How one man road the community for $19 million on hype and PR

The story starts when a little known hardware manufacturer released a few miners onto the market.

14th of May 2014 
GAW Miners Launches Generation A Scrypt Miners

GAW Miners Launches Geeneration A miners: The Fury 1.33MH, 
The Black Widow 13 MH, The Falcon 27MH and The War Machine 54 MH

Little did they know this would be the start of one of the biggest scams in crypto that year and lead to the collapse of the company. Perhaps they did know at this time and it was a long con, but I believe in the good of people first and foremost so most likely it was an innocent business.

These where pretty revolutionary at the time and those that bought them most likely turned a profit. Some blogs started writing reviews about these devices and how they stacked up on the scene : http://tabletsandtech.com/59/gaw-vs-zeus-miners-energy-requirements/

22nd June 2014
GAW Miners Announces The Vaultbreaker - Generation J Scrypt Miners

GAW Miners Announced The Vaultbreaker 500MH and The Vaultbreaker Mini 250MH

In June things seamed to be ramping up with some announcements of upcoming hardware that would blow other hardware out the water at the time, ramping up ROI substantially.

I believe this is the first "Coming Soon" TM . .

Type hype we say from Gaw. And I believe this was the start of their downfall. They started taking in pre order money for a product that probably only existed as a phone call with the manufacturer.

The money must have either been rolling in too slowly, or waaay too fast as about two weeks later Gaw announced pre orders will get 50% more hash rate than previously advertised. . An unbelievable score! And the PR started ramping up as well. Not only was this news released on their blog but was also syndicated by the popular go to Crypto PR company and the lasted 3 or 4 days.

8th Jul 2014 - 11th Jul 2014
GAW Miners announces 50% higher hashrate for Vaultbreaker Pre-Orders!

GAW Miners announces 50% higher hashrate for Vaultbreaker Pre-Orders! bringing The Vaultbreaker to 750 MH and The Vaultbreaker Mini to 375MH!

The rest of July Gaw fell silent to the outside world. Comfortable in the money they had raised from the pre sales something big was happening behind the scenes. I believe in this time it is when the money raised stated becoming too much to handle and it would be almost impossible to deliver on the promises he had made already on production.

Now you might think this is a good problem to have but in the Crypto mining world it is a nightmare. See the more people that mine with these devices the less "shared payout" there is between those mining. I think Josh (The CEO of GAW) saw these problems or was made aware of them by his tech team and so a perfect plan was set into place.

The biggest PR push yet.

12th Aug 2014 - 25th Aug 2014
GAW Acquires $8 Million Controlling Stake in ZenMiner

GAW Acquires $8 Million Controlling Stake in ZenMiner and in celebrating gives all Zenminer cloud customers a free Hosted Fury!

This was hyped all over Crypto world and some main stream media even picked up on it. I suspect they spent a decent amount on this PR campaign as it lasted almost two weeks. Almost 6 months later we found at that this was just a blatant lie to make it seam like Gaw was liquid, large and in charge. : http://www.coindesk.com/gaw-8-million-zenminer-investment-lie/

“The '$8m deal for the purchase of ZenMiner' that allegedly occurred between myself and Josh was a total lie. I've never owned any of the many companies operated by Josh.”

So this is like building a site for a few grand and then claiming you bought it for $8 million. Thus creating an evaluation out of thin air... Just goes to show, with enough PR you can lie about anything. But at the time this was the first time most of us even heard of the guy so it was no big deal and the only though was.. Hmm. Whats this zenminer thing.

but back to the story...

Marketing 101

I have studied quite a bit on sales and one of the first things you learn is to make multiple contact with your potential clients. Not many people will buy your product or service on first interaction and so following up with mail sequences, calls, meetings or advertising is the way business is generally done. So this PR stunt was just the first move. The #introduceyourself post to the crypto community if you will.

The second contact. . .

16th August 2014
Gaw Miners introduces the Hashlet. the worlds first digital cloud miner!

GAW Miners introduces the Hashlet. The worlds first digital cloud miner!

Now that I look at the history it makes sense that they had this all lined up and perfectly planned as things moved rapidly. Gaw announced the first cloud miner and then decided to do the old switcheroo .. And this wouldn't be the last time the Gaw Shuffle was danced around in the ballroom we call #life. . .

19th Aug 2014 - 11th Sep 2014
CEO Josh Garza announces free 1:1 conversion of old hosted hardware!

announce that we will offer a 1:1 trade in ratio on all previously purchased hardware in the past. Your loyalty should be rewarded, and this is a way of doing that! 

Yes thats right. The pre orders you all paid for.. You can have some cloud miners instead. It will save you time, electricity, shippping, taxes . And be the best ROI by far.

16th August 2014
Gaw Miners introduces the Hashlet. the worlds first digital cloud miner!

The hype was in full swing now with articles coming out about how they crashed their payment processors to how you will ROI in less than a few months and make endless money into the future with a ever lasting miner.

Well ain't that dandy. Retirement is coming boys I can feel it. I feel silly for being suckered by this, it seamed so "legit". A worlds first and pics to prove the mining facility.. . Or some of it....

I went all in with about 10BTC ~ $4000 .. All of my savings at the time.

Now the story for me gets a bit hazy here as more hashlets where born and various techniques where introduced to keep everyone "re investing" into more hashlets but after a month or two I had about 100 or something "never expiring" "immortal" "super sayan" hashlets that where worth around $50 each on their internal exchange.

I had withdrawn about 4 BTC of the amount I initially invested as well over this time frame. During this time everything was as good as it could be. With regular payments my initial investment would be paid off by the December holidays and I would be able to enjoy my Summer in Cape Town with some extra spending money in the pocket.

Then another switcheroo came. . .

14th October 2014
HashBase Approaches

A whole new platform called HashBase will be be absorbing the entire ZenCloud Platform and it will change the world. Only Hashlet Primes will be able to access it at first.

Hmm... Something is fishy here. Why a new platform? Why not integrate the functionality into the zen cloud site. This is when a lot started running for the hills and I also managed to sell a few more primes cashing out another 6 BTC, the price of BTC had gone down considerably in this time frame if I recall so I did not quite get my dollar value out even though I was one of the few lucky enough to cash out my initial #investment.

3rd Nov 2014 - 4th Nov 2014
Introducing HashCoin

6 months ago, we announced Project Prime - our plan to completely revolutionize mining. Tonight, we reveal next steps, code-named HashCoin. We are introducing the smartest, fastest cryptocurrency in the world. It carries on the original spirit of bitcoin while making the advancements necessary to produce the most stable, widely-adopted, and fastest cryptocurrency ever conceived. It launches with more investor backing and merchant support than any other cryptocoin in history and our customers get special privilege to the ICO.

Interesting.. Lets do this!

So unfortunately Hash coin was not just marijuana hash pressed into coins. If It where I would have been much more well off today or at least a lot more baked.

This is end of Part 1. .

Most of you familiar with the story know what happened next (All in all The SEC said that Garza and GAW earned roughly $19 million in revenue from the scheme and that the cloud mining changed into mining a promise coin that failed.. ) But upvote if you want to learn more about how the story ended for me..

And this how I know there is no scam here. I haven't invested a cent yet reap daily rewards for my contribution.

Thanks Steem. Steem on.