Beware! PiNeverEnds has stopped paying! Do not invest there!

Hi all! First of all I just want to say that due to a general lack of news stories today I’ve decided to swap things around a bit on my blog. No news is good news in this sense by the way, as all the programs on my monitor are in good paying status and nothing you need worry yourselves about to report there. However I thought it might be more beneficial (both for myself, the readers, the investors, and the admin) if I delayed the review that I promised you last night until tomorrow. But don’t worry, I still have something that might be of interest to you today. In recent weeks one of the more original new projects starting up has been PiNeverEnds. That’s a sort of mathematically themed HYIP that makes various plays on the Greek number/letter Pi, or 3.14. Plans are unusual in the sense that PiNeverEnds is one of the few programs on the net to offer such a combination of short and long term plans. These include 3.14% for 20 business days (principal back), 0%-9% variable interest for 314 days (credited on business days only), 136% after 7 days, and 264% after 31 days. Before we hear from the admin I’ll just remind you that if you like what he has to say and want more information then PiNeverEnds was first reviewed on MNO here:

“1. Hi Admin, please introduce yourself to the readers of MNO and tell us please about your own involvement in PiNeverEnds. What is your role in the day to day running of the program? I don’t usually ask this, but some readers might be curious as to the origins of the name you’ve opted to work under. Explain what it means.

Paul, thanks for the opportunity of this interview and for all your support of our program thus far.

You know, admins are people too, and PiNeverEnds is a very small part of who I am. I’m a father of three, a 1-year old boy (who tore around the fish section of Petsmart last night with his arm extended like a divining rod, pointing and screaming indiscriminately at everything that wiggled a fin), a 5-year old girl who has this admin wrapped around her finger, and a 15-year old stepson, who is a truly remarkable big brother to them both. I’m writing this in an oddly quiet house, as the wife has taken our 5-year old to Disneyland for her birthday WITHOUT me.

In PiNeverEnds, I’m the chief cook and bottle washer. You’ll often hear me refer to “we” or “us”, but for the time being you can think of that in a sort of “royal we” sense. Plus, it’s not about me, so I hate to be I, I, I all the time.

This program was originally going to be named “314 Days of Pi” and the phrase “PiNeverEnds” came out of the copy I was writing for the site. I thought it was the perfect metaphor for program theme that wasn’t based on deception like nearly all the rest of them are, so I snatched up a new domain. The name I go by, Greka Letero, is thematic as well, being Esperanto for “Greek Letter”. (That’s right, this program is so cutting edge it uses languages most people haven’t even HEARD of! Some day we’ll be able to say that we were using Esperanto before Esperanto was cool.)

2. I can see you’re something of an amateur mathematician, then. Can you give us some background information on PiNeverEnds and how/why you came up with the concept behind it? How many others are involved with the program or are you operating alone? How long have you been online?

I always liked the idea of doing a mathematically driven site. My first plan was to do a Fibonacci sequence site called Fibonacc.io. The Fibonacci sequence goes like this: 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21 and so on, where the next number is the sum of the two previous numbers (5 = 2+3, 21 = 8+13). But that just didn’t work for anything but super short sequences, and I wanted to run a LOOOONG program. Not sure how I came up with the digits of Pi, probably in the shower or something, that’s where I get most of my thinking done ;-) The other plans were for variety, and you can tell because the theme is kind of forced, lol.

In terms of a team, from time to time we need help with this or that, but extra team members cost money, money I’d rather be paying my members, so I plan to keep it bare bones for as long as it is manageable.
As of this writing, it is our 5th day online (counter on the site says 6, but we delayed a bit, and I haven’t gone in to change the JavaScript on that yet). So the first members in The Glutton plan will be getting their paydays pretty soon.

3. The vast majority of readers here will fully expect that you have a long history of working with and running online HYIPs. Without giving away any names if you don’t want (people will still speculate anyway) maybe you can talk a bit about your experience in the industry, highs and lows, memorable events, how things have changed, etc?

Yes, the “Guess-the-Admin” game. Didn’t take more than about 30 minutes of chit-chatting in the Shoutbox for that to begin.

