Hi,
I rate cloudmining companies on their likely hood of being a ponzi scam in this thread:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=878387.0Can you please look over the criteria I use, quoted below, and where possible provide arguments or evidence if one of these points does not apply to you;
1) No public mining address / no user selectable pool.
A cloud mining company that wont let you direct the hashrate to your pool of choosing and cant prove its actually mining bitcoins itself, is very likely a scam. There is no reason to hide mining address or not sign blocks. None.
2) No endorsement from any asic vendor
Asic vendors will gladly make a simple post to show the company in question is a significant customer of theirs. Its free advertisement for them and it helps their customer grow their business, so there is absolutely no reason they wouldnt. If a (cloud) mining company cant get any asic vendor to post such endorsement, you should assume they dont have any hardware to mine with.
3) No relevant pictures of their hardware and datacenter
There is no reason not to provide such pictures, except of course, if there is nothing to take pictures off. Mind you: pictures can be faked. Picture dont prove current ownership. So like all criteria listed here, by themselves they are by far insufficient proof.
4) Open ended IPO
Unless the cloud mining is operated by the asic vendor himself, you can not sell an unlimited amount of hashrate. Hardware takes (usually a long) time to order, arrive and deploy. Any company that doesnt limit sales or make public how much hashrate they sold vs what they have (provably) deployed should be considered extremely suspicious.
5) Referral programs and social networking
Referral programs, especially ones that pay almost 10%, are a huge red flag. The mining market is cut throat with razor thin margins. No real company can afford to pay 10% referrals on below market cloudmining prices. Referral programs almost always serve only to feed the ponzi and provide financial incentive to posters to lie about the true nature of the company. Never trust anyone with a referral link in their sig.
6) Anonymous operators
If the operators are hiding behind whoisguard, provide no provable identity and/or company registration information and especially when, like in some cloudmining cases, they use demonstrably false ID or company registration information, you have to be nuts to trust them with your money.
7) No exit strategy
If you cant sell your position, you cant get your money out. Thats the ideal case for a ponzi and allows it to run for a long time.
Am I right saying your company scores 7/7 on my ponzi scale ?
Hello Puppet,
Thank you for your question, the answer is NO you are not right
.
Here are the answers to your questions, most are on our site but you did not take time to read.
1) No public mining address / no user selectable pool.
A cloud mining company that wont let you direct the hashrate to your pool of choosing and cant prove its actually mining bitcoins itself, is very likely a scam. There is no reason to hide mining address or not sign blocks. None.
1- Technically It's too difficult if it's not impossible to make every member select the mining pool that he want to use for a minimum of 1 GH contract, the mining pool where we are mining is a public information you could read it in our FAQ page using this link
https://www.skycoinlab.com/faq (it's Ghash.io) .
However, we are working with our team of programmers to design a mining pool which will be ready in the next 3 months so our members can monitor there hashing power instantly.
2) No endorsement from any asic vendor
Asic vendors will gladly make a simple post to show the company in question is a significant customer of theirs. Its free advertisement for them and it helps their customer grow their business, so there is absolutely no reason they wouldnt. If a (cloud) mining company cant get any asic vendor to post such endorsement, you should assume they dont have any hardware to mine with.
2- About this question, we have the right to keep secret our suppliers and we don't need any endorsement, we are advertising Skycoinlab in the differents Bitcoin meetings (last one was The Toronto meeting in November 2014 ).
3) No relevant pictures of their hardware and datacenter
There is no reason not to provide such pictures, except of course, if there is nothing to take pictures off. Mind you: pictures can be faked. Picture dont prove current ownership. So like all criteria listed here, by themselves they are by far insufficient proof.
3- I agree that we don't have public pictures of our miners and warehouse, we will do it and post pictures of Skycoinlab miners racks.
4) Open ended IPO
Unless the cloud mining is operated by the asic vendor himself, you can not sell an unlimited amount of hashrate. Hardware takes (usually a long) time to order, arrive and deploy. Any company that doesnt limit sales or make public how much hashrate they sold vs what they have (provably) deployed should be considered extremely suspicious.
4- Please know that Hardware don't take more than 3 business days to be received even of that we have a limit on sells if we reach the maximum of our power hashing rate.
This is an example of our last received batch of miners
http://www.dhl.com/en/express/tracking.html?AWB=6309977214&brand=DHL .
5) Referral programs and social networking
Referral programs, especially ones that pay almost 10%, are a huge red flag. The mining market is cut throat with razor thin margins. No real company can afford to pay 10% referrals on below market cloudmining prices. Referral programs almost always serve only to feed the ponzi and provide financial incentive to posters to lie about the true nature of the company. Never trust anyone with a referral link in their sig.
5- There is no place where we have said that members make 10% on their referrals purchases, it's only 5% and it's on the home page so no need to look too much to get it
https://www.skycoinlab.com/home .
6) Anonymous operators
If the operators are hiding behind whoisguard, provide no provable identity and/or company registration information and especially when, like in some cloudmining cases, they use demonstrably false ID or company registration information, you have to be nuts to trust them with your money.
6- I agree that we are using whoisguard to be protected from spammers, if you like to know where we are you could only contact our live chat support if you were in a hurry.
To check for our company please visite this link :
https://www.ic.gc.ca/app/scr/cc/CorporationsCanada/fdrlCrpSrch.htmlSKYCOINLAB CRYPTOCURRENCY SERVICES Incorporated
Corporation Number: 895044-0
Business Number: 842120180RC0001
Address :
1174 St.Jerome Unit 107
sudbury ON P3A 2V9
Canada
Main owners are Mr. Michel and Mr. Baou .
7) No exit strategy
If you cant sell your position, you cant get your money out. Thats the ideal case for a ponzi and allows it to run for a long time.
7-We did explain our terms here
https://www.skycoinlab.com/terms-and-conditions so we are not cheating our members, members have to agree in order to join.
Your Criteria 7 is NAP in our case.