PBmining - legit?

[amprocket]

Their contracts should have years 2-5 in the bank by the end of year 1 and just pay out from that pot of money over time, no hashing (or electricity) required.

Not possible. They're offering roughly $3/ghps. That's essentially the going cost of hardware. If they have unlimited free electricity, then yes, it's possible. Who here believes they have unlimited free electricity? They might break even for a year. There's no way they'll survive 5 years.

That's assuming they haven't made a deal with a hardware manufacturer.

This lad had a valid point, they have sold a good bit of mining equipment on ebay with good feesback.

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[Ron~Popeil]

I have about 30GH with them now. So far so good. I may chuck a little more in from time to time but I am hesitant to go big until there is a bit more transparency. 

[amprocket]

I agree, what sort of hardware they are running would be nice to know/reassuring...

[windpath]

Going to watch this thread....

Below is a pic from the most complete mining calculator I have found, it accounts for difficulty increases over the time frame you tell it you are mining.

Advertised 0.007 BTC for 1 GH/s for 5 years (60 months)

According to my index (signature link) 0.007 BTC is worth around $3.07 USD right now....

According to the calculator 1GH/s (1,000 MH/s) @ a flat rate of $3.07 with no ongoing power cost will net a -$0.36 loss over the next 5 years with a difficulty increase of 1.6361% per day (the current average, this will likely go up over time).

This is at the current price of BTC during a crash, if Bitcoin survives 5 years you can bet the exchange rate will be MUCH higher, and this contract could *potentially* be very lucrative, it could also be a total loss. What will 1MH/s per second be worth next year, who knows? Probably not much considering the droves of TH/s+ equipment shipping right now...

Especially if it's a ponzi scheme, and without some transparency, who knows...

As a small-time miner and a business owner, this sounds insane to me. Would I sell 1 GH/s for $3.07 for 5 years? Hell no!

At current rate increases, just the projected increase in energy costs alone would sink them...

To me it sounds insane, like insane as in not possible?

Maybe they are betting on the cost per GH/s coming way down, which it will according to Moore's Law, but not accounting for increased energy costs?

How could you anticipate the value of Bitcoin, cost of energy and efficiency of chips in such a volatile market for 5 years out?

If it can be transparently verified (as it should be if its legit), I'm in, but I don't see that happening.

Just my .02 bits...

[ghur]

There's a much simpler question regarding their legitimacy: why do they use a coin mixing service for their payouts?
If they're legitimate, there's no reason at all users shouldn't be able to trace back their payout to a block reward.

They're hiding under the excuse of "protecting their personal safety" to keep their identities hidden.
A company without identifiable information is sketchy at best, but let's give em that, let's say they do have a valid reason to fear their safety.

This still doesn't prevent them from posting the tiniest bit of information/evidence their farm actually exists.

They're showing all the signs of a party who made the preparations to make a clean exit when their pile of bitcoin stops growing.

[Light]

This still doesn't prevent them from posting the tiniest bit of information/evidence their farm actually exists.

Yeah, I'm rather worried by the fact there is no evidence to prove that they are actually mining rather than running an elaborate ponzi. Some proof of their farms/tracing back transactions to a newly created block would be fine, but I doubt they would be willing to do that.

[Deep1]

That Site is legit.

[TechByPC]

That Site is legit.

Oh, looks like the debate is over. Again. Thanks for your deep insight, Deep1.

[iflash]

If they are a scam: Why do they sometimes "run out of stock"?

Of course, somebody could claim: To look more legit. But: If they are a ponzi, why would they even care about looking legit? Wouldn't they just sell as much as they possibly can to make as much money as possible? A ponzi "lives" from new customers, so turning them down from time to time would be a pretty stupid idea, huh?

For my own part: I am now at 3.7 BTCs paid out to me. This took 4 weeks at 1 TH/s.

Now with a few weeks of experience I now can calculate a possible outcome:

The highest payout was about 0,86 BTC (per week), the last one was 0,69 BTC (last week). If the degradation continuous at this level in the future, I will break even in fall. Afterwards, there won't be enough coming through week after week to make a significant difference (around 0,07 BTC).

So:

Let's assume for a second that http://pbmining.com?ref=iflash11 (yep, there is a ref-link included) IS legit, then it still might not be a great investment as the ROI is nearly nothing. If all goes well, I could make maybe half a BTC after one year, but then it's only satoshis. That would mean around 5 per cent interest.

For the risk involved this is not enough in my view.

EDIT PS: I forgot to mention that the price per GH/s dropped from 0,0089 to 0,0064 in the same time. So the price dropped about as much as the payouts for the GH/s bought.

[cloverme]

There are a few threads on pbmining, most asking for legitimacy and there's a few unresolved points with them as far as I can tell.

1) They haven't proved they actually mine in any way. They cite security concerns and attempts to social engineer information out of them and calls to their private residences, etc.

