My reputation, BTC rates, terms of trade and acceptable payment methods  can be found on LocalBitcoins.com: https://localbitcoins.com/accounts/profile/prudentmining/

If you want to buy BTC I will advise you to buy through LBC, at least for the first few times, for additional security and piece of mind.

Unfortunately, most of Altcoins can only be traded directly, so for quotes and everything else, please contact me on Telegram: @PrudentMining

If you contact me on Telegram, please make sure to only contact @PrudentMining. The scammers will change one letter in the name to look alike, they can also add some words like 'official' to the name- don't be fulled and check spelling!

If still in doubt, you can quite easily open account on LBC, even if you are not going to trade there, just to contact me via link above and to make sure you are talking to the right person on Telegram.

And remember, I will never approach you first, I will never pressure you into the deal or rush you, and if someone does that, be very suspicious and don't deal.

Better minds and better people than myself tried to organize buying group buy at no apparent success. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2572220.0.

Now I guess it's my turn for failure . After all I am just a newbie which understandably a red flag for most reasonable people (I know it would be one for me, too). Besides, the group buy idea on this forum was pretty much dead for about a year. Yet, I think I found a way to buy, where people don't need to put their trust into new personalities, even such wonderful as myself.

A little bit about group organizer: my name is Alex, I am from Toronto, ON. For about 10 years I owned a Freight Forwarding company in JFK, NY. Now I am trying to develop a mining service, you can google Prudent Mining. Anyway, the bottleneck of any group buy is payment vs goods. People want to send money to someone they trust, pretty obviously.

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Here are 2 ways I suggest how it can be done:

1. There are 5 US based escrows listed on this site: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2439910.0.

Let's choose 1 escrow for each of the following major destinations: JFK, LAX, IAH, ORD and YYZ. Each escrow collects funds for no more then 100 miners to start with and pays it directly to Bitmain with instructions to send shipment by air to the according US airport. The ultimate consignee on master AWB will be a US Customs broker for US shipments and a Canadian one for Canadian shipment.

DISCLAIMER: My background is in logistics, so I personally know the US broker for about 15 years. He has been in the industry for about 30 years and licensed his own company about 8 years ago.

You can and should be suspicious of everyone, including customs people, but the chances of customs broker running with 100K worth of merchandise, losing hard earned license and facing lawsuits along the way, would be pretty minimal.

Escrows are greater risk, almost none of us know them, and they are not licensed as escrow. Yet I have a feeling many forum members trust them, because of their history on this forum and positive reviews.

DISCLAIMER: Sending funds to any escrow is your own risk. I am just organizing a group buy, so I must not be held responsible for any wrong doing done by any third parties, including, but not limited by an escrow, manufacturer of miners, overseas freight forwarder, US customs officials, US Customs Broker, US domestic trucking company or releasing warehouse. (TO BE CONTINUED)

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Along with master AWB I will instruct overseas freight forwarder to produce what's called house AWBs for each participant in the group. That's the document which will allow each group member  to receive their miners.

Question: can a group organizer (i.e. myself) ask overseas freight forwarder to prepare HAWB or MAWB for myself, to receive all the miners, and then run?

Answer: We will instruct escrow to inform Bitmain during payment to use US Customs Broker as an ultimate Consignee on MAWB.

Master AWB holder, i.e. licensed US Customs Broker will be in control of the goods until it's customs cleared. He will be informed about each group member. Each group member will have to contact him directly PRIOR to shipping and PRIOR to payment from escrow to Bitmain is done. I will provide him with the list of names and contact details as well as the quantity each one ordered.

Each member will confirm that information with the broker directly. He will know what to expect for each client and whom it should be released to. He will also have the copy of each HAWB from me and from you and they have to match. Also, the totals from all HAWb’s should equal total number on MAWB. Any irregularities will be noticed.

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Now about process of releasing goods in the airports.

To avoid any confusion, there should be the same person and/or company on the HAWB as on POA. Once miners arrive to the US, people will have to bring those HAWB’s, POA and matching valid government personal ID (Drivers License or Passport), even if receiving for company, in order for the miners to be released.

Question: Can someone sneak into warehouse and receive goods instead of a lawful owner?

Answer: In order for someone to get your goods he will have to:

a. get hands on your HAWB by hacking your computer or stealing a paper copy from you
b. get hands on your POA, the same way as in a.
c. prepare fake ID with your name and present fake ID with your name at the warehouse equipped with video cameras.

Long shot, if you ask me.

(TO BE CONTINUED)

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Now about the order itself. I have been in contact with Bitmain for the last 2 days and there are good news and bad ones.

Ordering for June batch is pretty much closed unfortunately. The next batch of T17's and S17's is expected in September. So you are looking at about 3 months of your money seating at Bitmain. For some of you it can be a deal breaker right here.

The good news is that September batch of T17's and S17s will be cheaper. Not only hardware will be cheaper, there should be NO(!) 25% import tariff, as goods will be coming NOT from China. I cautiously say ‘should’ instead of ‘will’ because:

a. 3 months is a long period of time and government can change tariffs any way they want, especially with current administration.
b. Bitmain can change their mind or make a mistake and ship from China, triggering a tariff.

But as it stands right now there should be only 2.6% duty and no 25% tariff when importing to the USA.

You are in minority in this topic. Can you show your calculations?

I think cloud mining in general is not profitable.

Here are my calculations for Mining Cloud vs Buying Bitcoin.

All following calculations are done on annual basis.

All following calculations are done WITHOUT halvings and adjustments counted until you read later down.

Hash rate (total hash power of the world) close to 49 Mil. Th/S as of today May 17, 2019.

Every hour gives the world 6 blocks, multiply that by x 24h x 365 days= 52,560 blocks produced in the world in 1 year.

Currently there are 12.5 bitcoin mined per each block x 52,560 blocks= 657,000 bitcoin can be mined per year in the world if no adjustments and halvings happened.

49 mil. Th : 657,000= about 75 TH/s to mine 1 bitcoin as it stands now, before counting adjustments and halvings.

Let’s assume I bought 1 bitcoin today and paid about $7,200 (as of May 17, 2019) in a hope to sell it in 1 year at a higher price.

Now let’s see what would happen if instead of buying 1 bitcoin I invested the same amount of money in cloud mining.

Typical contract from a firm like Genesis Mining offers 1TH at a rate of about $60 all-inclusive per year (May 17, 2019), and that's including maintenance and other fees.

For $7,200 I can buy about  120TH for 1 year term of cloud mining.

120Th : 75Th per 1 bitcoin= that should give us 1.6 bitcoin over 1 year period of contract for the price of $7,200.
 
1.6 bitcoin is obviously more then 1 bitcoin which I can buy today, so cloud mining is better, right?

I think NOT, because remember we have not counted difficulty adjustments and halvings yet.

Now let’s do that, let's include them in the picture.

The next halving is in about 1 year,  so we don’t have to take it into our example as the contract will be over by the time of halving, so for now we just have to worry about difficulty adjustments.

But from historic data I never seen those adjustments less then 100% year over year and usually it’s even more.

So, in our example instead of 1.6 bitcoin, I am lucky if I get 0.8 bitcoin by the end of cloud mining contract.

Therefore, in my humble opinion, it’s safer to buy bitcoin rather then mine one in the cloud.

Would you disagree? And if I am wrong where the flaw in the logic and/or calculation?