Bitcoin Forum

Hello and thank you for this space to share.

My name is Jonathan Alvarez and I am the founder and CEO of a crypto mining startup in Latin America (Argentina).
We have been working since May 2021.

Our operations started with Ethereum due to the availability of GPUs and the ease of mining this token.
When the Ethereum merger was announced, we started preparing to select the most profitable algorithm for our users, we currently mine ERGO.

Now we are looking to create mining farms in Argentina.

A little history...

[size=200]About us?[/size]

We are 3 founding partners (2 men and 1 woman). The 3 of us live in Argentina.

Our startup is registered in the USA although we operate from Argentina, this is to protect our investors and offer greater legal security in such a troubled world and more so in the cryptographic ecosystem.

We offer rental of mining power through a 3-year contract.

Our users can acquire mining power through our investment plans starting from $100.
When our users rent power, they get a 3-year contract that entitles them to interest on the rented mining power every month.
Our company keeps 15% of the monthly returns. This percentage includes the cost of energy, GPU maintenance, support and administrative expenses.

We do not charge commission for withdrawing money or for investing.

At this moment we have more than 200 registered users and more than 20 investors with an average ticket of $340.
Our users can also reinvest earnings to earn compound interest.

Our platform is for management and control only, the mined cryptocurrencies are not on our platform and users should not request withdrawals. Your monthly earnings are paid directly to your virtual wallet.

[size=200]Why did we create this crypto mining company?
[/size]
We believe in the individual and social change that blockchain can generate and we love applying it to society.
In a world with high inflation, low wages and lack of employment, we seek with crypto mining that our users obtain monthly returns to improve their quality of life and their environment.

[size=200]Why Bitcoin?[/size]

Bitcoin is the most valuable cryptocurrency and also the token that will continue to be used by the PoW consensus system for many years to come.
This aligns with our goals and vision.

[size=200]Why Argentina?[/size]

Argentina is a country with great advantages for foreign investors due to:


We have planned to create the first mining farm in the state of Mendoza, city of San Rafael, due to its high energy availability and average annual temperature of 28º.

[size=200]Providers:[/size]

We have ASIC providers in Florida and Hong Kong.

We also have the support of the Mendoza government to create BTC farms in the city.

[size=200]Costs and projections[/size]

_{*ASIC cost includes customs taxes and internal fees.}

Below we share an image of profits and costs according to the price of BTC:
https://ricemining.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Screenshot_1.png

[size=200]What are we looking for?[/size]

If you are an investor interested in crypto mining, we believe that Argentina can be an interesting bridge to generate cryptocurrencies and profits.
We are looking for investors who can contribute the money to start with 100 ASICs in Argentina.

[size=200]What we offer?[/size]

Our experienced team takes care of the maintenance, management and administration of the ASICs.
We also have our lawyer specialized in blockchain law.
We offer to legally participate in a crypto mining startup.
We also offer accommodation and stay for those investors who wish to travel to see the city and talk personally with us.
If you are interested please leave your concern.

I do not share company name to avoid generating spam.
Any comments, suggestions or concerns are welcome and I will be happy to respond.

Investor Presentation (https://drive.google.com/file/d/1zJbomUTYBqGYPPSthmWUMcAoNYdC8zLN/view?usp=sharing)

This is good for local investors but overseas investors have to spend more to see if you're project is really legit



You should and you're not going to spam by providing the company name, this is the most important part, so you're potential investors can research your company's reputation, before you there are mining sites that offer similar services like yours, they provide company name, address the people behind them registration and the pictures and videos of their machines and location, without you providing anything you are not giving anything that can make us trust your project

The best run and marketed project like this I'd ever seen was one in Austria. I forget the name but I can look them up again in old files. Did a bit of work for them.

They revealed all. From proof of existence like Names, persons, livestreaming camera feeds showing the actual rigs, the hydropowered locations... to proof of business concept, company incorporations, publishing lawyer letters, business plans with profit projections (one of the few who actually bothered). The only thing they never truly satisfied was actual income statements.

