The biggest issue is that they don't let you pick the pool, so you have no idea what you would mine and no ability to forecast a return at all. At the end of the day, you can't really trust any of the cloud mining companies.
How do you mean you cannot trust any cloud mining companies? Whilst I do agree there is alot of stuff out there that is nothing short of a scam or ponzi, I do personally think IMHO that there is a place for cloud mining. As CTO of FinalHash (although i just created a bitcointalk account today, <-- straight newb i know) i get the gamut of customers. While we do have plenty of folks who want to be more in control of their units, there are also others who simply don't care. Generally I classify customers into 5 groups.
1. The "I love crypto but my wife hates the heat and the noise" customers. Me personally, I fall into this category so all of my stuff is offsite. Better than sleeping on the couch if you ask me.
2. The "I am new and just wanted to play around with the idea of mining for a quick set up" customer.
3. Enthusiast customers who know alot about the crypto space but simply do not have the space or power or low enough electrical costs to warrant getting physical hardware at their locale.
4. Customers who want the hardware shipped, which I think is safe to say cloverme is this type.
5. The fat cats who just say take my money I don't care.
I always advise people to get the hardware themselves and control what you mine. It's not that difficult to mine bitcoins or altcoins on your own.
While i do agree with you here also, I think this is far to broad of a generalization to say just buy hardware due to a number of reasons.
1. So many people are newcomers to crypto and more often than not their first hearing of crypto was of a nepharious nature. AKA BFL or something similar. Folks are always hesitant in new endeavors. That is just human nature. So spending $30-40 just to try something is generally a lower obstacle over all than taking a risk on waiting to see if a machine comes.
2. for some of the reason mentioned above. Most ASICS I dub the divorce makers.
Your use case for mining as a pool operator and tester makes sense, but you're not the target demographic of what the cloud mining companies are going after. Note that they don't let you pick the pool, so you won't be able to use them to test your pool. They want uninformed newbies with fat wallets, not experienced folk.
Really if you look at it, their intended market is everyone. I mean every company in the history of ever if asked, "If you had your ideal market who would it be" All of their answers would echo something to the effect of "EVERYONE IN THE WORLD" So, in the general sense it behooves every company to try and accommodate every market share, right? Genesis Mining is no different. I think they are working on some refactors of the interface from what has been circulating on redding and the like, and also something called Project X. I mean when you really think about it, there is no "target market" for large companies, right?
You seem to be highly educated in the crypto space cloverme and it is important for educated individuals like your self to be scrupulous on such matters as to better inform the larger less informed community at large. I would love to hear your thoughts on my comments here. The more Highly Educated crypto folks that can dig down into things like this, the less likely folks are to run into another BFL scenario so I truly encourage this well though out counterpoint of yours.
