Bitcoin Forum

So I want to try and find some long term cloud mining contracts or indefinite shares in the stuff but it's become quite difficult for me because almost all of them seem to be either quite scammy or at the very least have a lot of suspicion around them. Does anybody actually know any services they'd vouch for? Also, I'll know if you're trying to affiliate spam so don't even bother.

I'm trying to find some passive investments but it seems to be quite difficult seeing as how the more you look at this kind of stuff the more suspicious a lot of these things get.

No.  Concept/design failure.

:(

ALL cloud mining is a scam. Why would ANYONE sell cloud hashing to you at a loss for them? If they could make more money hashing themselves, they would. But they make a killing selling hash rate to others - more than they could make if they just mine for themselves.

It's all a scam.

A friend of mine and also I myself have gone to a plan B: invest the money you would spend hashing in buying coin outright. You end up accumulating a lot more than you could ever mine.

Here's a list of cloud mining services: http://www.cloudminingreviews.com

A few are missing like KnCminer but those are probably scams anyway. I did meet the people from Genesis Mining at a recent Bitcoin conference: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=569926.msg9110850#msg9110850 and they seemed pretty decent and definitely had some good reasons to rent vs mining for themselves. The most impressive thing they said to me was that they had no desire to burn up equipment mining for themselves and risk never paying off the equipment when they could rent for a set rate and guarantee the equipment payoff. If there is any life left in the equipment after the rental payoff they can realize a profit. If they mine for themselves volitility could keep them from ever realizing a profit. Of course, you have to worry about that issue if you rent. Their schtick could all be a bunch of BS but I tend to believe them because one of the girls at the booth had really big jugs. ROFL

Now that's a helpful website QuestionAuthority thanks, lots of user reviews is just what I need, I spotted some review sites out there but they were clearly ad backed and posting dodgy reviews.

true.  unless by cloud mining your intention is to help secure the network, rather than profit.

it should also be said that even non cloud retail mining gear is not too much different.
There are the variables of electricity, space, cooling, and maintenance, but the same principle applies:
Why would any company sell you something they can make more profit from themselves?

Real winners in mining create their own gear and chips or buy parts wholesale and assemble.

The only cloud mining worth doing is if you setup some new miners at a buddies place, typically you will never break even when trying to use the cloud hardware to mine coins, unless the coin gets hot after you mined a ton. Otherwise the company "hosting" the asics would just be running the machines to harvest coins if it were profitable. The only profits they can really derive from having the machines is to sell it to other people to use, because using it will not be profitable.

In my mind its a service for lazy people who are gullible, your better off buying Bitcoin and going to an exchange more often than not also you get all your coins up front.

Edit: Clarity

And I'm sure that they're not shills...

everything you need to know is in every post of this thread so far.  I'll add 2 things:

profitable miners buy they're own hardware, mine with it, then sell the hardware before it becomes totally worthless.
If I had old hardware that I wanted to squeeze a little more money out of, I'd start a cloud mining company.

if mining for yourself with your own equipments where you get 100% bitcoin is a risk to pay off.. then by that assumption asking a customer to rent it where the rents cover the costs, obviously prove that the rent exceeds bitcoin mining income.

thus as others have said, they are all scammy under a long term contract.

BUT, the exception is for those that just want to grab a 48hour premine of coins without spending $500-$50k in equipment, they can easily rent it for just 48 hours and make a profit on the initial pump and dump. so for short term boosts of hash power, there are benefits. just not for long term contracts

This.

The essential idea of cloud mining disgusts me. It is bad enough we have centralized pools, let alone centralized mining warehouses. Please don't encourage this behavior. The only justification for centralized mining is if all of the members owned the company and equipment equally and had equal rights as any other shareholder with the ability to remove their share of equipment at any time.

agreed, the only positive would be for short term usage. EG 48 hours quick mine. as its cheaper and faster than buying equipment upfront with atleast a 3 month ROI and a 1 month delay in shipping. definitely wont recommend for 2month-2 year contracts

Mining in general has been a running scam since we stopped mining with video cards. You have to use ASICs, the manufacturers are all crooks, you can't mine solo, P2Pool works for shit and the pools can cheat the miners. That's why I stopped in 2012.

I recommend you GAWMiners Hashlet, you may pm me if you have any questions.

I don't understand the point. cloud mining centralizes mining which hurts bitcoin and almost guarantees you will lose money.
 
  GAWMiners Hashlet
447.50 for 500 GH/s
electrical + shipping = 0
Bitcoin Difficulty:    35,002,482,026 + 20% per month average
Profit = none
Loss = -195.00

Congratulations, you just wasted 195 dollars to make the network more centralized.

--------------------------------------------------------------------

  GAWMiners Hashlet
$2685.00  for 3000 GH/s
electrical + shipping = 0
Bitcoin Difficulty:    35,002,482,026 + 20% per month average
Profit = none
Loss = -1,170.00

Congratulations, you just wasted 1,170 dollars to make the network more centralized.


Are people really this bad at math? Seriously? At least when you buy an asic(shipped late) rig you help decentralize the network and lose less money than with cloud hashing.

In fact, i'm good at math. I have a proof of daily payout on my blog since 15th september or so...with screenshots and I can say its very profitable.

No contract, you can sell your Hashlets when you want so... I cannot say how it could affect bitcoin price, I think someone who buy for one or 2 million of mining rigs will still have an impact on bitcoin price, you tell me.

With the Zen Hashlets and the Prime Hashlets, we mine on Zenpool, its exclusive at GAWMiners and we can still mine in Altcoin, not only bitcoins. I always suggest to buy only theses one at the moment and..I can say my rates is ok, Zen Hashlet got a ROI of 130-140 days.