Fantastic people are great ideas, but they couldn't really prove it worked -- and it didn't. As soon as markets came down in 2018/19 they just couldn't pay out the shared revenues promised.

My message being: you got to do a lot better than this. Documentation. That shows you have what you say you have (your team, for example) and to prove you know what you say you do (your market research, evidence of profitability, etc.).

I'm confused... How can your registration in the US, offer any kind of "real" protection to investors when the whole thing is taking place in Argentina?
^{- I'm not sure if I missed something but AFAIK, the regulations in there can't have a significant impact on your operations!}

Are you implying that multiple platforms are in the equation?
^{- If the answer to this question is "YES", then you need to mention all of their names.}

There is just a lack of info about your company. Coinbase stated that you got around $80k in funding, and I think it is difficult for a mining company to run with that amount of money. I kinda understand why you seek investors, but even your public team doesn't instill any confidence. I think you should fix that first if you're serious about your business.

I have seen this all before, this is not the kind of presentation that will pull in investors you have to be better than just claiming what your project reached or accomplished, you have to back it up with proofs with certification which we can verify and location which we can locate in Google map and the team behind the project, which we can add because they are real accounts, I have seen a much better presentation and they are good until they scam their investors, you have to beat the competition by providing us more detailed proofs that this project is for real.

so which legal region do you belong to, USA or Argentina? If something goes wrong, whether you are within the reach of the competent authorities of the USA?

You tell us here about a little history but the fact is that you have not told us anything about yourself except that you have been mining for 1.5 years. That is not enough.


you have no reason to hide the name and information of the company and spam is probably the weakest excuse for hiding a company's identity. investors have the right to know to who they are giving money.

Hello, thank you all for your messages.
My first message was an introduction to our business model and now that concerns and questions have come up from you, I will be happy to provide further information and details.

My name is Jonathan Álvarez, I am the CEO of Ricemining LLC.

We founded the startup together with 2 other partners (Sergio Garcia and Natalia Cabrera).

My professional profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alvarezjhonathan/
Sergio Profile (COO): https://www.linkedin.com/in/sergiogarcia93/

Our company is registered under number 11939140.
You can check our information on the Delaware government website: https://icis.corp.delaware.gov/ecorp/entitysearch/namesearch.aspx

Our current company is registered in the USA.

For our new business model (BTC mining) we are going to register the company in Argentina, since this is mandatory to be able to import ASICs and pay the internal taxes and customs taxes of the country.

Currently we only mine with GPU. (Our idea is to start mining BTC and create a mining farm in Argentina).

[size=200]How our current business model works:[/size]

We rent mining power.
Users through (https://app.ricemining.com) can purchase crypto mining plans.
By purchasing a crypto mining plan, investors get a 3-year contract which gives them monthly earnings for 36 months.
Ricemining LLC keeps 15% of the cryptocurrencies mined each month. This allows us to pay energy costs, maintenance, website, marketing and investor support.
With the money from investors, we buy GPUs that we configure and start mining.
We currently mine the ERGO token as after the Ethereum upgrade we decided it was the most profitable algorithm yet.

[size=200]New business model (BTC mining):[/size]

When the end of Ethereum PoW began to be announced, we began to plan and diagram how to continue mining in Argentina, but with Bitcoin.

[size=200]Why Bitcoin?[/size]

In addition to being the cryptocurrency with the highest value, it is the algorithm that can continue to be mined over time.

[size=200]Projections:[/size]

We have made some projections and costs so that you can see and calculate the possible earnings of mining BTC in Argentina.
In this online sheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1S7LT49CTew07PAfT2w1vqmtVVwYvOGNylMQQJlHZSUM/edit?usp=sharing you will be able to know some costs of Ricemining in Argentina including ASIC and also the profits.

Current data on Ricemining:

We currently have 20 investors with an average ticket of $350.
We have 200 registered users.

Facts about the people behind Ricemining.
I have been dedicated to crypto mining for approximately 4 years. After mining with my GPUs, I wanted to bring this to the rest of society and create a new revenue model for people.

Sergio, my partner is in charge of configuring and maintaining the mining software.

