Bitcoin Forum

There is a saying that anyone can make money in a bull market, but bear markets are where future profits are carved. This could apply to the current market situation especially when the market trend turns to be better.

The price of BTC soared from the bottom on December of 2018 at $3,203 to around $4,000 recently, which has increased by nearly 25% in only three months. When miners are worry about their losses on the devaluation of BTC, the market moved and getting better in a rapid speed.

Under the current duration where the bear turns to bull. It is the best time for bargain hunting for miners. There are several ways for bargain hunting and the chief three are shown as below:

1. Buy Bitcoins and wait the price to increase.

2. Buy the hashrate of BTC miners and find the miner hosting services.

3. Get a BTC miner directly and mining bitcoins by themselves.

There are pros and cons of these ways. From my opinion, for example, for risk-averse people, purchasing a BTC miner is a better way because the only cost is the investment capital on the miner and electricity fees of the data center. Compared with buying Bitcoins from the Exchange place, getting a BTC miner could be more safe and stable. The only disadvantage of the third way is probably its inconvenience of subsequent procedures such as hosting and operating. Though, it could be easily figured out by experienced platform and specialized companies.

I am a beginer of Bitcoin and Blockchain industry and still in the process of learning, feel feel to contact me and you guys are also very welcomed to email me. We could discuss and learn together  ;)

nikkoxiaoxiaoli@gmail.com

Ok, first of all, most Cloud mining services that "sell" hash power is based on Ponzi schemes, so I would not advise people to invest money in that. Secondly, you already said that you are a newbie, so why would people contact you for guidance? I would suggest that you study the subject a bit more, before you offer people the option to contact you for advice and guidance.

You do not want people to blame you, if you gave them the wrong advice, right? There are enough experts out there that are willing to give advice for free on public forums like this, so concentrate your efforts on targeting these people.  ;)

his first suggestion is not related to mining or cloud mining , so i would accept it and i totally agree with it  . buy low sell high is the most basic and most popular strategy to do when bear market strikes  .  however i also agree on you that most cloud mining sites are just plain scams  but maybe there are few exeptions  . i know some old cloud mining sites that are still up and running until now  .

buying a miner and do mining all by yourself  , can also be a good alternative option to avoid the risk on cloud mining investments .

Thanks for your reply, but I did not mean I advice people to ‘buy’ hashrate and enter into the Ponzi scheme, I did mention in my comments that ‘from my opinion’, I think it is better for miners to have their own machine to get BTC coins. In addition, I also did not say any words of  ‘guidance’, what I was saying is come and chat with me or contact me either by replying me or emailing me, I’m not thinking about giving any advice on anyone in case I will show the wrong way.

I am curious about what is your reason on the opinion that ‘Cloud Mining services’ are based on Ponzi schemes, because as I know, companies such as Genesis is the cloud mining services which is not running based on Ponzi, do you mean all of them or some of them are fraud?

BTW, what’ your opinion on these three options above from your experience or do you have better suggestions that could help people during the bear market?

Thanks for you reply and understanding on my words! :D
Do you have any examples on scams of cloud mining and which way do you think is the best one for people to choose during the bear market based on 'buy low and sell high'?

99% of the cloud mining services have been purely Ponzi schemes scamming people. that 1% that hasn't been a pure Ponzi scheme has also been scamming people and were partly Ponzi because they sold more hashrate than they had.
you see cloud mining is not a profitable business so they all have to turn into a Ponzi scheme if they want to survive and earn profit. in the end the users are not the ones making any meaningful profit, it is these companies. so don't waste your time with them.

I don't know  where did you get this information but I think you were totally wrong. Now I will tell you based on my experience why it is not profitable to mine during the bearish market. Aside from it does not give you profit as you do mine the coin while its price is slowly going down.

Also have you heard the news that the BITMAIN is currently facing a big problem as it lose around $500 Million last year because of the current market.

I totally agree that the cloud mining services are not really good investment at all. Been there and I only wasted my money. No ROI was returned. Also, there are so many threads already if  he's looking for trading tips, and other pieces of advice in terms of crypto investment.

Thanks for your advice!

