Sorry mate, you're already enrolled. GH's will keep piling up!

I started a signature campaign to promote this thread and push back a tiny little bit against the ponzi's:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=888864

I offer anyone, regardless of rank or post count, a 10TH "Masters Cub" cloudy mining contract completely for free and for as long as your signature is something similar(*) to this:


Newbies who cant put links in their signature can use something like this instead:


"Masters Cub"  is operated by me, it is a perpetually cloudy bitcoin mining operation that pays out a theoretical 100% PPS with zero fees and automatically reinvests 100% of your revenue in additional hashrate, using the best market rates available. So your hashrate will grow constantly.  It does so forever, or for as long as you use this signature. The process is 100% automatic, you dont have to do anything other than adopting the signature and post in this thread to start your contract.  (that said, if you want to know how many TH your contract is worth at any point, you will have to do the math yourself).

Additionally, each month this campaign runs, I will select one post that I consider the "least useless post of the month" that is carrying this signature,  and award the person a 10 million satoshi (0.1 BTC) bonus. The selection is completely arbitrary, and can be based on being funny, useful, creative, innovative or any other reason that makes me think the post stands out among this ocean of scams, shill and post-count-bump posts that we call "bitcointalk".

(*) Feel free to change the signature design in to something far more creative, as long as it points to the same thread.

Why do I do this?
Because I want to push back at least a tiny bit against the countless (cloudmining) ponzi scams that seem to appear on a daily basis. Their biggest tool is this very forum and the fact it allows renting signature space for ads, pays users per (nonsense) post and allows referral links even to obvious scams. I do not understand why forum adminstrators allow this to continue, as it results in a forum thats almost devoid of content while being inundated by meaningless posts, obvious shilling and non stop scams. Many of the substantive posters that actually contributed have long fled (if not, sold their account). If this is allowed to continue, soon there will only be scammers, scam shills, referral whores, and scam victims left. I dont pretend this effort will help a lot, but its better than doing nothing.

Am I serious?
Yes. I will award the 0.1 BTC each month, assuming there is at least one post worthy of consideration. Of course the cloudy mining contract value is rather questionable, but then so are most other cloudmining contracts, and at least on this one, you wont lose any money.

Silly question. We are early december, so he's gotta take a loooong Christmas holiday first, buy lots of presents, and then see how much he is willing to refund and to whom.

posting here isnt going to do anything, nor will anything else I fear, but FWIW, I fully agree

And what could that possibly prove ? Of course a ponzi like yours will pay out initially. That's irrelevant. Pirate and PBmining and BT trader and all the 29432 other ponzi's paid out perfectly. Until one day they no longer did. So will this ponzi.

No, its either someone trying to steal login credentials, or more likely, just translated the site to russian to get referrals.

He is buying time, that much is obvious, was predictable and predicted.
But he is still "out of stock", and since we nailed his id, I seriously doubt he would be digging an even bigger pit for himself.

True, but a real company with real people and real assets would then be taking a real risk, financially and potentially even facing jail time. Its possible of course, see MtGox, but its not equally likely to happen as with these anonymous copy/paste scams. I hope Im not implying any of these companies is somehow 100% trustworthy, no company or person ever is. You could one day run away with an escrow,  but that doesnt mean you are as likely to scam someone as, say, Dank,

I was pretty much doing that already, but I dont think its fair to label anyone as a ponzi if I havent even checked them out, or given them an opportunity to give or highlight evidence that may be public. So as of now, and with the above linked (scam, bet on it), I just ask the questions I use as criteria and give the operator a chance to reply before defaulting their score to 7/7.

Hi,

I rate cloudmining companies on their likely hood of being a ponzi scam in this thread:

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

Can you please look over the criteria I use, quoted below, and where possible provide arguments or evidence if one of these points does not apply to you;

1) No public mining address / no user selectable pool.
A cloud mining company that wont let you direct the hashrate to your pool of choosing and cant prove its actually mining bitcoins itself, is very likely a scam. There is no reason to hide mining address or not sign blocks. None.

2) No endorsement from any asic vendor
Asic vendors will gladly make a simple post to show the company in question is a significant customer of theirs. Its free advertisement for them and it helps their customer grow their business, so there is absolutely no reason they wouldnt. If a (cloud) mining company cant get any asic vendor to post such endorsement, you should assume they dont have any hardware to mine with.

3) No relevant pictures of their hardware and datacenter
There is no reason not to provide such pictures, except of course, if there is nothing to take pictures off. Mind you: pictures can be faked. Picture dont prove current ownership. So like all criteria listed here, by themselves they are by far insufficient proof.

4) Open ended IPO
Unless the cloud mining is operated by the asic vendor himself, you can not sell an unlimited amount of hashrate. Hardware takes (usually a long) time to order, arrive and deploy. Any company that doesnt limit sales or make public how much hashrate they sold vs what they have (provably) deployed should be considered extremely suspicious.

5) Referral programs and social networking
Referral programs, especially ones that pay almost 10%, are a huge red flag. The mining market is cut throat with razor thin margins. No real company can afford to pay 10% referrals on below market cloudmining prices. Referral programs almost always serve only to feed the ponzi and provide financial incentive to posters to lie about the true nature of the company. Never trust anyone with a referral link in their sig.

6) Anonymous operators
If the operators are hiding behind whoisguard, provide no provable identity and/or company registration information and especially when, like in some cloudmining cases, they use demonstrably false ID or company registration information, you have to be nuts to trust them with your money.

7) No exit strategy
If you cant sell your position, you cant get your money out. Thats the ideal case for a ponzi and allows it to run for a  long time.

Am I right saying your company scores 7/7 on my ponzi scale ?

LOL, missed that. Imagine my surprise. 7/7 it is.

Initial ponzi assessment 6/7 -> Ponzi

I suspect that will climb to 7/7 once they announce referral programs.

AMHAsh, can you please address this question:


I rated AMhash top scores for credibility, but at the same time you are associated with and relying on a company that I had to give pretty much the same credibility rating as 3 ponzi's that have recently collapsed. If this doesnt get cleared up, Im going to have to take this in to account.

Lets see if thats true. I list and rate cloudmining companies in this thread based on the likelihood they are a ponzi scams:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=878387.0

Im using 7 criteria atm, only one appears to be full filled for now (no referrals, but Im sure that will change) and one is still subject to verification (your address and company registration). 

Did I miss anything else?

Ha! Happy birthday young man

I had not. *sigh* these scams really are a dime a dozen. One down and three new ones pop up. Do you know if anyone verified the listed address?

To all victims that didnt see this coming, or those (crazy enough to be) looking for another cloudmining provider, please read this
Cloudmining 101 (ponzi risk assessment) first.

when I quickly add up all incoming transactions to peta's mining address, I get ~331 BTC for the past month or 11 BTC per day. That is  0.0096/TH/day. Quite far from your estimate.

So either ghash is having terrible luck, not paying out correctly or cryptx is not pointing all its hashrate at the pool.
So I checked its stats, and WTF ?

http://www.petamine.co/stats/

I guess they are moving to another pool and didnt feel the need to tell anyone?
Either way, until yesterday the chart does still show the full ~1150TH at ghash, so for now Im gonna blame either ghash or bad luck at ghash and assume thats why cryptx is moving to another pool. But it would be wise to follow this up and ask him to comment.

At least its a large and beautiful jail