Did GAW make deals with the pool operators? Like Clevermining and Wafflepool? It hasn't made sense to mine SCRYPT on Wafflepool in a long time, or am I missing something?
Several pool operators have confirmed that they have had no contact with GAW whatsoever, and have not seen any rise in hashrate commensurate with GAW's claimed power.
There is no evidence that the Hashlets exist in any form, or are actually mining on any pool, or any coin.
What you are buying is a contract which will pay you the equivalent rate that you would have earned if you were hashing on Wafflepool, minus maintenance fees. They may or may not actually be mining.
As the expected overall return from that contract is negative, GAW could simply take your initial money, then slowly return it to you, and still make a profit, with no actual mining required.
GAW is not taking your money and giving it back. They have invested in 3 data centers, their main office and bought a domain for $1 million. If they wanted to pay you back your own money they'd just sell fake contracts like Lunamine without the need for any facilities.
They also host actual hardware. But hashlets are not actual hardware...they are "digital," whatever that means. I have to agree with murraypaul here...I doubt there is any hardware backing these things, with the possible exception of Zen/Prime (which might have a positive expected return). It's not really a Ponzi, since I think they will be able to pay everyone (e.g. the expected return is negative). We're basically loaning them money with a negative interest rate ;-)
Just to be clear, I'm not saying that Hashlets do or don't represent actual mining.
I'm just saying there is zero evidence that they do.
They don't even actually claim that they do.
From their terms of service: