So, my contract has completed, and I thought I'd share my thoughts here. When I initially bought my contract, I did so with a coupon code I had received offering me a discounted price. So, I purchased a 1TH/s SHA256 3 month contract.
Shortly after my purchase, Mintsy changed their contracts, and upgraded me from 1TH/s to 2.5TH/s, also extending my contract duration. At this point, I was quite happy with the service.
I tried a few of the options available to me - using Mintsy pools, my own external pools, etc. I didn't have much luck getting external pools to work, but the Mintsy BTC pool worked just fine, so that's where I kept my contracted hashing power. I also tried to use my own hardware to mine at the Mintsy BTC pool. Relaying through MRR didn't work at all; however, just pointing my gear directly at the pool worked out alright.
So... where did things go wrong? It wasn't for a while into my contract until things started to go awry. Where my hash rate had been very consistent early on, it spiked wildly. Hours would go by where no hash rate at all was reported, then it would spike up to some higher amount for a bit to attempt to compensate. Well, I wasn't too bothered by this because even though the graphs were showing bursty traffic, the average was close to the contracted amount. Unfortunately, then the payouts were way off. Even though I should have been credited for what my average hash rate was showing, the payouts didn't come close to reflecting that value.
I opened a number of tickets with support to explain my issues. I would typically receive a quick reply, even if it was a canned response about being compensated at the end of my contract if necessary. My biggest problem with support was that they were quick to reject any reported problem. For example, when I reported my hash rate and earnings were far below what was expected, I was given the canned answer of "sometimes hash rate dips below contracted rate". When I supplied proof that this was more than just a dip (it had been going on for nearly a week), I was then told that it wasn't possible for me to predict my earnings. Why is it that I'm the one responsible for a bitcoin mining operation's support team's education? What do you mean I can't predict earnings? Every online calculator out there predicts earnings. The formula for calculating expected earnings is readily available. Finally, after providing evidence of my actual payouts vs expected payouts, and how I arrived at my expected payouts value, I was told there was a problem with miner reporting and that I'd be compensated.
Unfortunately, things never really recovered. Hash rate was still swinging all over the place. Graphs reported a large percentage of rejected shares from my contracted hashing power. Payouts were well below what I should have received. Basically the entire month of June the payouts were far below what they should have been. Towards the end of my contract, the pool's hash rate began to drop. It went from a peak of over 7PH/s down to where it is today, averaging about 20TH/s. Since the hash rate dropped so significantly (all during the month of July it dropped), there were very few blocks found, and hence very little payout - although the payouts I did receive in July were right about what I would have expected for the hash rate I had.
It's too bad this didn't work out. The service offered some pretty promising features had it been able to deliver. Unfortunately it couldn't, and for that reason, I cannot recommend it.
By the way, here are the actual numbers from my experience:
Contract purchase price: 2.17543320
BTCContract total payout: 1.55217135
BTCNet profit:
0.62326185BTC (red indicates a loss)
Pros- Clean UI/UX
- Ability to point your contracted hash wherever you want
- Direct integration with Cryptsy based on your trade key
Cons- Wildly fluctuating hash rate
- Payouts inconsistent with average hash
- Mining to an external pool was flaky at best - some worked, some did not
- Support team too quick to give canned response and dismiss ticket
Overall rating: 2/5
