Bitcoin Forum

Hi,

I would like some advice on cloud mining.

After initial capital I cannot understand the business model of a cloud mining company, surely if you make your ROI in 3 months or something they start to lose money after this period.

why would any company open that knows its going to lose money in the long term? Unless they have an ulterior motive?

I am tempted to try out some cloud mining sites that have been around for a while as It seems easier than me buying some of my own miners but I am putting the trust in someone elses hands.

Has anyone invested a lot in cloud mining and come out on top? Any examples or anyone here who has?

Thanks for any advice

No you are buying equipment for X amount of time 3 years to 5 years usually. After your contract ends that equipment will still be there. Add that to the maintenance fees they overcharge you and wala you have profit and with every weeks purchases you are able to gt more and more equipment. There are many ways to set up a good very profitable cloud mining service that makes its members a lot of money and you will end up with a lot of equipment. I am on top in 2 of my cloud mining sites, and i am close to ROI on 2 more, I have also lost on 1 or 2 sites as well as they disappeared into cyberspace. But i always make small starting investments, jump on board fast in time to ride the train to ROI and let the site do all the work for me. If they vanish into cyberspace I usually have gotten my ROI and then some.

But a true honest cloud mining service could be very very profitable to the right investor who knows his shit and can make it work. and this could be a very profitable and ethical business f he sticks it out and plays his cards right. I am actually looking into setting up an authentic real cloud mining service right ow, one that will be here for a long tie and may have the potential to be very profitable to everyone, the owners and the members buying contracts. Hopefully I can get this project off the ground before BTC rises up again, because as BTC rises so does the cost of the mining hardware and right now it is super cheap.

Thank You.

I will look at some of the providers to see what I think.
 

Some cloudmining sites don't give you lifelong earnings . Its only for a fixed amount of years.

be very careful. For the last two days few services just "disappeared"..

Can you add details about sites that disappreared? I heard only about pbmining that happened a few days back, but nothing in the last 2 days.

pbmining is still here but they pay 1/10th of the expected mining revenue.
Cloudmining can be very profitable for the cloud mining company and the clients if it done right.

Cloudmining used to be very profitable when the btc price was 600$ or more.

Now Btc price ~300-320$, Cloudmining services having hard time... Probably most of the site owners even cant profit anymore.

I think if the site is legit, then it would still be profitable, however now to be profitable you would have to spend more time to get a higher ROI.

cex.io profits because they have a huge maintenance costs. Cloud mining services that are small and smart can still profit because they keep the costs very low.

Yes im new to mining as well, and was doing some research on cloud miners. On the site it looks very profitable, but like what was posted above some sites stopped taking new clients or just disappeared meaning there is no way to contact them, or the site has errors in certain places. I want to really test it out to see how it works, but im really interested in building my own cloud mining service as well. I just need to see how it works.

Cloudmining should NOT be profitable. You are either having calculation errors or the site is trying to scam you. If cloudmining is profitable, why would they rent it to people to make a profit? Creating a legit cloudmining service requires alot and alot of funds. You would have to get alot of ASICs, have money for datacenter rent since you cant run it at home. It isnt easy managing hundreds or thousands of mining hardware.

I think like rano said, being small is more hard to survive, unless they have big amounts of gears.
It would probably become expensive for them.

cloud mining contracts are all not profitable. u need around 1000gh/s per day to make 0.01btc daily.
at current prices you have trust the company to stay in operation about 150days to be in profit.

If you are small you  have lower costs, it could just be a handful of people with no salaries or taxes to pay and a very small rent

The small rent part is incorrect. You have to rent a space at a datacenter which would not be cheap, considering the power usage. I doubt much people would be willing to be there manage the ASICs with no salary. Also, website design, ddos protection and hosting is not cheap.

IMO with cloudmining, you'll make a profit once BTC price goes over 500$ or so, if not you're unlikely to make a loss (at the current rate) but the earnings will be marginal.

Also, be wary of fake sites and pyramid schemes. Cloudmining seems like a service designed by Ponzi gods themselves. Here's a useful link on how to avoid scams:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=878387.msg9697654#msg9697654

on a slightly different note, check out Hashcoins.com in the New Year. They are a reputable mining & hardware company in my town (Tallinn) and I have some insider info that they will be launching a cloudmining service in early January, with some sweet incentives for early customers. If you want I can connect you with them, or just keep an eye on their website

Even after the price being low, I see some sites say that it will be profitable and a positive ROI will be earned in 5-6 months.
Is that true?

I would say yes, but take that with a grain of salt. The actual earnings depend from way too many volatile factors (mining rate, difficulty, BTC price) to tell for sure how much ROI will be made. My sources and experience tells me that 70-150% ROI is possible, however IMHO the biggest problem is you just cant tell what your earnings are gonna be worth, you can only tell for certain you will have SOME Bitcoin earnings.

I would say you aren't guaranteed profit in your first 3 months, but you are guaranteed a stream of revenue in BTC which, provided major unfavorable changes in those aforementioned volatile factors don't occur, should turn you a profit. If you think BTC will be worth 50$ in a years time, dont waste your time. If you want to steadily generate bitcoin and believe that the price will stay the same or increase, then it can be profitable

Most cloudmining sites(if legit) can guarantee profits in the next one year . But it would be uncertain after that, as the difficulty might change.
Even when the halving occurs in 2016 , it might be a whole different scenario, and we might have different miners by then.

I'm changing all the time with what I use and what I do

I have just started on here now

http://minethatcloud.com/

Seems pretty good and the people seem to know what they are doing

It's really hard to know where to stay and go so I always just look for deals that are the most suitable, I would'nt wanna stay to long on one place but I know alot of people
do, It depends really on how much hash I want to buy.

Yes, and you have many risks involve because you are trusting others with your money but if you chose the correct mining company, you pay a relative low price and they charge low maintenance fees, you should ROI nicely within 3-4 months if the difficulty doesn't go up a lot more than expected.

There are two types of cloud miners looking for business, those that mine and those that say they mine.
Puppet has an informative thread which attempts to analyse which category any scheme is likely to fit into.

 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=878387.0

From a quick look, I'd say that http://minethatcloud.com/ doesn't do too well on his scoring system.

With the current BTC price/difficulty circumstances, I'd say that if XBTC/Ghs price is a level at which a genuine miner would be able to sell mining contracts and stay viable, then any offers below that level should be looked at with suspicion.
The difficulty is establishing what X is, especially given that the only significant variable is cost of electricity and maintenance.

Until they provide some evidence of legitimacy, they're just another ponzi, as is cloudminr.io too by the way. With Cex.IO halting mining the other day and Hashnest halting mining today, AMHash and Bit-x are the only legitimate bitcoin cloud mining services left. There are also a few hosted services like KNC Cloud which offer fixed length contracts for say 6 months or a year.

As for why companies would offer cloud mining instead of just self mininig, they make a guaranteed profit up front instead of having that profit spread out over a period of time. For manufacturers services like AMHash, Bit-x and Hashnest, it's not really any different than selling miners.