Topic: GAW Miners (Scrypt/SHA256 miners and Hashlet cloud) independent feedback thread (Read 82222 times)

Actually I wanted to open this thread by myself, then I found this, so I post here:

How did I come to GAW:
They stated that they will give discount for KNC's Titan buyers, they even replied me answering that this is true.
Knowing that KNC case will take time, this was probably from beginn on a marketing trick. I decided to find out what GAW is and how they work.

My first experience:
First I wanted to test how their system works. I bought from every hashlet type min. ammount. After first week the result was almost the half of that what I do solo. So it was not that profitable like mining with your hardware, especially because the maintenance and power costs are at least 8 times higher than I pay. Anyway, they were profitable enough to invest and I bought more hashlets from GAW (at this time their market on ZenCloud was not available). After 2 months I decided to invest another € 1000 in GAW. But in that time their market on ZenCloud opened.Like on every exchange, I waited 3-4 days after the launch to get dumped prices. During all this time we have build up a small company, my part was to find partners and buy/rent hashing power. There was no company that delivered their product in time that would satisfy me. Actually KNC was most promising but they turned out to be criminal company which stole millions of dollars from their customers to invest into their cloud mining. Good that i did not trust any of these companies and did not order more than 1 piece. Back to GAW.

Game started:
I dropped in € 1000 and bought for that Zens and Primes
As GAW was very promising, some of my investors wanted to try GAW with more investment. I did not approve this because 2 months of testing is not enough and this company is very young. At the same time it seemed to me that the whole GAW team is very young, too young for dealing with big money.

At this time I opened second account, as this one was my test account (which GAW knows since first communication with me). That means that this account was only for demonstration to potential customers. Some time later, one of my partners wanted to see how everything works. I started showing him and transfered by mistake all  BTC (€ 4000) to my test account. After BTC has arrived, my partner told me "Lets see how their support is working, ask them to move hashlets to to new account. This should be possible, especially if we invest 4x more in worth". So I asked their support to do this, more than 1 time, they always denied it. But they were more than once suggesting to do this over their market. I did not want to do this as their Market was buggy:

1. You could not see amount of hashrate that you sell
2. you could not see price/mh
3. You do not see what you sell on any windows that asking you too agree.

So actually you agree to sell uknown amount of Mh for price of $ 19/Mh for $ 19. So how many did you really agree to sell? This is uncompleted code which should never be applied in productive system as it's untested. This shows actually the real age of GAW team. Programers can make mistakes, but they are not responsible for a decision if the system is ready to be productive or not. I have screenshots and every proof of what happened.

I decided to try this buggy system out, GAW team told me to do this and if something goes wrong I thought GAW support will solve it. On other side I can see how the process is and if selling works at all. I splitted my Zen hashlets so I had 1Mh for selling. Selling process was very buggy.

Knowing this bugs I realized how easy someone can sell X Mh for price of 1. I could not believe, but that happened to some users. What did GAW do? Nothing . Probably their bots bought these amounts and they made profit of it.

After selling 5 of my zens it happened to me, I sold 15 Zens for the price of 1. I realized it in the same moment as I clicked to agree sale of unknown amount and probably less than 1 second later cancelation was not possible, for sure bot. As GAW support did not want to refund anything or give any information about the owner, I assume their bot has bought it.

As their support was very slow (no answer after more than 1 hour), I oppened a thread at hashtalk. It was closed and I was banned without any notification why ban was activated and who did it (my userprofile there).