Yes, I am agree with you. The price goes down slowly and the market is choppy you really cannot control it. But wouldn't buying BTC coins be more risky in this case?? For example, you probably got 100% return on coins yesterday but get 200% losses in today, and it is hard to compensate on that. To buy coins again? Too risky. But buying a miner could be different because you paying investment capital on the machine and electricity fees, maybe you will not profitable at the beginning or even last for a while, but when the market turns, it is more stable and possible to get better return than those only invests on coins? Do you think so?
 I've heard that BITMAIN has some problems but not that specific, so do you think is it possible for BITMAIN to profit in future or what kind of strategy you advice on it?

I am not providing trading tips and advice, I did not give any suggestions on cloud mining at all and what I am thinking is how to survive during the bear market. One should have some ways to solve this situation not just investing in coins, right? So what's your opinion on how to survive during this hard time? 

He probably has his eyes on the long term. I mean yeah you're losing money now, but once Bitcoin prices kick off again, that could more than make up for your losses.

That being said, I probably wouldn't recommend it myself, as we have no idea when that could happen. It would be far simpler to just buy coins and sit on it.

first you need to realize that "bear market", "price going down",... are not "hard times". it is just a different trend that you normally were used to see. so you need to adapt to the new trend and change your strategy so that you are not stuck in something that is over.

for example the simplest way of making profit during a downfall is to make profit during recoveries. generally whenever price moved in some direction too fast (in this case a big fast drop) there is a reversal. for instance when price drops 20% it recovers 5-10% right afterwards, you can make a good profit during that time.
another way is margin trading which I won't get into because I don't like it myself but you can find information about it online.

Thanks, I'm totally agree with you!
What I forgot to say is the difference between the short term and the long term and you just remind me! Of course buy the coins and wait the price goes up could be the easiest way because the only thing you need to do is to transfer the money, you do not need to worry about the subsequent issues such as operating machines or something. But how can you control the market or the price? The market will not always goes as we wish to be, so maybe you will get a lot of money in a short time, but how you get profit in the long term, keep buying the coins? or buying coins plus buying machines together? That could be an interesting topic!

Almost every cloud mining services were completely ponzi, there is no need to segregate which is a ponzi and which isn't a ponzi. In this regard we need to be more cautious. Recently I was approached by a person through Instagram trying to scam me with the term mining. To his words we'll soon become a prey, scammers try to find us through different sources. We need to be prepared enough to be on the safer side.

So based on your comments, do you mean choose the right time to invest on coins could be the best and simplest choice for the bear market?

Thanks for reminding me on that!
Could you please talk about more on 'Almost every cloud mining services were completely ponzi', why is that so?

essentially yes, but also you should make a decision whether you want to be a trader or an investor and I consider these two to be very different from each other.
a trader only takes advantage of short term market movements and makes money from them while an investor only looks for a potential investment where he can put his money and keep it that way for long term so that he can make profit in the long term while ignoring all the short term fluctuations.
the options for a trader are the whole market and every coin that exists in it, but an investor has limited options and I personally consider only one option for investment and that is bitcoin.

Thanks, I'v learn a lot on your comments!

Actually from your perspective, it is the choice between a trader or an investor, and I think if you could own a machine during a downfall instead of buying bitcoins, then would you possibly get several-fold profits more than buying them when the trend goes up? From the investors' perspective, they will always look at things in the long-term, especially investment in the high-risky industry (eg., BTC), which is similar to the stock market,
then don't you think it is more sustainable and safe to win in the long-term?

Indeed, profits occur before a bullish market, someone will not get a profit without going through a bearish period, so take advantage of the bearish market as well as possible instead of complaining because bitcoin is not going up,

Totally agree with you! 8)

So what do you think about the current market? a bullish market right?  ;D

my best advice is to engage in a business that will bring profit for you in cryptocurrency. Even your profit is less but due to bear market you will get the good amount of crytocurrency.


PS: I see you are creating a new post for each reply,multiposting is against the forum rule and you can reply everyone in a single post.

I support you too. Many people simply fear that they will lose everything or simply want to make easy money quickly. So now there are so many disappointed in Bitcoin. In the end, those who see Bitcoin as a long-term investment will benefit. Those who are now looking for promising projects and investing a little money in them in 3-5 years can make a fortune. We just all need patience. Speculations rarely make a lot of money. For a period of 5-10 years, long-term investment shows significantly better results than speculation.

