Stock market analogs in cloud mining

While not exact, cloud mining has a couple of interesting situations which have possible analogs in the stock market:

1) The selling of BTC cloud mining contracts. In a way, this resembles stock market covered calls. If the value of BTC goes down or stays the same the seller makes money. If BTC spikes, the upside for the seller is limited. Essentially the seller is locking in a known, steady yield on their hardware investment.

2) The buyer of a BTC cloud mining contract. The buyer is essentially purchasing a call option on BTC. If BTC does nothing or goes down, then the mining contract is a wasting asset. The contract is even a wasting asset even if BTC goes up because BTC appreciation has to outpace any difficulty increase. With time a Gh/s is going to mine less and less BTC.

Here are some things both sides don't appreciate:

3) Contract sellers: Cloud mining contracts are totally unregulated. Sellers could get gamed by insider trading. Suppose you knew that say a major world class retail operation (Walmart?!?) was going to announce the they would accept BTC online and in person, and for money transfers (FYI I just noticed that a local Walmart just opened a "bank like" looking area at the front of their store featuring various monetary services). If you had information that was going to move BTC up, the cheapest, fastest way to capitalize on this would be mining contracts.

4) Contract buyers: As has been noted elsewhere, BTC mining contracts as they stand are generally losing propositions. In common with call options, they are selling hope. They will only make serious money IMHO in a serious move upwards in the price of BTC. A serious move up in year 4 of a five year contract is probably not worth very much.

Finally there is there is one area where mining contracts fail, if the issuer goes out of business then the buyer is screwed.