2) Their business model seems to generate revenue on the naivety of those who invest in their business. Selling 2gh/s on a 5 year contract will never return a profit.

3) There have been open discussions on whether they are a ponzi or a pyramid scam (referrals), so far the debate still continues.

I wouldn't invest a dime with them, they also say they have been hacked (a note to their homepage) and can't offer any estimate on a potential return on investment.

[tempestb]

They run "out of stock" because they have to distribute the funds by hand.  Which whether they are legit or not seems to be what they have admitted they are doing.  That's a long process, so the more people who buy in and get added, the more work they need to do to distribute funds. 

[xdmlaser]

Got my payout on time, last night, from my 125GH....paid 4-5 times now, probably won't buy any more with all this mystery, so that sucks, I wanted to double my size.

[xilatleo]

Almost ROI. I can say the site is legit until now

[BitcoinRichi]

Anyone know the company's address?  Perhaps from paypal you can get the address if you bought something from them.  I'd like to know more than the website hidden behind cloudflare and the admin's internet provider shaw communications.  I suppose I could phone Shaw and see if they will tell me.  What is the person's name and technical background?  Anyone know if there is any relation between pbmining and dominion bitcoin http://www.dominionbitcoin.com

[iflash]

They run "out of stock" because they have to distribute the funds by hand.  Which whether they are legit or not seems to be what they have admitted they are doing.  That's a long process, so the more people who buy in and get added, the more work they need to do to distribute funds. 

Sorry, that's BS. A *very* simple script can do that.

[haaggus]

We just started a cloud mining company, Data Center Mining Co-op. www.dcmco-op.com

We might be small right now but we're consistently paying out BTC to our shareholders and setting up partnerships with suppliers and service providers. Huge growth potential with this venture. At least I hope so, since I invested a sh*tload of BTC in it.

[Light]

If they are a scam: Why do they sometimes "run out of stock"?

Of course, somebody could claim: To look more legit. But: If they are a ponzi, why would they even care about looking legit? Wouldn't they just sell as much as they possibly can to make as much money as possible? A ponzi "lives" from new customers, so turning them down from time to time would be a pretty stupid idea, huh?

For the same reason that scam artists wish to look more legit - your going to get a lot more money looking legit than if you have a giant neon light flashing 'I'm a scam'. Turning them down would really only increase the hype and make people more intent on buying - haven't you seen the effect when people ask you something and you decline to answer. Their curiosity gets the better of them and they cannot help but pester you for an answer. By creating false scarcity people tend to value the asset more even though its not true.

I myself am invested in PBmining, but with some hindsight I don't think it was such a good idea. Even if they are not a scam, I'm doubtful they'll last long enough to fulfill their 5 year contract (although I'd love to be proven wrong).

[Gate559]

The biggest problem (beside the chance of being a scam+ponzi) is the fact that you can't resell your power.

So even if you ROI by the end of the year you won't make much after. You could of course invest what you earn or even more to keep up with the difficulty but to me it makes more sense to do that on cex.

[cloverme]

For the people here that got a payout, that doesn't mean the site is necessarily legitimate. The rumor on other boards is that this is a ponzi (just google pbmining ponzi) and like an offline ponzi, the theory here is pretty simple. In this example, new sales in BTC are used to provide a small payout in BTC to the previous customers... customer #400 pays 3.2BTC and customers 1 - 399 are paid 0.005 and 1.1 is pocketed. This is why everyone is asking pbmining to provide proof of mining, which the owner refuses to do (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=418183.640).

There's one comment in the thread that especially suspicious, "Also, our system works different than what you're used to.  The coins come from all directions, and make many hops to get away from prying eyes like yours.  Someone discovered one of our addresses and we removed it immediately from the pool.  Payouts are also fed from our insurance wallets to cover any performance reductions or downtime of the hardware  That is one of the key features of PB Mining."

If you're a miner, you're far better off buying your own hardware than trusting these guys.

[CLOUDMINING.GURU]

PBMINING might not be the most transparent cloud mining provider out there - yes.

We watched them since their very beginning and correct me if I am wrong but they sold cloud mining GHS off of Ebay some while ago.
So, why would they screw you / us over? The guy / guys who bought from them off Ebay do have a real contact name. In a screwover case they would be found easily.

Why are they so secretive? They have been DDOSED and people tried to hurt or bring them down in many ways, so they might be off better handling everything as secret as possible for the moment.

PBMINING is currently the most profitable cloud mining provider out there, and that with an outstanding service, like I stated we watched them since their beginning and they never let down one customer.
If there was any problems they resolved it friendly and quickly. It could be a scam, it could be a ponzi, only time will tell, but we personally do think they are LEGIT and here to STAY!

Aswell we wrote a review about them and you can check it here: https://cloudmining.guru - we do recommend them!

Regards