Support took almost 1 month to reply that I was banned by users . This really made me laugh and ask myself who am I really doing business with, bunch of kids maybe??? Until now I do not understand:

1. Hashtalk community is hyper active blindfolded supporter of GAW, which is the ground for their business.
2. They want to drive their forum by active users and community should help to decide which threads are bad, good, ... who to ban by lowering users reputation....
3. There is no official support for hashtalk.
Before you ask why, here is one of many reasons: They took 1 month to tell me that my user account was banned by users of hashtalk. First they claimed that their is for sure a reason for my ban. They unlocked my account again. Same day my account was locked again. Until now GAW support did not reply anything regarding second ban. But here is a part of their last answer (by Amanda):

What can I say, this is official statement that they deny to give me support. That's a second breach. I could go to the court and I would win this case 100%. As the behavier for me was not acceptable, I told them even that they should refund me for my loss or I will go to the court. So thats a second part of Amanda's answer to me:

That means that GAW told me public that we can not find a solution and I should go to the court to get my fund back. But actually they told me more than that, that's to ban my account (probably without refund) if I try to contact them again regarding a solution for this problem. Very sad, from this point GAW turned to me to scam companies, even if many made profits, they do not act legally in some cases and there shouldn't be any! That's the biggest problem for me. I could not advice anyone to make deal with them, even if the possibility is big, I can't trust go.

Making 1+1 from my point of view:

1. I came because they promissed me discount for the same amount which was spent on KNC's miner. However, I did not get any discount, it happened otherwise, GAW became 50% of my account , good business for me, isn't it .

2. I lost the half of accounts value because their system was not in productive state and all agreements for buy/sell do not have any legal power, as their is no information about the deal. Bad on this is that I was by far not the first and by far not the last who lost money this way and we should keep in mind that there were users that lost 100s of Primes (1 prime was ~ $ 50). GAW Support adviced me to use their system, later they told me it's my fault and they do not have anything to do with that. Asking in forum why this is possible and why GAW does not make anything against this brought me probably a ban. GAW can still beat it because it's GAWsome , worst is that they shut your mouth by denying support, possibility to ban your account and letting some kiddies block your account on their forum which is in my eyes a part of a bought product. This point remembers me somehow on KNC's way in giving support.

3. I still do not know why my account on their forum is banned

4. GAW support does not give me any support more, they closed all my tickets but they are all unresolved. I have a feeling that they will ban my account (like Amanda promissed) if I ask for any support regarding any question. At this point I ask myself what for is it called customer support?

5. The only possibility I have is to write them letters. Support will ban me if contact them, on Hashtalk I am already banned. Yeah, not to forget Twitter (which actually is not a part of a product, so I see no reason for opening account on Twitter to ask for support on Zen). I will not open Twitter account to contact Josh directly, I assume/hope he knows what's going on in his company and I am sure that he knows about my case and about decisions of his employees like Amanda.

There are still so many other points which I would like to write, but I do not have time, so I will go over to the most interesting question, profits .

Profits:
Even with my lost 15 Zens, I invested over € 5000 in Hashlets. I can not imagine that there is someone outside who did not ROI (except these who lost their investment through buggy market on ZenCloud), who entered 3-4 weeks before XPY launch and converted their Hashlets into stakers, they have made for sure at least 2-3xROI. ROI for is actually a moment where you really pay you out. Even these who dumped their coins for $ 4- $5 made ROI in less than a month, that's really amazing.
Most important point, profit is the only advantage GAW has over all other cloud mining services. Actually, they are the only one who made such profit, GAW investors made 2-3 ROI in less than a month, I can't remember anything that is comparable to this, especially at the time where BTC goes down and most Altcoins are unprofitable to mine.

How did I pay me out:
I got lucky and sold XPY in worth of my investment for ~ $ 14 and during 2 up and downs I got back my XPY and ROI. I also bought additional stakers to place my XPY. Even with this investment, I still ROI.

Final review:
GAW investment was a hard but very profitable for me. I still can't advice it to anyone for bigger investment as there are so many things that go wrong. If you invest in GAW you can expect profits, but my experience proved me that you can loose them all in a second as long as all other make 2-3 ROI and probably you will get banned asking for support until you get it.
Their support is that slow, that it's useless for the speed of how things in cryptoworld develop. Like their promissed discount for KNC customers, even if they give it now to me, that's already another type of investment into another product in completly another market situation. I adviced them in forum and in tickets that they should hire more people for support, as this can have serious negative effect on a company.