Someone once told me that 90% of HYIPs are run by the same handful of folks. I’m in the 10%. Honestly, when I look out at the HYIP landscape here’s what I see: Cynicism. Skepticism. Mistrust. And you know what? For a damn good reason. “Scam” is typically the right word, because these programs are based on deception. So those qualities I just mentioned are business as usual, and it sucks. When I think about my personal relationships, Cynicism, Skepticism, and Mistrust have no place. When I’m banking, when I’m shopping at the grocery store, I can’t afford those feelings there either. Why are we embracing it in the HYIP industry? Casinos do a fantastic business, poker tables where everyone throws in a ton of money knowing they may not see it back. Why aren’t we demanding more? More truth, more fun, less skepticism.

PiNeverEnds is an experiment intended to ask the question “Does it HAVE to be that way?” Our results may not even answer that question, someone else will have to try too, and someone after them. But I implore your readers to EXPECT MORE, and consider rejecting the status quo.

For those of you who think I’m blowing smoke about this honesty business, consider this: it takes a special kind of evil to talk as passionately as I do about honesty, and to be lying nonetheless. At some point, you have to consider Occam’s Razor: the simplest explanation is often the correct one.

4. Explain the investment plans in detail to us. What ROIs are on offer. What are the minimum and maximum amounts to invest? What payment options are you currently accepting?

In detail? I think I’ve gone a bit above and beyond detail, it might be time to pull it back a bit!

We’ve got 4 plans:
1) The Piphilologist uses the digits of Pi as variable payouts. Pi goes: 3.14159… so this plan would pay 3%, 1%, 4%, 1%, 5%, 9% and so on. The term of the plan is 314 calendar days, but interest is only credited weekdays. Principle not available on expiry. It only takes ~30 days to breakeven, and then you’re in profit after that. Should this program manage to chug along for 314 calendar days, your ultimate profit would be roughly 1000%.
2) The Euler pays 3.14% per weekday for 20 weekdays, resulting in earnings of 62.8%. Principle IS returned upon expiry.
3) The Basel is a 30-day plan with a single payment at the end of the term. You will earn a profit of 164%, and your Principle will also be returned.
4) The final plan is called The Glutton, or “OMG I ate too much Pi”, named for its egregious overusage of the Pi theme. It is also a single-payment plan, and will return 36% profit at the end of 7 days, and also returns principle.

5. I know that you’ve been working on the addition of either (preferably both) Payza and SolidTrustPay. What kind of progress has been made here and perhaps you can also discuss the process from an admin’s point of view? That is to say regular investors and account holders may not be aware of what goes on when trying to get approval or verification for a HYIP related website. Do you think either processor will be added soon?

STP has been almost completely silent. I’m thinking of writing them a song and posting it on Twitter to get their attention. Who wants to sing backup vocals?

I have no reason to doubt Payza at this time. I completed all the information they asked for just yesterday and they ask for 2-5 days of processing time, not counting weekends, so fingers crossed for next week!

As a quick explanation, whether you have an actual “button” or not, some payment sites require approval of their payment button before placing it on your site. STP is all about the “real business activity” thing these days, which is why so few HYIPs have been able to get their attention.

6a. How secure is the website of PiNeverEnds? What are you doing to protect it and members’ accounts from hackers? Are you on a dedicated server? Who is your host? What kind of anti-DDoS protection do you have?

6b. What kind of script is PiNeverEnds running off? Where did you get it, how safe is it, and why do you think this one is most beneficial for you as an admin and your members?

I turned these into an A and B of the same question because they have more or less the same answer. We’re running Shadow Scripts which is built from the ground up for security. Other scripts, such as Gold Coders, have historically had some known bugs that were susceptible to SQL injections, which means they could be hacked with fairly little difficulty. I believe those bugs have sense been resolved, but Shadow Scripts has no such heritage. They also charge a premium, so it is much more difficult to churn out new throwaway sites at their license fee level.

Typically when you get DDoS protection, you get a fairly out-of-the-box solution. There’s not a technical resource assigned to you that works to optimize every tiny thing about your particular program. Shadow Scripts is now offering hosting and DDoS protection through a third party called Secured Servers. The benefit of this is that they can do customized tweaking of the firewalls for helluva lot better protection. So our site is very difficult to DDoS at all, and that’s even before the regular DDoS protection comes into play.

