Cloud Mining Journey (with Hashflare)

[mghaynes]

TLDR; I bought 20 TH/s from Hashflare and I'm going to post here what happens.

https://i.imgur.com/fVqkOUD.png

FULL BLOG BELOW

Maybe there are other people out there like me. You see bitcoin jumping to $11,000 and you hear people say bitcoin may go to $100,000 in a few years. You get excited and you decide to join the craze. Sure, on the one hand, you think it's a bubble, but on the other hand, what if it's not? Maybe you think this is Google at $250 or Netflix at $100. In those stocks you missed the initial gains but there was still a long way to go.

After getting excited and reading a little, you decide to try mining. Of course, you quickly discover that every piece of mining equipment is selling at 3-4 times the listed price. The equipment manufacturers themselves are sold out and booking orders for delivery 2-3 months out. On top of that, you keep reading that difficulty increases mean the miners earn less and less over time. You read what happened to Dash when the D3 hit the market and decide you better get in right now. So, you look into cloud mining.

Immediately, you notice a dichotomy in opinion on cloud mining. Some say all cloud mining is a scam and others say they have made money in cloud mining. A few companies are generally held out as being legitimate. These include Genesis Mining and Hashflare.  Genesis is no longer taking new bitcoin contracts. Hashflare is. Probably because there are a lot of angry people that they cut contracts from lifetime to 1-year. Ironically, the fact they did this kind of makes me think they are legitimate. I mean, if a scam why not just disappear with the money? And why would major credit card companies still allow you to send them money? It's confusing. What is real and what is not?

To answer the above question, I decided to purchase 20 TH/s from Hashflare. Why 20TH/s? Hashflare currently has a policy to only let you transfer BTC0.1 at a time. At the current mining difficulty, 20 TH/s should mine about BTC0.1 per month. So, I should be able to transfer monthly from Hashflare to my wallet. I will not reinvest. I will cash out each month and see if they let me.

After purchasing my 20 TH/s, the first troubling thing I notice is the following statement at the top of the login page:
 "Bitcoin withdrawals continue to be performed with a delay. The withdrawals that are confirmed on HashFlare.io are broadcasted to the network by block.io and are placed in the Mempool queue. This means these transactions now await confirmations by the miners.  
  You can track your transactions here: https://chain.so/. If your transaction exists in chain.so it means it is already in the queue. HashFlare support is unable to speed it up since its out of our control.
   As soon as the queue of outgoing transactions is completely cleared, this message will be removed."

Bitcoin transactions should take minutes not days. Some research reveals Hashflare pays the transaction fee themselves, so they are paying the absolute minimum fee. This is weird. Why not just charge the transaction fee to the contract holders? Sadly, the only reason I can think to do this is if there is no mining. This makes sense if the whole thing is a ponzi scheme and they need new blood to pay the old blood but new blood is not coming in. $H!t! What have I gotten into? Is it too late to get me money back? Is that why Hashflare freezes your account for two weeks if you fund with a credit card? I'm starting to freak out. Ok, deep breath. I brought my TH/s using a credit card, so if need be I can dispute the charges (hopefully). Let's give them a few days and let's see if my 20 TH/s starts producing BTC0.003/day.

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[mghaynes]

TL;DR - After a day of cloud mining, I have 0.003 BTC. https://i.imgur.com/YfDjVbi.png The amount matches almost exactly calculations from https://www.cryptocompare.com/mining/calculator/

FULL BLOG BELOW

A day after purchasing 20 TH/s from Hashflare and then proceeding to freak out, I check my Hashflare account at 0:00 UTC. There is nothing credited to my account. Still 0 BTC. I check again 30 minutes after that. Nothing. 30 minutes later, still nothing. I'm really starting to get nervous. Fortunately, I get distracted for an hour going to pick up and friend. Then, I'm watching Monday Night Football (brutal game by the way). After the game, I check the account. It says I have 0.003 bit coins. Phew! First hurdle passed.

