Question regarding various cloud mining services

[BrendonM]

I have purchased about 60GH/s on CEX.io, and in my search for other sites that don't bend you over and screw you with maintenance costs, I found other sites like GAWminers.  For a few dollars on eBay, I can buy 1-2GH/s of lifetime CEX.io mining, wherease on GAWminers and some of the others, you are looking at numbers such as $40 for 1MH/s.

At face value it looks like you can buy 1000x the mining capacity for a fraction of the price, but I am assuming the situation is more complicated than that.

How do we explain the discrepancy in cost per unit of mining rate?

[railzand]

apples and oranges.
scrypt algorithm measured in M/hs for eg litecoin,
versus sha256 algo measured in G/hs for eg bitcoin.
both the shady outfits you mention pay out in btc - for now
cloud mining as of today is a sure way to lose money.

[DrG]

As noted above if you see mining in MH/s it's using the scrypt algorithm (like LTC/Doge).  If you see something mining in GH/s or TH/s it's SHA-256 (like Bitcoin).

Please read this before investing any further into cloud mining:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=739510.0

My advice, and this is just my opinion, sell your hash on cex.io, cash out the bitcoin, buy some more bitcoin on an exchange, and move it all to a cold wallet.

If you want to make money - do it the old fashioned way.  Learn to provide a service that can be reimbursed in BTC.

[BrendonM]

As noted above if you see mining in MH/s it's using the scrypt algorithm (like LTC/Doge).  If you see something mining in GH/s or TH/s it's SHA-256 (like Bitcoin).

Please read this before investing any further into cloud mining:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=739510.0

My advice, and this is just my opinion, sell your hash on cex.io, cash out the bitcoin, buy some more bitcoin on an exchange, and move it all to a cold wallet.

If you want to make money - do it the old fashioned way.  Learn to provide a service that can be reimbursed in BTC.

Is mining generally unprofitable because after a certain amount of time the difficulty makes profit impossible?  Or is it simply inherent to the nature of mining itself?

[DrG]

As noted above if you see mining in MH/s it's using the scrypt algorithm (like LTC/Doge).  If you see something mining in GH/s or TH/s it's SHA-256 (like Bitcoin).

Please read this before investing any further into cloud mining:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=739510.0

My advice, and this is just my opinion, sell your hash on cex.io, cash out the bitcoin, buy some more bitcoin on an exchange, and move it all to a cold wallet.

If you want to make money - do it the old fashioned way.  Learn to provide a service that can be reimbursed in BTC.

Is mining generally unprofitable because after a certain amount of time the difficulty makes profit impossible?  Or is it simply inherent to the nature of mining itself?

2 basic ways to get Bitcoin
-Buy it with cash
-Mine it with hardware

For most of us we only consider mining profitable if you can mine more than you could buy with the cash.  If you can buy 10BTC with $100 for example why by a miner for $100 that could only mine 6BTC - that wouldn't make sense.

With cloud mining - you have to spend either cash or BTC to buy hashing power.  As it stands no company looks like it will return more to you in BTC than your initial outlay - hence it's a losing proposition.  Yes the difficulty is part of it, but that would be there whether owning the miner or having it in a cloud.  The cloud part just makes the hardware 2 to 3x more expensive since you don't have to "get your hands dirty" so to speak.

[BrendonM]

As noted above if you see mining in MH/s it's using the scrypt algorithm (like LTC/Doge).  If you see something mining in GH/s or TH/s it's SHA-256 (like Bitcoin).

Please read this before investing any further into cloud mining:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=739510.0

My advice, and this is just my opinion, sell your hash on cex.io, cash out the bitcoin, buy some more bitcoin on an exchange, and move it all to a cold wallet.

If you want to make money - do it the old fashioned way.  Learn to provide a service that can be reimbursed in BTC.

Is mining generally unprofitable because after a certain amount of time the difficulty makes profit impossible?  Or is it simply inherent to the nature of mining itself?

2 basic ways to get Bitcoin
-Buy it with cash
-Mine it with hardware

For most of us we only consider mining profitable if you can mine more than you could buy with the cash.  If you can buy 10BTC with $100 for example why by a miner for $100 that could only mine 6BTC - that wouldn't make sense.

With cloud mining - you have to spend either cash or BTC to buy hashing power.  As it stands no company looks like it will return more to you in BTC than your initial outlay - hence it's a losing proposition.  Yes the difficulty is part of it, but that would be there whether owning the miner or having it in a cloud.  The cloud part just makes the hardware 2 to 3x more expensive since you don't have to "get your hands dirty" so to speak.

Hmm, well I guess I should sell my GH/s on eBay, I always bought them below average price, so if I break even or recoup most of the costs I'll be happy.  I read your large cautionary post and was glad to see I wasn't the only one who thought the maintenance fees were unjustifiable extrotion (three times in a row the maintenance was greater than the gains from the block). 

You seem to be the most knowledgable on the subject so I would like to ask - is there anyway conceivable way to passively invest in BTC without getting screwed?  I like to make my money work for me rather than work for it, hence the draw towards cloud mining.  Is there a way to invest in BTC where something equivalent to the interest we see in banking/the stock market is possible?