Thank you all for the time.
If you have any concerns about the online spreadsheet, please let me know.
Also if you have questions about our business model I will be happy to answer.

---

Hello!

I want to say that our website does not administer or manage the cryptocurrencies that we mine.
The website is for business only.

The cryptocurrencies are stored offline and the earnings of the users are not paid through the website, but the earnings are paid to the wallet of each user.

This is to prevent hacking of the website.

---

Hi, thanks for your message.

Well, it is true that foreign investors should be more cautious and perhaps it is more difficult to know the project personally.

However, Argentina is a country with currency devaluation above 75% per year.
This makes local investors unsuitable for setting up mining farms in Argentina.

For this reason we seek foreign investors.


I also think it is a great attraction for foreign investors.
Our operating costs are much lower than in the USA or Europe and mining regulation is not as severe as it is in the USA, with the exception of some states.

[moderator's note: consecutive posts merged]

So we have no website to show all the relevant information about your mining I was kinda intrigued by your post that your users do not get paid through your website, of course, it cannot, websites are for transparency purposes all payments are done through wallets, why would hackers get interested if you are only going to show data and information and besides WordPress with good security plugin takes care of this, you are not going to run your mining like an exchange I don't see why hackers will be interested in hacking a website that only shows data.

Thank you for the clarification and it's good that you went with the cold storage route, but I don't understand why you're not allowing them to manage their mined cryptocurrencies through your website ^{[I'm not a developer by any means but AFAIK, it doesn't require you to have everything on a hot wallet]}!
^{- The way I see it, it has more to do with the fees (you can easily add a reasonable withdrawal fee if that's the issue).}

If you are here to share information then it's fine, let few users to read it and some people to comment but if you are looking for investors then you will need much more than this.

Have a website where you put all relevant information for the investors to read and check reference. Consider having a pitch deck too.

Thanks for your question, hackers attack everything they can I think... and they don't know that we don't store keys or information on the website.

4 months ago we suffered a Ddos attack for several days that prevented the registration of investors and the purchase of crypto mining plans.

The hackers asked us for $3000 at that time, luckily with the help of the Cloudflare team we were able to mitigate it and finally the hackers got tired...

hacker message: https://prnt.sc/75bWP5E-a2YY
CF activity: https://prnt.sc/Nc5PrzAHcfsv

Due to this bad experience, we began to implement less flexible security processes.



Hello, thanks for your suggestion.

We have tried to do this, and we would love for users to be able to manage their cryptocurrencies!!!

However, doing this requires a large investment in programming to make it happen.
In the future we would like to do it, it would be easier for investors, safer and more automated.

We are currently in talks with 2 crypto software development companies, but as I told you... the cost is still high for us.



Hi Royse, thanks for your suggestion.

Yes, we know that if we need investors we must present more information.

Our presentation is available here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1zJbomUTYBqGYPPSthmWUMcAoNYdC8zLN/view?usp=sharing

Our data is available in these places:
https://ricemining.com/en/about-us/
https://app.ricemining.com/terms-and-conditions/

Our professional profiles on Linkedin are also available on our website.

Finally, we also share the trademark registration: https://portaltramites.inpi.gob.ar/MarcasConsultas/Resultado?acta=4042675

Well, Ethereum mining stopped and caused a huge hash rate drop which highly affected the mining rewards of every user. This would sometime happen with bitcoin as well. Mining is not good for nature, so it might be stopped some or the other day. I love PoS more than PoW.

So after looking through your presentation, as well as doing some research on cost of equipment, import taxes, current value of BTC and the fact that the miner in question is not profitable when you include the actual cost of the miner (If you could even find 50 of them available), and the other fact that ASCI depreciate in value over time, and after 1 year your miner will probably cost a good amount in upkeep, I'm going to pass on this idea.

Also, creating a company in the US, but operating it in Argentina is a bad idea, and is on rocky legal ground as well. For such a small profit margin, just a single issue could cause disaster for your entire operation, throwing you into debt. You need to rethink your entire idea before you try to continue. If you have investors, you should just liquidate the assets and return their investment to them.