8. Can we see any statistics regarding PiNeverEnds? How many members have joined since the beginning and how many are active at the moment? Are you pleased with the support from the members so far? How important a role do they play in bringing in new members?

I’m taking a cursory look at the moment since I’ve already been writing for a LOOONG time, but it looks like membership is up about 30% since the last stats, and deposits have a little more than doubled. So some of the bigger deposits are beginning to make their way in.

I love our members, they’re a lot of fun and sometimes my support tickets fill up with chatter back and forth. But I would really love to see a boom in folks pursuing those referral bonuses. We put together a killer system, and I think anyone who isn’t working that hard is missing out on some serious money.

I think our members are the number one key to bringing in new members, because nothing moves to action like word-of-mouth. Hopefully we’ll see a big uptick in that action once the 7-day plan pays out for the first time. That’ll be some proof in the pudding for a lot of folks.

9. How can members contact you if they have any questions or support related issues?

Support tickets are the most reliable.

10. What have been the most common questions and problems you’ve had to deal with so far? Is there anything you wish to say here so that members can avoid having to contact you later?

No one has really had to ask questions due to lack of clarity. As has been well-communicated, we had several hiccups in the first 3 days, but those have all been resolved.

11. How have you been promoting PiNeverEnds so far? What advertising strategy have you been using? How are you getting new members to join?

I’m starting to slowly spread to other monitors and review sites, and will continue to ramp those up. I also spent some time butchering the Russian language at mmgp.ru today, so hopefully those folks have a sense of humor! And then over the next week it is off to Bitcointalk and MathForum.org, with some Google Adword campaigns running in the background. Social media will follow shortly as well.

12. You’ve recently launched a contest for members. Tell us more about that and also if you intend making it a regular feature should this one prove popular

I’d love to do more of them, and I have one planned already for the next Pi Day, which is November 10th. But beyond that it will need to be demand-driven, and that means a significant percentage participate. The next contest will be more “best answer” oriented rather than “fastest answer”.

13. Specifically in relation to promotion, why have you chosen MNO as an exclusive (or at least your first official) monitor, what do you hope this is going to achieve for the program, and how long are you planning to stick with this strategy?

MNO has a very large base, so that factored in heavily. Also, because this site is SO different, I didn’t want to blast across the internet until there was a bed of coals, so to speak, so I felt that MNO was a good place to make some embers. And its expensive to bring on monitors. I’d rather have strong reserves and organic growth than blow my whole budget on ads and live paycheck to paycheck, so to speak.

Picking monitors is really a crap shoot, as literally no one keeps good analytics. I’m actually thinking of spinning up a HYIP Analytics site for just this purpose, optimizing marketing strategy based on actual performance.

14. What exactly are you doing with investors money? How are you investing it and how are you generating the profits being made to members? Is it fair to say PiNeverEnds is basically a HYIP related money game and perhaps considered a form of gambling?

The latter indeed, we’re a real money investing game. I hate the term Ponzi because of the trickery connotation, but I think HYIP has legs. Bu, no, we’re making no representations at all. So that means that our business plan is exactly the same as every other HYIP, we just don’t try to pull the wool over anyone’s eyes.

15. Is there anything else you wish to say not covered in this interview? Also please feel free to comment on the review of your program published on MNO. If there was anything you felt was unfair, mistaken, or in any way in need of clarification then you are welcome to explain this in your own words here.

All I would like to say to investors is this: Ask yourselves if you want the HYIP industry to stay exactly as it is. Because I’ve seen a lot of you in the Shoutbox talk about burnout, needing to take a break. When you invest in PiNeverEnds, you’re investing in the future for a simpler HYIP experience: opportunity to make a ton of money and have a helluva lot of fun along the way.

16. And finally (no cheating!) how many decimal places can you accurately recite the value of Pi to, purely from memory?

I’m very impressed by the greatest of the Piphilologists, but I don’t have the patience for that level of tedium! 3.14159 is as far as I can get with utter certainty!”

That’s about it for today, guys. Just to say thanks to the admin for taking the time and trouble to answer the questions and wish the best of luck to everyone involved in the program. I hope it can stay online long enough for as many of you as possible to take a profit from it. As I said at the top of the page I’ll be back tomorrow with a full news round-up and a more detailed look at EastOil, so stay tuned for that and see you all then!