back up some of his claims, he is in deeper shit than he can wade through.

Either way, if I play it smart I probably make either a clean getaway while others ride the hype train, or I will make a decent profit and be invested in an upcoming coin that more retailers might get behind.  Certainly its not the greatest white-paper, but I imagine that there are still a number of things not mentioned in it that might attract investors.  That said, if GAW collapses tomorrow, I wouldn't be surprised either.  Even though Josh's tongue is loose, I just don't get the vibe that it is all total BS, so I see opportunity in it.

I cannot stand the Garza for the life of me, if I see :grinning: one more time I might puke, but I don't see "the red flags" in the same light you do I guess.  He has leaked more information than I would expect, but I do think that marketing stunts are part of business.  It strikes me as far fetched for the company to go so far if it is all smoke and mirrors, and I haven't heard anything about GAW employees or associates jumping ship.  I can't say I believe in the company 100% either, I can't stand their spokesperson, I just think it is worth the risk to put my money where my mouth is in this case.

Looks like a lot of the industry hardware players are joining forces and taking a stance as well. Even if I am not a huge fan of Zeus, I applaud their latest partnership with Gridseed and the message they are all trying to send.

Scott-

man i tell you when i seen the whole picture of the cycles of hashcoin i though it was something else. When my 8 year old seen it she was like look daddy they teaching you how to do magic tricks like in vegas. I dont know what part is more sad / funny lol but oh well  BUT i will gladly like to be proved wrong for the sake of all those people

There could easily be a contract in place that limits when they can sell.   If the dump they would then be in beach of the contract.   This kind of contract is common in business.   Something like you can buy at $2/coin but you can't sell for at least 180 days.     This is just speculation but I would be surprised if something like that existed.