Looking at the breakdown, I see I mined about BTC0.037 and the maintenance fee was about BTC0.0006. At yesterday's exchange rate of about $11,600USD/BTC, that's $43 in mining revenue less $7 in electricity and maintenance fees. Screenshot of breakdown: https://i.imgur.com/o6cFcFA.png

In case you're interested, yesterday I pooled 50% Slush and 50% BTChina. I chose these pools after looking at this site: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Comparison_of_mining_pools. Today, I'm adding F2Pool as a third mining pool.

[Rahar02]

Ok, let me note it;
You have purchased 20 Th/s which worth $3000 ?? Or am I miscalculated?
Everyday, hashflare will give you BTC0.003 ?? Or BTC0.03 ?? Please be clear about it, do not typo and misplaced a number.
Maintenance fee BTC0.0006 is pretty big imo as there is another cloud mining which offers cheaper maintenance fee, buy unfortunately out of stock or not yet offer a new contract.
If your mining contract will always generate BTC0.003 per day, you may reach a breakeven point within 3 months, right?
Then, I'll keep an eye on this thread for 3 months. Good luck.

[mghaynes]

In response to Rahar02, let me clarify a few points for transparency.

On December 4, 2017, I purchased 20 TH/s for $2800 USD from Hashflare. That's $1.4/10Ghz  x 2000 Ghz = $2800.

Based on the current bitcoin difficulty and block size, I expect to mine BTC0.0036 per day minus the maintenance fee.

The Hashflare electricity and maintenance fee is $0.0035 USD per Ghz. This works out to $7 USD per day for my 20 THz. An efficient miner (i.e. Antminer S9) requires about 1 kwH per 10 THz of hasing power. Therefore, my 20 Thz should use about 2 kwH of electricty. Do the math and Hashflare is basically charging me about $0.146/kWh for electricity. This is pretty high. Some rudimentary checking indicates $0.1/kwH is typical charge for hosting a miner in many places. In Estonia where Hashflare is located, the average industrial cost for electricity $0.08 USD. Hashflare is clearly making a nice profit just on the maintenance fees. In fact, I'll probably make another post with my thoughts on the economics of cloud mining. Obviously, mining yourself is a much better proposition financially in every way. Even in cloud mining, I would preferred Genesis Mining as it is typically held out as the best of breed. Of course, if you can't get your hands on a miner and the other cloud mining companies aren't offering bitcoin contracts...you end up with Hashflare.

As for my break even, yes, if the price of bitcoin stays steady, then I should break even in a little under 3 months.

[BitMaxz]

Why invest in hashflare you have a large amount of money top invest that i think antminer s9 price directly from bitmain is $1415 usd and $100 for PSU since you had $2800 why you still choose to invest in cloud mining instead you can mine bitcoin with your own and its more profitable because you own the hardware..
And you can mine that 0.003 nearly with the antminer.. and you can buy more antminer if your first miner earn the same price of antminer and you can make more profit than you are investing in cloud mining.. There are lots of cloud mining online but for me there is no legit that can gives me profit base in what i experience i scam many times in many different cloud mining.
So right now i don't trust them instead i'll mine with my own..

[elkoxon]

Following as i know some people will be surprised by the results. Maybe this will finally stop the FUD

[mobnepal]

Why invest in hashflare you have a large amount of money top invest that i think antminer s9 price directly from bitmain is $1415 usd and $100 for PSU since you had $2800 why you still choose to invest in cloud mining instead you can mine bitcoin with your own and its more profitable because you own the hardware..
And you can mine that 0.003 nearly with the antminer.. and you can buy more antminer if your first miner earn the same price of antminer and you can make more profit than you are investing in cloud mining.. There are lots of cloud mining online but for me there is no legit that can gives me profit base in what i experience i scam many times in many different cloud mining.
So right now i don't trust them instead i'll mine with my own..

I also agree with bitmaxz however it will be quite exciting to see how your cloud mining journey gonna end.

If I were you, I will rather buy mining hardware from bitmain and start mining at my garrage with double mining power so 100% more daily profit.  

I have never invested a penny in any cloud mining contracts and will never do...

[elkoxon]

See, where i live the electricity is 0.18$ per KWh so the maintenance fee o HF is actually lower (yes i do agree owning hardware is better and i actually own hardware and still invest in HF)

[mghaynes]

TL;DR Hashflare domain name expires in 10 days!  But this probably doesn't matter.

