My cloud mining experiment

[botolo86]

Hello Fellow Miners,

I love the idea of cloud mining and I know that many of you think this is not profitable. Not having other options (I can't host hardware at my place) and willing to have some fun, I started buying some hash power from some of the most popular or interesting vendors and I will report daily here on my results.

These are the vendors I am buying from:

NimbusMining
Great vendor, you can rent GHS one year and direct their hash power anywhere you want. I am currently mining at BTCGuild.
The price, however, is very high.
They use hardware from BFL.

CEX
Popular cloud mining provider. I love the fact that I can resell my GHS in the future. They have the biggest pool, GHASH.IO.
Prices are much better than NimbusMining but you can't direct your GHS anywhere you want.

PBMining
I know that someone here says they are a scam, but I have read many posts from happy customers and I wanted to give them a try. More than leasing hashing power, I have the feeling that you are contributing to their own mining network and they repay you with exact mining results according to a fixed calculation.
They have the best price out there. Payouts every week.

Here is the initial spreadsheet.

[alani123]

Thank you for this one.

[botolo86]

Thank you for this one.

You're very welcome. I have read so many posts about cloud mining and mining profitability in general and the truth is that there are so many variables out there, that it's very difficult to see whether cloud mining will be profitable in the long run. That's why I had this idea. Let's see where this hash power will go.

[JayRobo]

cool keep following through with this. I thought about cloud mining but it seemed unprofitable

[botolo86]

Today's update. A couple of notes:

• The mining result from CEX may have some dust from a previous BTC transfer, so today it may not represent pure mining results
• The USD value of the total mined is being heavily affected by the poor BTC/USD exchange rate today

[laserfocus]

Today's update. A couple of notes:

• The mining result from CEX may have some dust from a previous BTC transfer, so today it may not represent pure mining results
• The USD value of the total mined is being heavily affected by the poor BTC/USD exchange rate today

Thanks for starting this thread. 

Considering cloud mining myself...helpful to see real world examples. 

Based on your spreadsheet cloud mining appears unprofitable in the short term. 

One way to better fine tune results might be to compare number of coins you can purchase vs. number of coins mined.  If it's about the same, better to invest directly in the coins(sure thing) instead of leasing out rigs in the hopes of a potentially higher payout.

If you don't mind sharing it'd be great to know which coins you're mining.

[ujka]

...
One way to better fine tune results might be to compare number of coins you can purchase vs. number of coins mined.  If it's about the same, better to invest directly in the coins(sure thing) instead of leasing out rigs in the hopes of a potentially higher payout.
...

On that spreadsheet, there is a column 'Potential BTC purchase', and than 'Total BTC mined' and 'Total BTC gain', so you can compare just that, leaving $/btc exchange rate aside.

[botolo86]

I am so glad that many people appreciate this project and find it useful. Here is the spreadsheet for today. Some comments:

• I have added some columns to see the daily mining outcome of each single cloud mining platform. I usually update the spreadsheet at the same time, at around 6.00am PST but don't expect it to be exactly a 24 hours round;
• Day 2 results are not reliable, because I had some BTC dust in the CEX account which is not related to CEX's mining. But starting from day 3 everything gets normal

[botolo86]

I am having a lot of fun with this project and I have just updated my spreadsheet with some projections. I am basically taking the last value for daily BTC mined and reporting it for the number of days that I know difficulty will still remain the same, according to bitcoinwisdom.com.

[raskul]

good stuff, thanks for taking the time to compile this, i'll be watching  

[b!z]

When do you expect to start making profit?

[botolo86]

When do you expect to start making profit?

I have no idea. Some BTC calculators say never, some others say 3 months. I created this project to see what really happens. No assumptions on BTC/USD value, no assumption on difficulty increase, just the real thing.

[raskul]

When do you expect to start making profit?

I have no idea. Some BTC calculators say never, some others say 3 months. I created this project to see what really happens. No assumptions on BTC/USD value, no assumption on difficulty increase, just the real thing.

my own first purchase on PBMining was at the end of february. as of today (1 month on) that purchase has mined half of what I paid for it. so taking difficulty increases into account, 3 months sounds about right for GH purchases from them. can't comment on the others...

[5ick3uffalo]

25 $ for 1 Gh/s? OMG lol

[alani123]

Is there something wrong with PB mining? The earning seem similar to those of the 6 Gh/s of cex! 

[raskul]

Is there something wrong with PB mining? The earning seem similar to those of the 6 Gh/s of cex!  

perhaps it's CEX who are skimming on mining returns?  

add: I have 60GH on PBmining now and the returns are most definately correctly comparible with my 170GH rig at home, which I mine on a dgm pool.

[ujka]

Is there something wrong with PB mining? The earning seem similar to those of the 6 Gh/s of cex! 

He said he had some 'dust' on cex address.

[alani123]

Is there something wrong with PB mining? The earning seem similar to those of the 6 Gh/s of cex! 

He said he had some 'dust' on cex address.

But still assuming that 60 is 10 times bigger than 6.

Shouldn't the daily payout be similar to that?

[raskul]

Is there something wrong with PB mining? The earning seem similar to those of the 6 Gh/s of cex! 

He said he had some 'dust' on cex address.

But still assuming that 60 is 10 times bigger than 6.

Shouldn't the daily payout be similar to that?

If you consider the difference between the luck of each pool, there is aught to be some variance.

[ujka]

Is there something wrong with PB mining? The earning seem similar to those of the 6 Gh/s of cex!  

He said he had some 'dust' on cex address.

But still assuming that 60 is 10 times bigger than 6.

Shouldn't the daily payout be similar to that?

I'm looking day 3:
cex daily:         0.00037
PB mining daily: 0.00544

It's 14 times bigger. (luck probably)