Kinda ironic, I used to smoke Scandinavian pipe tobacco all the time (Wo Larsen, Borkum Riff which I thought was Swedish in fact, and several Danish blends).

What do they cost over there?

Last I checked (I switched over to electronic cigarettes this summer) I paid between 5.5 and 7.5 euro per 50gr pouch, depending on brand/type. That always struck me as cheap, though Im sure it can be found cheaper elsewhere.

Which is precisely what these mining ponzi's do. Often times you can even trace the payments from purchase to "dividend"'.

What makes a cloud mining ponzi different from many traditional ponzi's, is
1)  there is no risk of a bank run.You can not get your money out because these contracts are non refundable. You may be able to trade them with other users, but the operator doesnt risk a withdrawal rush. (But thats also the case for many traditional ponzi's where the investment is locked in for a certain period for the same reasons. Its just that with mining ponzi's, this sounds like a reasonable thing);

2)  Less than 100% ROI can be expected depending on how difficulty evolves, see below:

(most) cloudmining is Ponzi 2.0.


So what happens if difficulty slows down enough that these contracts ought to be profitable? Where is the ponzi going to get the money from ?
What you suggest could only work in theory if investors lose money supposedly due to increasing difficulty instead of theft, but they lose money nonetheless.
So either you lose money because the ponzi collapses, or you lose money because your contracts are unprofitable. There is no chance (on average) to profit.

Of course, in reality its far worse; regardless of difficulty,  do ask yourself, why would the operator pay out all or nearly all of what he collected? Considering virtually all these ponzi's are being run anonymously, use coinmixers to hide their tracks etc. What makes anyone think these people are lying about the business model and hiding their identity but will voluntarily pay out nearly 100% of their loot to fulfill their contract?

BTW, there are ways to gamble on difficulty that dont involve ponzi. You can trade B.MINE and B.SELL on havelock. Its a transparent way to let you bet on theoretical (un)profitability of mining. Unlike ponzi 2.0, its actually quite possible to make a profit that way.

LOL.  'minor' flaws and omissions like zero evidence of hashrate, zero vouching from any asic vendor, zero photographic evidence of any hardware, zero evidence of identity, zero blockchain tractability to mined coins, etc, etc.
And now on top of that, zero knowledge about operating a mine or how liquid cooling works.


You showed a picture of a "liquid cooling device" that would supposedly exploit the low local ambient air temperature. And that device is a tiny black box that sports a fan. I dont even know how to begin to address the absurdity.

Yes, its crystal clear you havent got a frigging clue what you are talking about, you've never been anywhere near a datacenter. and that you know as much about mining as I know about mass producing lipstick.

Its the number of lines in the stats table, with each line representing 1 customer.
Copy paste the table in your favorite spreadsheet and see how many there are.

Had to try!


Cold air outside
+ Hot air inside
+ "special" case with fan that moves air
=  liquid cooling system
?

Lulea doesnt seem that cold to me



Either way, you design a case with a fan that can only  move hot air within your "datacenter". You have supposedly cold air outside. And you use liquid to somehow connect both?
How does that even begin to make sense?

So they are waiting in boxes instead of shelves, is that it?

I have an account. You are just looking at the account numbers instead of counting them.  6753 actual accounts. There are huge gaps in their numbering.

So you have a "room/shelf kind of a thing" with a 12 inch fan that provides liquid cooling to cases that are connected to shelves..
Keep talking, this is getting more and more entertaining!

Maybe not finished miners, but you gotta wonder what became of the 60/120PH worth of gen 3 chips that were supposedly produced.

ha! that would explain it, thank you

Im a bit puzzled. When you check blockchain.info  for that address, the last transaction occurred on the 17th (last apparent payout on the 16th):
https://blockchain.info/address/1Payday1sm5wGqtatKscfXnxARZ2B2MF3z

But when I check some of the customer addresses posted in your links, I can find transactions such as this:

https://blockchain.info/tx/4e21d59f789db80d242f841aa20d4278b9e737438c7d815b3410fbd567c96af8

Which occurred on the 23rd and originates from that same 1Payday address.

I figured it might be a problem with blockchain, but blockr.io shows the exact same problem/bug/whatever. I tried blockexplorer, but it crashes on that address.

Im not reading anything nefarious in to this, just curious.

No, havent looked in to that yet. But if you look at their stats page, they have  ~6700 customers, not 38K. And you can pay thousands of those in one transaction.
If your listed payout address is correct, then they are paying ~225 BTC /week through that. Theoretical payout for 4.4PH is >380. Perhaps they use other addresses, perhaps customers have been reinvesting their divs..?

Riiight, I see. This here:



Is really a centralized liquid cooling solution for your entire DC ? And thats gonna cool the cases too?
Silly me, thinking it was a PSU with stickers on it wrapped in a paper bag.

So, lots of problems just keeping a website, referral whoring and sig spam going.
We're all thrilled (and not at all surprised) you haven't ever had any issues with your pool, mining hardware, cooling, electricity supply, asic suppliers (!), collocation or any of that stuff that actual mines tend to struggle with.

Ponzi operators rarely close at the peak of profitability. They generally postpone the inevitable well past the peak. Either because they began deluding themselves, or out of fear or whatever reasons.
They can also gamble on the fact that continuing the ponzi even though its clear its beyond its peak,  will increase their credibility enough that sales pick up again. Remember, there is no bank run with a mining ponzi, and pb has enough coins in his piggybank to play poker with.

Assuming what network growth scenario?

Here is the deal: cloudmining companies (those that actually mine) take a margin on their expenses. If they offered you something that is almost certain to provide a profit, they wouldnt be selling it at that price, they would mine for themselves. Not only that, the asic vendors that provide the hardware to the cloudservice would have an even bigger potential profit by hosting these machines themselves in their megamines. Why would they not ? So difficulty would go up until that profit potential is gone.

So the short answer is that NO cloud mining offer is anywhere close to guaranteeing a profit.  Anything that looks like a sure profit is a scam.


You cant be that naive.


If you value your bitcoins, yep. Cold wallet for the win.

Its easy. If you do the math based on pb's public numbers,  you learn that in the previous month, PB got at least $150,000 more in revenue than they paid out as divs.  If you post that, then you got some ponzi apologists that try to correct your numbers, and you end up with closer to $250,000.  That would be net profit if you assume they have no real running costs. Not bad for one month.

Whatever the real number, no one is arguing its <$0. Hence continuing the ponzi is still increasing the operators loot.

The question of course is,  for how long.

Ive only recently been logging their stats, and one cant be sure they are accurate, but it appears sales arent going too well now. The past few days have been pretty much stagnant. If that continues,  Id expect desperate measures like price cuts or bonus reinvestment programs or whatever. If that fails to stop the bleeding, it wont be long before pbmining website looks like www.bitcoincloudhashing.com.

Fixed that for you.