FULL BLOG BELOW

Ok, I'm back in freakout mode. I saw in another thread that Hashflare domain expires on December 15. So, I went to check it out myself. Anyone can do it, simply Google "whois hashflare.io." Sure enough, the domain name is set to expire on December 15. https://i.imgur.com/3SNpDkD.jpg This is worrisome since December 15 is just 10 days away. So, I sent an email to Hashflare. Basically, the email was, "Dear Hashflare, in case you didn't know, your domain name is set to expire in 10 days. Are you going to do something about that?"

I got back the following automated response:
"Your request (359822) has been received and is being reviewed by our support staff and a member of our team will get back to you as soon as possible.

Please note, that due to the emerging issues, the support queue currently has ~4000 tickets. Our customer support team will reply to every request, though the response time may reach 3-5 days in some cases.

You can reply to this email to add additional comments. Please do not create multiple tickets for the same issue as it will not speed up the resolution.

Best Regards,
HashFlare.io"

Great. Looks like I'm going to be freaking out for at least the next 3 days and probably longer. If they don't renew the domain by December 15, then we can no longer reach the site. The domain would go into an expired status and Hashflare would have a minimum of 0 to 45 days to renew the domain (at discretion of the registrar). From the whois information, I see that Hashflare's registrar is key-systems. Out of curiosity, I decide to check their policy on expired domains (it's a minimum of 14 days before they actually delete the domain registration). But, I stumbled into something more important. Their domain renewal policy. It reads:
"Renewals of Registration
1. Renewals of registration are possible for 1 to 10 years depending on the domain name.
2. A contract for the registration and administration of a domain name shall be renewed automatically for another 12 month term at the end of the registration period if it is not terminated with a notice period of 3 months prior to the date of expiry, unless agreed otherwise.
3. For renewals the price list at the renewal date is applicable.
4. Customer will be informed by e-mail of his obligation to pay for the renewal in accordance with the provisions of ICANN or the respective registry in time before the end of the registration period. If Customer does not terminate the contract on time and Customer has either identified his payment method to be credit card or bank debit and entered current and valid payment details, then Registrar will automatically charge the due amount 10 days prior to the expiration date and the contract will be renewed accordingly. Customer is solely responsible for ensuring the timely receipt of the fees applicable or for the functioning of the chosen payment."
(Emphasis added by me)

Ok. So, the domain should renew automatically. 10 days before the expiration, they'll charge Hashflare's credit card or bank account...that's tomorrow! If the payment goes through, the domain should be registered through December 15, 2018. Financial transactions usually take a day or two to clear, so the domain should be renewed by Friday, December 8. Ok. I'll stop freaking out until Friday.

[Slow death]

Ok. I'll stop freaking out until Friday.

they have a company that allows them to have huge profits at the expense of other people's money, I do not see why they have not yet renewed their domain, I commented in a post that they are acting strangely. they consistently make promotions and monies, restrict payments and constantly increase and decrease the minimum value of withdrawals, just look at their twitter as they are very active. This is all very strange

As for my break even, yes, if the price of bitcoin stays steady, then I should break even in a little under 3 months.

Is that even possible? I doubt it

[hahahafr]

Wow you are really risking your whole ass in there, hashflare has scammed out a lot of people and i know a guy who put all his life savings in this website, he lost it all because they closed his account without letting he know.

I really hope that you are going to recover your investment, 20th's are not a big deal, i mean, it is a huge amount of hashpower, and maybe you are going to be able to make more than 1500 bucks a month right?

Why are not you able to withdraw? They were having some issues a few days ago but far as i know they have fixed it up, what is your problem with the withdrawals?

[mghaynes]

Wow you are really risking your whole ass in there, hashflare has scammed out a lot of people and i know a guy who put all his life savings in this website, he lost it all because they closed his account without letting he know.

Fortunately, I'm in a position where it'd suck to lose my investment, but it wouldn't affect my day-to-day life. I've always fantasized about letting people know the truth about various things, and this is my chance to let people know some truth about cloud mining.

I really hope that you are going to recover your investment, 20th's are not a big deal, i mean, it is a huge amount of hashpower, and maybe you are going to be able to make more than 1500 bucks a month right?