GAW Support:
It's useless as long as they deny to make customer support, for me it looks more like internal management than support.

GAW/Paybase community:
In my eyes it's a mickey mouse community, like children that scream when they see cartoons on TV. If Hashtalk can't take constructive critics, then this will be used against then, it's physics. I just can't say anything positive about a community which bans you if you make constructive critics or report bugs. So that's very important point, especially security point. This is world for cryptographers in first line and making donkey of them is not the best way to get worldwide community support, maybe I am wrong, but that's my opinion. You can reflect this on dumps on markets.

Some positive words about their support:
I do not want to forget also some positive about GAW support, I am not joking , they have some competent people which I do not want to make bad when I write about a horrible support.
First of all I would thank Eric from GAW support, he replied my tickets and he contacted their manager couple of times regarding my issue. I can't say I did not get support from Eric, he gave good support and here is for example one of his answers where I feel like a customer not like Amandas answer where customers feel like a trash:


Today I read that GAW_CEO is claiming that many are dumping their coins and he warned them. I know Josh and Hashtalk community do not post or come to bitcointalk, but Josh if you read this, answer me. I asked you some questions in my tickets, you did not reply any of them. You can write me a PM or to my email registered on ZenCloud if you want to discuss my issues with GAW.

Hope my report will help communtiy to make right decision and on other side GAW can maybe see that there are some very important points which have to redesigned so everybody can be happy.

I wish you all best in 2015.

dudes not a drug addict he's a jesus freak, which in my opinion is far scarier

OK i put 3 THS on the official paycoin pool at launch. i got zero coins. yes the blockchain got stuck but the first 266 blocks paid out, friends of mine on mierpools got paid. I want to know where my coins are at?

And who are you to call people drug addicts and scammers? Another lunatic throwing baseless insults, like we haven't had enough of that.

Hey, nice to see you again. Yes, I remember better times and wish those times didn't get ruined. However, after everything I have seen and experienced first hand, I have my opinions and conclusions that cannot be ignored or forgotten. That doesn't mean I have any ill feelings towards you or many of the others I enjoyed spending time with. I welcome open debate and honesty any time. Thanks for saying hi!  

Take care,
Scott

The scam is ending soon.

Drug addict GAW_CEO knew very well that the 5 PHs he got will never be enough to extend the ponzi ride. All payments have gone down, which is in line with what happens with every ponzi. The last thing he wants is people selling at a loss on the GAW market and cashing out, leaving him high and dry.

What disgusts me is they say they have 25,000 new users every month, seriously who you know who has not heard of or is into bitocin has joined?

So he invented the Paycoin scam and unfortunately he is so high on drugs that he believes his own lie, that this is on CNN and the likes, it is called Adverticle and I can have a dogs show if I pay the right money, especially if it is other people's money you know, like $1M on BTC.com, clearly money has no value with them.

So what is the latest in the scam: the Hashlet ponzi cannot survive anymore so everyone will be upgrading to the new ponzi called HashStaker, where all the previous hashlets which never existed anyway will become the new HashStaker.

The HashStaker will be expensive meaning you will lose some money when you convert from the solo miners to the HashStaker, but it is either that or ever dwindling returns of 0.0000001 BTC / MHs / day, which means you will get $1 every 3 years.

So the lie continues and GAW_CEO is making more money.

@KC6TTR I am bummed you got banned from HT…I enjoyed reading your posts. I always figured you for one of the smart ones and someone I could learn from. I am also kinda bummed to find you here with the hate. Obviously I do not frequent this forum…curiosity got to me and I instantly recognized your screen name and remembered chatting with you about that liquid cooling stuff you where researching. Very cool stuff BTW (no pun )

I have no wish to be disrespectful so please don't take my post in that regard. I do disagree with your position about GAW and we should leave it at that. It was not even my intention to post here at all But I remembered having some good conversations with you and I felt compelled to post to you. I will not try to persuade you from your opinion but if I may I would like to leave you with a little saying I like to use "forgiveness is not for the person being forgiven" Don't be bitter bro, for you, not for any one else…best of luck to you and I hope your life is like a loaf of Italian…long and full of dough 

Is that a GAW endorsement in your sig???…EPIC!

