Is 'renting' GH/s a viable option? any guys here do it?

[Bobbyd]

Hi guys, first post so please be gentle.

Through my currently short adventure in to the world of Bitcoin, I've come across an increasing number of individuals/organisations offering GH/s up for rent. Now, is this option a profitable one? when one takes in to the account the cost of running the hardware, not to mention the initial cost of purchasing, is it an avenue many miners have explored? or more of a gag for the less informed to hand over their hard earned cash? Here in the UK the approximate cost per KW/h is around $0.22 about 30% more than across the pond, and with the ever increasing difficulty soon you'll need 2TH/s to get a decent return if you purchase the device (just an estimation).

Minerlease is one company which offers the service, although I think they're quite expensive. However as some topics/articles have stated the cost of BTC could reach $1000, again yes I understand this is entirely speculation but say if you made 2 BTC over the year, that would most likely cover your costs of rental and you'd make a tidy profit from doing well.....nothing.

So, what are your thoughts?

[bitcarder]

Renting GH/s is a very feasible option for people who lack the knowledge to mine but want to get in on the profits that can be earned by mining. Most of the guys that do it like www.cloudhashing.com and www.hastrade.com sell contracts with certain amounts of hash power and time constraints. It's basically like investing in a blue-chip stock and you're guaranteed to get some money back every month (or the time specified in your contract). In terms of breaking-even, that's something you have to calculate carefully and account for rising difficulty.

[Lethn]

Thanks for the info Bitcarder because I've been curious about that too, I'm always looking for ways to legitimately increase what Bitcoins I have without getting scammed.

[whiskers75]

Warning, cloudhashing has multiple scam reports.
http://cex.io is the current option for renting hashing power, but always have caution in any investment.

[balanghai]

cex is the best way to go. you can sell it if feel need it. It's not a rental but a share that you buy and you earn from mining while holding on to the shares. Start your cloud miner now.

[Whity]

Since today cex does also merged mining, which makes you also some devcoin, namecoin and ixcoin at the same time.
It is my preferred cloud platform

[pysiak]

I concur with previous poster about cex.io
Started a couple of days ago and it's working and seamless to start.
It's good that you can sell the GH/s so you can recover your investment. Unlike buying hardware asic. I bought from BFL and waited 8 months. The cost of that ended up 40$/GH/s. At cex.io I get about 23$/GH/s (depends on how you calculate different curriencies and which exchange you use) and I get GH/s instantly, not after 8 mos.

[243e]

I haven't heard of cex.io before, and I'll have to look into it. Cloudhashing.com and all of the other such sites that I have seen thus far seem like ridiculously bad investments, though. Even if they aren't flat-out scams, you can just look at the cost for their hashing power and look at the various projections of hashing rate increases over time. Every time that I have done this, the result has been that you should expect to lose a lot of money---but don't take my word for it, do this yourself. In addition, it has never been clear to me what the incentive would be for a company to sell mining contracts. If their PR is truthful, and you really can expect a sizable return on your investment, then this means that they are losing money by selling contracts---since they have the hashing power, they should just use it themselves. But perhaps I'm missing something.