Thanks for reminding but do you mean quoting? I don't know how to reply each on without using quote  :o

And what kind of business you mentioned above? Could you give me an example?

Exactly, thanks for your support! :D

I think the truth for the word of 'earning' is not simply equals to 'quick money' or 'returns', is a kind of sustainable thing. So I think one is better look at a greater picture more than a limited one.

I can say you are right about the first advice but others I don’t really accept them. There are pretty many ways to make money even in bear market and some platforms offers the option of shorting which many people has gained from it in the past months especially with bitcoin. Mining is what I like b cause I thin it’s  kind of a Ponzi scheme and many of them do fold up at some time in the business. Nothing last for long, as a good trader you should be able to profit both in bear and bull. It’s just about knowing the right thing to do and do it diligently.

Personally I'm looking for long term investment so I try to use simple MA to analyze when I can purchase it
For example with current situation, the pattern show that it's positive enough to purchase and when the graph start to move, it's show the correct decision !

Well the fact that it's a bear market means that most coins are at a bargain price. You just have to be patient in timing when you think the price is close to the bottom. Have a plan. And i don't think the current status of the market can be considered as bullish yet. Probably not until we can get back to around 6k in a consistent trend.

of the three ways only number 1 is the most commonly used by most investors, this method is considered easy and has little risk because buying at a basic price, and about yourself I don't think you are a beginner even you already understand a lot about actual crypto investment

bar·gain /ˈbärɡən/ - a thing bought or offered for sale more cheaply than is usual or expected.
(BARGAIN | meaning in the Cambridge English Dictionary. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/bargain)

What if you bought at the peak of its price at a certain time? you need to have a basis what is the right time to buy a bitcoin and you don't have assurance that you bought it in bargain since it has no usual price because it is volatile and doesn't have a stable price.
For what I've known and according to the surveys I've read online (Not sure if it was true) a few months back buying hashrates are not that profitable at all also buying hashrates refer to as a cloud mining.
Let's say you bought a $1200 miner (Just an example) plus the payment for the electricity to run your miner and the current price of bitcoin. I think you're investment in miner as well as in electricity cost much rather on what you're earning from mining (because of the low price of bitcoin)

To conclude this the only way I think you can bought a bargain bitcoin is to user by user agreement on where a you're going to do a direct exchange with a certain user with a price lower than on an exchange.

I agree with the opinion that there are many ways to make money even in bear market, but I'm disagree with what you are saying is the opinion 'mining is a kind of Ponzi scheme', because from my understanding, 'buying the hashrate' and 'buying a machine to get btc' are totally two different things. Most of comments above said 'buying hashrate' (which equals to 'cloud mining') is a Ponzi shceme, though I still do not know why they say that, I think maybe most of cloud mining companies are frauds in nature.

So you mean in current situation, buying a machine to get btc is the best solution for long term investment?

why? years of experience in seeing new cloud mining companies coming up and say they are legitimate and provide all kinds of weird "proof" and then go belly up after a while because they were Ponzi schemes. it is not a profitable business so they have to do other things to make ends meet. and it has always been like this.

here is a topic you can read for more information: ▁ ▂ ▄ ▅ ▆ Cloudmining 101 (ponzi risk assessment) ▆ ▅ ▄ ▂ ▁ (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=878387.0)

Yep, I think so. It's true that at current time most coins are at a bargain price, so be patient means to do nothing? what kind of ways you think is a proper one to utilize especially on current bargain price period: buying coins at low price or buying the machine?

Thanks, but I'm still learning on it.
Actually I don't think the no.1 method has little risk, instead, I think it is the most risky choice, think about the stock market, isn't it quite similar? and I think there are a lot differences between investment and speculation.

Thanks for your comprehensive analysis on these three opinions (of my own:P), but I have some different opinion for the third comment, 'I think you're investment in miner as well as in electricity cost much rather on what you're earning from mining'. No, the miner itself does not have much value, so I think buying the miner does not mean to invest in the machine itself, it's the initial cost (so as to the electricity fees), what you actually invest is the btc mining by the machine, and the future increase on the value of them.

