Hi, I just registered to reply to this thread I introduced my bro to hash flare just yesterday, and he was freaking out, and found this thread. And after reading it (btw, it's very thorough and very well written), I wanted to testify with my exp. in addition to mghaynes's journey.

TL;DR - I transferred about 0.05 BTC so far to my other wallet, and got return of investment in about 3 month (maybe little less).

I had similar question in August. I had a co-worker who already had contract with genesis-mining, and that he was getting payout so it was legit. I wanted to buy a contract with them, that was when BTC was rising around 4~5k, but I couldn't use my credit card (all my credit cards were declined). When I got enough BTC from coinbase, there was no BTC contract available anymore. So I looked for alternative, found hashflare. But like mghaynes, I had concerns about hashflare being scam. So I decided to test it myself, spent $360 to get 3TH using credit card.

I transferred about 0.05 BTC so far to my other wallet, reinvested about 0.02BTC since then. I still have 0.05 BTC in my wallet, so that's more than return of my investment. This is mainly due to steep rise of BTC price, but I remember making same conclusion as mghaynes in September. If the BTC price stays the same, you get your return of investment roughly in 3 months. Every mined coin after that is pure profit.

What I want to say is, even if this is 1 year contract, unless BTC price drops significantly, cloud mining is still profitable.

My brother and I wanted to buy S9 like last week / early this week, but it's sold out. Not sure when they're gonna announce next batch, but like mghaynes said, it'll arrive at your door after 3 month from you order (that is if you order right away when batch is out). Then you need to mine with it for few months to get the return of investment. So I think cloud mining is not that bad. With no s9 stock left on bitmain at this point, I'm thinking about investing more into hashflare.

I'm little nervous about renewal after reading whole threads, haha, I'll watch this thread and see if it gets renewed.

Thanks.

BTW, @mghaynes, thx for good write up and analysis. Also you should put your referral link on your blog. I got some BTC from that when someone used that link to register and bought hash power. (my bro didn't.. boo) Here's mine https://hashflare.io/r/5DEF5A51