GAWminers and Hash/Paycoin looks like a money grab by Stewart Fraser (owner of GAWireless) who has been bankrolling this endeavour and now Cantor Fitzgerald is going to get in on the deal by being the first round investors to try to grab money from private ICO $10 buyers and the public rubes at $20/coin.

That is good to know, even if it would be better if the company went on record via their own platform to announce it like they do with other moderate size business dealings.

No actually Bitmain confirmed from their official account.

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.9378239

No official BITMAIN email or public statement has been made about any claimed 5PH purchase. Anyone can create a Bitmain account on the HT forums and say anything.

The pictures referenced are not new or representative of the power GAW/Zen would need to facilitate even a fraction of what GAW/Zen is claiming.

Believe whatever you want, just don't say you were never warned.

It wasn't 1 PH but 5.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=827552.20

You can also find the photos of their scrypt miners, some old ones are in the linked thread.
They are real

There are arguments both ways to say that GAW is a ponzi. They do have some level of proof that they have recently purchased over 1 PH/s from bitmantech however it is less clear that their scrypt miners are "real"

Plus the fact that they do not allow contract holders to point their mining power to pools of their choice is less then ideal

Sadly it's really hard to talk about GAW on this forum. I've seen users shouted down or called shills for giving positive reviews and there's a group of people who made a habit of coming here every day and leaving one or 2 flame posts with various invectives. I first came here to ask about hosted miners months ago and some of these posters were already here writing the same things they are now. The whole situation is unfair and a bit awkward.
My advise to you, don't even try going through the feedback. There are at least 2 spam/flame posts for each meaningful one. Find a roi tracking thread, where people compare payouts and calculate if the contract is profitable. My investment turned out to be, but it was over 3 months ago and the payouts have gone down since then.

The only sure thing these days is holding your crypto (BTC, LTC, Doge) and letting its long term growth earn you the $$.

In my opinion, GAW/Zen is likely a long term SCAM. In the end, I truly believe they will either bail on their customers, like has already been demonstrated with the ZenController Pi OS, or the regulators will shut them down. The evidence is there in plain sight, myself and others have submitted our complaints to the proper authorities, and I think the end appears to be coming sooner rather later. So, it is what it is.

People's focus right now should be getting the word out and at least make an attempt to save a few of these newcomers from being sucked in to the GAW/Zen hype.

Scott

I've not decided, and don't need to. I'm not looking to get into mining in any way. I was worried about my friend buying a contract and wanted to know if they were as dodgy as they sounded.

It's too late - he already bought it - so I guess time will tell.

No I am not trying to defend the otherside. They have issues however dont believe everything you see here also. For a few months it was great it may return again. Everything in the industry goes up and down. It could be just a down time for them. Reading your comments it looks like you have already decided against them so why bother asking anything.

If you're trying to present the other side of the coin, you're not making it look very good!

Payouts suck right now, and they're gambling their future on the success of yet another altcoin that nobody will care about?


So it's not "always profitable", it's "profitable as long as we are profitable, which is as long as we can keep attracting new customers to subsidize the unrealistic deal we made with old customers in which we promised to pay for their power bills forever"?

Basically I have a problem with anyone guaranteeing eternal profits for a single up-front payment, especially when said profits depend on factors outside their control, such as the global network difficulty, advances in technology, and power costs.


Fair enough. It's bad for Bitcoin when the first contact new people have with it is to get suckered into buying a mining contract that never pays for itself. But I can see why "kids and noobs" would make a good target market.

That's why I suggested to take a look at hashtalk. I'm sure dooglus can make up his own mind if he decides to do that.