Thank you so much for sharing this link!! That really helps  :D ;D

If you think cloud mining works you are wrong ,don't even try it ,all cloud mining services are just ponzi schemes that are perfectly organized ,too hard to believe ,making investors believe that they have large farm full of mining rigs ,stay away you've been warned

I've got so many comments related to cloud mining is a ponzi scheme and I did not advice them at the beginning. What I was saying is to own a machine and getting coins directly maybe less risky than buying coins.

#1 is kinda given. That's what people do when prices for something they value and believe will increase in value is at a low cost. #2 is just sketchy and I wouldn't bother with it. #3 would come with additional maintenance and utility costs I'd rather not have.

MA means Moving Average so you misunderstood it to a machine.

And if I'm correct, he's talking about trading not mining.

All these movements are part of something very important, they want us to sell cheap, when this is the opportunity to buy cheap, so maybe, by lowering the price of bitcoin cause panic in people who have invested in bitcoin, especially , those who are insecure.

It seems to me that mining is not so important now. For me the best way is to trade. You could learn this and then you will always be in the black despite the market situation.

I get it. Always buy low, sell high. But when it comes to mining. I know someone who never got to gain profits from it and became deficient. His capital is no joke producing mining facilities. And electricity is really high. Not all miners had a success stories. We underestimate it. You can still choose an alternative way of earning in crypto world.

Thanks for your advice, and don't you think #1 is more risky with lower return compared with #3? the difference between 1&3 for investor is only the investment on machine, but price will be fluctuating for a while and you can't control it, if someone really has a faith in Bitcoin which will bring them value, why they couldn't invest in machines that creating Bitcoins, the thing they believe in and wait for the value grows? 

Well, from my understanding, MA is an analytic method for him to analyze whether it's worth to put the investment. And as he said for long term investment, it is more possible that he's talking about mining because trading is for short term investment.

Generally when bear market strikes, people choose the most basic strategy which is 'buy low sell high'. so for people who interested in bitcoin, the insecure comes from the market's ups and downs, especially in short term, it is better to invest with long-term view

Why mining is not important now? So you have better way to trade? How do you know you always on the right side for sure? If so, then trading will become a risk free game right? Could you share me more experience on trading?

Yea I agree with you that the electricity is high, that's why people say investing in machine for mining is not a small amount, so do you have some advice on alternative way of earning?

The problem with buying low and selling high is that the market fluctuates very quickly so it is easy to get caught short. For new traders just buying bitcoin and wait for it to rise, learn about the other coins then switch to one that is going to pump

The only alternative way of earning crypto now is to trade on the existing ones which is very effective but a risky part for those who don’t trade well.

Another way of earning crypto currency which is applicable to new ones by participating in their ICOs or registering for airdrops and aside those, no other easy way, though one can still look for some of these smaller coins to mine that are not energy intensive but even in mining them, we can only hope that we don’t mine shitcoins.

And actually it is difficult for new traders to  distinguish when is the best time (the lowest) for them to buy in...

Thanks for your suggestion, these choices are all based on short-term trading and I think it looks like gamble, investing in mining maybe a better choice for long-term investment, and you said you know people who got losses on mining, maybe they were just choose the wrong machine? because as I know, not all machine could earn profit especially in the bear market, so one needs to be careful about that.

If you are continually hitting your stops after entering a trade then your stops are too close to the price and you need to make them larger, this obviously increases your risk since now you can get bigger losses but it is a risk that is necessary to take since it is quite possible that you could be forced out of a position that was going to be profitable but in which the price went against you for some time and then it skyrocketed.

This has happened to me several times already and it is something you need to consider when you are creating your trading strategy and it is even more true in this market that is known for its huge volatility.

Miners can profit but it is definitely a challange when it comes down to calculating the right moments.

First of all if you live in a place with high electricity cost you are already going to just lose a ton of money right at the get go, many rich wealthy miners build their platform on places with either zero or very little cost so they can have less costs to keep it open. Iceland was I think one of the cheap places with a cold weather which helped reduce heat issue as well. China has certain areas with very little to no electricity cost as well.

So all in all if you are trying to do this on a normal place you are going to most definitely fail at it. Plus, even if you are in a great place you should definitely look at the difficulty and profits at all times, if its not making you money than you close shop and when it does you open it back up and constantly calculate that.