I hope to recover my investment too! I bought my TH/s on my credit card    Given the price of bitcoin as of yesterday, I would make about $1000/mo. But, as you know the price is in a constant state of flux. And, difficulty will increase. There should be a lot of TH/s coming online at the end of this month, and then again at the end of January.  So this profit will not last more than a month.

Why are not you able to withdraw? They were having some issues a few days ago but far as i know they have fixed it up, what is your problem with the withdrawals?

I purchased my TH/s with a credit card. There is a two week account hold on withdrawals for credit card purchases. https://i.imgur.com/NMo5w1O.png So, I haven't tried to withdraw yet. I did see when I first signed up that they had temporarily increased the minimum withdrawal to BTC0.1. I haven't checked to see if it changed or not. The message about withdrawing appears at the top of the site whenever you login. I guess a lot of people have been complaining about withdrawal issues.

[mghaynes]

Why invest in hashflare you have a large amount of money top invest that i think antminer s9 price directly from bitmain is $1415 usd and $100 for PSU since you had $2800 why you still choose to invest in cloud mining instead you can mine bitcoin with your own and its more profitable because you own the hardware.. And you can mine that 0.003 nearly with the antminer.. and you can buy more antminer if your first miner earn the same price of antminer and you can make more profit than you are investing in cloud mining

I also agree with bitmaxz however it will be quite exciting to see how your cloud mining journey gonna end.
If I were you, I will rather buy mining hardware from bitmain and start mining at my garrage with double mining power so 100% more daily profit.  

I am also buying 4 x Antminer S9 and a 1 x Whatsminer M3. I'll post about that journey separately. To make a long story short, if you order right now, you won't get systems until late January/February. By then, mining difficulty will have gone up a couple times and the systems won't be as profitable. So, if legit, I could have earned back the money I invested in cloud mining by the time my antminer's get here.

.. There are lots of cloud mining online but for me there is no legit that can gives me profit base in what i experience i scam many times in many different cloud mining.
So right now i don't trust them instead i'll mine with my own..

I have never invested a penny in any cloud mining contracts and will never do...

I have read so many different opinions on cloud mining that I wanted to experience it first hand and show everyone the truth. If I get scammed, it will be documented in a way everyone can see. If it's legit, then people should know that too. At the end of the day, a $2800 investment won't make or break me, so I can afford to do what a lot of people can't. For me, the journey is more fun than the destination.  Finally, in the back of my head, I have an idea about starting a legit cloud mining company based in the US and subject to the laws of the US. If I go that route, understanding how other cloud mining companies work will make for a better business.

[Zocadas]

Nice calculation, but you invested into a sinking ship. Hashflare has cut lifetime contracts, doesn't payout automaticly anymore, changes withdraw minimums and you will soon experience, that mining power will go down dramaticly. Do the best with the situation and cash out as often as you can. Don't reinvest. You can be glad if you will get your investment back. Keep your Botcoin and let it work itself.

[mghaynes]

TL;DR - I accidentally reinvested my first day's profits  https://i.imgur.com/TnN7x4t.jpg

FULL BLOG BELOW

I just went and checked my Hashflare account and was surprised to see my BTC balance was BTC0.00010519. WTF! I'm looking over everything to understand where my BTC went, when I notice on my dashboard that I now have 20.25 TH/s. https://i.imgur.com/TnN7x4t.jpg Looking at my history, I see what happened. Apparently, I reinvested my profit back into more TH/s. https://i.imgur.com/mjyp9Pb.jpg. Hmm. This is not what I wanted to do. I need that BTC to payoff my credit card!

There are some buttons on the dashboard that say "Withdraw" and "Reinvest". I click the reinvest button and I see what happened. The default setting is to "Reinvest in SHA-256." https://i.imgur.com/xNpG8EX.png Ok. I change the setting to "Do not reinvest."  Hopefully, this solves the problem. I'll check back in a couple hours to see if I got my daily deposit.

[Rahar02]

As for my break even, yes, if the price of bitcoin stays steady, then I should break even in a little under 3 months.