Certainly, tricking people into believing they are going to make money hashing can be profitable if you make money with affiliate revenue, but that isn't exactly ethical is it?   Can you humor us with your math proving 130 day ROI?  Even if you ignored history and assumed a 0% difficulty increase you will still never make a return on investment with the 447.50 GAWMiners Hashlet.


Here is a tool if you need help with your math --- https://bitcoinwisdom.com/bitcoin/calculator

What are you assuming that difficulty doesn't increase?

Although this is a good point, many people will ignore your advice. There are many people who are interested in mining but do not have the technical expertise nor the time to invest in a miner. As a result they doing it the "easy" way and will purchase a cloud mining contract

Yes there are a lot of Hashlets...Yes some have a ROI of 220 days, that's why I only recommend Zen Hashlets and Prime Hashlets at the moment.

All the daily rates of Zenpool are on my blog and you can notice its stable at ; 0.00061014 BTC / MH

A fan on Hashtalk made this spreadsheet ;

http://gawminersaffiliate.blogspot.ca/2014/09/roi-calculator-sheet.html

I dont recommend Clever, Waffle and Multi cause the ROI is not good and the pools rates vary a lot.

Zen Hashlet is stable and its the one I use most.

I don't have a lot of Primes even if GAWMiners say its futureproof and have some features. I'm waiting for the tonight or tomorrow announcement and for the Project Prime before investing in some more Primes Hashlet.

So if you go with Zen, yes its possible...Like anything you want the best for your money, so did I.

And....to be honest...I'm still a newbie ( 1 month of mining ) and I know that I'm late so I try the climb the hill the fastest I can for now and GAWMiners gave me that opportunity. I tried to mine on hardware and gosh I was lost...

I apologize for being rude. Please do yourself a favor and look at this:

https://blockchain.info/charts/difficulty

and use this calculator :
https://bitcoinwisdom.com/bitcoin/calculator

Set watts to 0 , mining pool fee to 0, Electricity Price to 0, 20% difficulty and than pop in your payment and the hashing power to see for yourself how you will definitely lose money vs buying bitcoin directly.

My advice to you is to resell the hashlet as soon as possible and stopping promoting cloud mining.

Yes, it also doesn't help that many of these cloud mining companies provide helpful little calculators which ignore difficulty increasing, and thus are blatantly scamming the credulous. It's no wonder many of our fellow comrades are jumping ship and adopting PoS/DPoS coins. There is only so much of this people will take and eventually most of these investors will realize they were scammed.

Something needs to be done about this... seriously.

I understand your point. The Hashlet Prime was built for long term and to go against increasing difficulty. If new Hardware arrives on the market, Prime will be automatically upgraded to them...For the Zen, yes I can say maybe in a few months it will change a bit.

Instead of calculator or whatever we chat with the founders and staff directly on hashtalk.org, I think its better like this.

If it was me at first I would have a lot Antminers, but then I step up when I calculated my electricity bill.

Anyway with the Zenpool its the difficultys of other algorithms...Only the Hashlet Genesis will be affect. GAW_CEO last week gave +50% hashrate power for all the Genesis Hashlets owner and the price as dropped by 1$...

The last bitcoin crisis of 275 USD yes I should have bought some, would have been more profitable this way sometimes.

I didnt know about Bitcoin wisdom, its nice. :)

I can see at least one reason for cloud mining. When I first came here lots of people were buying drugs on Silk Road. Hell, even the forum had a guy named Flaxseed (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=236305.0) selling drugs in the marketplace for a long time. They wanted to get their Bitcoin without buying it or giving up any info so they mine. If you don't want to meet someone face to face or give up your identity to buy btc for drugs couldn't you just rent a miner for a short time? I'm not sure how the rentals work, do you need ID to rent a short term miner?

Not sure to quite understand....

Since cloud mining is definitely a losing proposition we are trying to justify any reason for its existence. One possible reason is virgin coins are impossible to track are useful for buying drugs on the dark market...

Did you need to provide ID?

Ah ok now I understand.

Nope, no ID.

This is true. I used to mine on Eligius directly to a Casascius bar. The irs has no record of how many bitcoins they are. Nor could it ever be proven.

I know some people that sell hashrate through cloud mining services. They make 30-40% profit by selling to you, than mining alone. You obtain the same bitcoin value as them, but you pay 30-40% more for it. Why?!

If you want to mine, buy equipment and mine yourself. Otherwise just buy some coins.

If no ID then I understand cloud mining for short term contracts even if you don't make as big a profit as buying an expensive ASIC miner. It facilitates the purchase of illegal items so your main concern isn't profit. I'm not passing judgement. That's where Bitcoin started. Cloud mining is just carrying on the tradition.

I don't see any short term contracts with cloud mining though ... Do they even exist?

No problem. I have had very good returns from Litecoin GEAR and original Hashlets bought at $16. GAWMiners is running a sale today only in ZenPortal on Hashlets, you can pick up ZenHashlets for $17.95. I track returns on all my cloud mining investments at the forum in my signature. None of the providers I use are fly by nite. Litecoin GEAR has been in business over a year now and has always provided the best ROI. Hope this helps.

They seem kind of silly but yeah, they exist. There are even 24 hour, wink wink, trial contracts. Those seem perfectly suited to drug sales.

https://groupbitcoins.com

LTC and GAWMiners have the best reputations for now.

Ltc gear is quite popular right now.  I don't own any shares, but I have been looking into them a lot lately.  I have some gaw hashlets which I honestly don't care for anymore.  

Genesis mining is also pretty good from what I've read.



Edit: I bought my primes for 15.99, no way in hell I would buy them at current prices