Well I think there is no such a place we called 'data center' is mining without electricity costs, even in certain areas in Iceland or China or some other remote areas. We can say those places are with lower operating costs, and because of the bear market, even the lowest mining costs becomes the difficulty of miners, so yeah, if someone decided to mining, it is a right strategy for him to find the best place with lowest electricity fees, but I think there is another vital thing is to choose the right machine, especially in the bear market, one wants to earn profit and needs to get avoid of the risk of turning off as well.. So it is risky, but it's for long-term investment.

Don't know why this thread was bumped, but I'm finding it interesting. 

I've always read that cloud mining operations are mostly Ponzi schemes, and I tend to believe it.  People want to get into mining, especially during bull markets (when it's most profitable) and from my understanding it's very hard to mine enough in an individual operation to cover all the costs involved in doing so.  So people turn to these scammy, fly-by-night cloud mining places that offer you hashing power--but there's no way of telling what they're actually doing with your money once they get it, and I've definitely read a number of scam accusations on bitcointalk about these places.  Not in a while, however.  I think people have wised up to the game and aren't getting scammed as often as they used to.

As I said, it is more profitable to mine when the price of bitcoin is high, and that should make intuitive sense to anyone who thinks about it.  The difficulty in mining has nothing to do with the price, so you can recoup your expenses much quicker when the price is higher. 

As far as making money in a bear market, I vote for the buy-and-hold technique.  It's always a gamble, but when bitcoin's price is down it usually rebounds.  It takes balls, however.  It's much easier to have enthusiasm for and to buy something when the price is going up than it is when it's going down.  That's why most people don't make any money trading IMO.

I think the issue with the cloud mining contracts is that its mostly new adopters who get suckered into those contracts who don't exactly understand how difficulty works.

Basically I've met 2 individuals locally who got involved in these mining contracts. They said that it was a better deal for them since they didn't know how to "build computers" and had "wives/girlfriends who didn't like loud computers" so the cloud mining was a better option for them.

They said that "If BTC goes down in price ... we will all lose money anyways". But I told them what happens if the price trades sideways or goes up slowly and difficulty starts to increase expoenetially, they had no idea what I was talking about.

They assumed if you make 0.01 BTC today... you will make this 1 year from now when the contract expires. And this the reason why they are so popular is because most people don't know how difficulty works. Neither did I when I started my GPU mining farm a few years back. Learnt it the hard way.

Thanks for your respond!

I totally agree with you that it is hard for individual operation to cover all the costs so they tend to cloud mining, maybe the operation mode of cloud mining is being highly risky and the scheme is not transparent so people don't know where their money actually flows to. 

And I also agree with the buy-and-hold technique, I think it can be also used in mining, even in the bear market, where people invest in miners, and holds the coins they got, so they could harvest in the bull market. For people who think it is difficult on operating of lots of miners, I've heard some institutions provide related professional services, such as hosting services.

Actually you don't need to worry about problems like  "wives/girlfriends who didn't like loud computers" and have no alternatives but to cloud mining, because some companies have like '' hosting services'' to help you operate your miners...

I'm guessing it works as follows.

1. They take your money.
2. They buy Bitcoin straight away and say they are mining.
3. You wait a long time to "generate" coins. This is where they give you the bitcoins they bought cheap with your money.
4. At the end of the month/year (or at a specific threshold) you can claim your coins which are the current price.
5. You get your bitcoin. The get the difference.

If they really want to screw you over extra they will go bankrupt or claim your account was hacked :P

That could work if we're dealing with investors having an eye on the very long term, but most miners aren't like that because their bills come back every month. You could try to hold your coins for like a month or six, but there will be a breaking point where you stop holding them and start selling to cover your operation costs.

Bitcoin has been going down for over a year, and if you look at the price development, miners were better off unloading their coins before we broke $6000 than holding them, and while the odds of another severe correction is on the lower side, you can't take it for granted and have to sell to make sure that you can stay operational for at least a couple of more months would a correction take place.

LOL, I am not saying this is the right way or what they are doing is right or legal but at least this sort of investment is still better than pure scam provided they don’t go the other way of bankruptcy. If most ICO scam had even done it this way by using people’s money to invest and given them the investment back with capital, the distrust we are getting from investors now would not have been there. That is why even in dealing with mining companies, we still need to make our research thoroughly because it’s really getting difficult for miners in this bear market as some of them has even stopped mining.