Is that even possible? I doubt it

Well, most people doubt it, but we're curious about how it will be in 3 months. That's why it's interesting to watch closer on this thread.

TL;DR - I accidentally reinvested my first day's profits  

FULL BLOG BELOW

I just went and checked my Hashflare account and was surprised to see my BTC balance was BTC0.00010519. WTF! I'm looking over everything to understand where my BTC went, when I notice on my dashboard that I now have 20.25 TH/s. Looking at my history, I see what happened. Apparently, I reinvested my profit back into more TH/s. . Hmm. This is not what I wanted to do. I need that BTC to payoff my credit card!

There are some buttons on the dashboard that say "Withdraw" and "Reinvest". I click the reinvest button and I see what happened. The default setting is to "Reinvest in SHA-256." Ok. I change the setting to "Do not reinvest."  Hopefully, this solves the problem. I'll check back in a couple hours to see if I got my daily deposit.

LoL, not a terrible mistake, but it's an unnecessary one.
Too many scam accusations against this company and withdrawal issue is the most worrying thing. BTC0.1 limits for withdrawal is just ridiculous.
I appreciate your decisions to invest in mining in both ways (cloud mining and purchased mining hardware) clearly calculate your investment and acknowledge the risks involved. I would like to know about your orders from Bitmain as well, hopefully, you post a link here, just in case I miss it.

I have read so many different opinions on cloud mining that I wanted to experience it first hand and show everyone the truth. If I get scammed, it will be documented in a way everyone can see. If it's legit, then people should know that too. At the end of the day, a $2800 investment won't make or break me, so I can afford to do what a lot of people can't. For me, the journey is more fun than the destination.

Indeed, for a man with curiosity and fantasized about letting people know the truth about various things, you will make it clear whether it's worth or not. If you make it, then more people will invest in hashflare as well. But, for me; I would never deal with such risk

[cosmicnet]

Thanks for posting this. I know someone who made a similar investment, so far so good, it's matching the calculations but it's too early to know for sure. Hashflare certainly worries me more than GM and HN, but they haven't had any SHA256 mining contracts available for some time.

[mghaynes]

TL;DR - Day 2: Earned BTC0.0033 using 20.25 TH/s

DAY 2 BLOG BELOW
Yesterday, my BTC earnings showed up on my dashboard at 0349 UTC. Today, I anxiously await 0349 UTC and nothing appears. Hmm. Not good. I refresh the screen a minute later at 0350 and my BTC appears!  
https://i.imgur.com/0Ff4kfA.png
I mined BTC0.0038 less maintenance fees (about $7 USD) for a net of BTC0.0033.
https://i.imgur.com/R90p1aZ.png
So far so good. It's only been two days, but I don't see any reason to complain. The results have matched the estimated results from sites that calculate mining profit based on TH/s. At this point, I imagine the next real test will come in a month when I have BTC0.1 and attempt to withdraw it.

On a side note, I changed my mining pool allocation today. I am mining 50% Slush and 50% Antpool. The reason is Slush has the lowest PPS fee (2%) of all the mining pools available on Hashflare, but it is a medium sized pool accounting for only 10% of all mining. Antpool has a slightly larger PPS fee (2%) and they keep all transaction fees, but they account for 16% of all mining. So, I figure between the two I am participating in 26% of all found blocks. Over time, Antpool will find more blocks but pay me less on each found block while Slush will find fewer blocks but pay more for each found block. In fact, after thinking about it, I'll add BTC.com back to my mining pools tomorrow. They have high PPS fees (4%), but account for 16% of all found blocks. If I use all three pools, I will have a stake in 42%-43% of all found blocks.

[magneto]

Hopefully you do make a profit. However i can't say that i have personally had a good experience with cloud mining, especially i have heard a lot of stuff that would discourage me from investing in hashflare(Reducing from lifetime to 1 year, high withdrawal limits for no apparent reason, etc.).

If you do make a profit, do not reinvest.

Speaking from expeirence, just be settled with a net positive profit at all. Never reinvest, since you never know what their company is up to, or even whether or not they are actually mining or just a huge ponzi scheme.

[elkoxon]

Currently the withdrawal is actually at 0.0106, not 0.1