▁ ▂ ▄ ▅ ▆ Cloudmining 101 (ponzi risk assessment) ▆ ▅ ▄ ▂ ▁

[cyberpinoy]

Ponzi schemes developed, and should be added number 8
Hashprofit now asking money for sending them a message (0.03 BTC!). And if you see there are no connection between message and payment.
You just pay and... message goes somewhere or maybe not... Don't be fooled.

yep, It doesn't look good:

"Our service was under the most severe attack ever. Due to most specialists' holidays we've decided for a reliable safety of users' funds to suspend site's work until the first Monday of 2015 (5th of January). Everybody will return to standard work then and we'll continue our work in a usual way. Please be calm. Thank you for understanding.

To keep contact with our users and to separate priority mail from spam, we've developed mail accepting via BTC payments. For guaranteed processing of your message you'll have to pay small amount through an interface below.

We've successfully deflected serious threats and attacks on our service earlier and we're sure that together we can do this even in a situation this hard."

I am certainly no fan of Puppet, however, did anyone notice anythig really funny or contradicting about thier message? So they say thier people who can handle the DDOS attack are on holiday until january 5th. However they just so happened to have a person hanging around who could completely recode their index.html page as well as code a second page using Java script, MySql and PHP that will accept payments in order for you to recieve satisfactory customer service from any complaints you may have.

I pray to god no one was stupid enough to send thier BTC and file a formal message with these idiots.

The person who spent 9+ hours re-coding their site could have very easily and quickly ended the DDOS attack. it takes a lot less intelligence to stop a DDOS attack than it does to rewrite and completely re-code an Index.html with a button to a second page that also accepts payments and code that whole page.

Thank god I already got my ROI from these guys Good luck tho those of you who put a massive amount of BTC with these scammers, you should have checked their WHOIS which is completely whois guarded. and the registrar is enom and the phone number they ahd displayed was for Enom abuse not to anyone involved in HAshprofit.

Puppet do you use anything from whois in your predictions?

[cyberpinoy]

Ye i actually can prove this part and here is your proof. of how you buy Cloud mining and lose money on cex.io this is pulled directly from my account there.

2014-12-13 11:22:30   -0.00010634 BTC   -0.00007886    MAINTENANCE   -   Shares 216576 , Cost: -0.00010634
2014-12-13 11:22:30    0.00005109 BTC   0.00002748    MINING   -   Block #334075, Reward: 0.00005109

2014-12-13 07:09:50   -0.00007693 BTC   -0.00010046    MAINTENANCE   -   Shares 156672 , Cost: -0.00007693
2014-12-13 07:09:50    0.00005014 BTC   -0.00002353    MINING   -   Block #334049, Reward: 0.00005014

2014-12-13 05:20:47   -0.00011816 BTC   -0.00007367    MAINTENANCE   -   Shares 240640 , Cost: -0.00011816
2014-12-13 05:20:47    0.00004888 BTC   0.00004449    MINING   -   Block #334038, Reward: 0.00004888

2014-12-13 02:36:42   -0.00006185 BTC   -0.00000439    MAINTENANCE   -   Shares 125952 , Cost: -0.00006185
2014-12-13 02:36:42    0.00004143 BTC   0.00005746    MINING   -   Block #334031, Reward: 0.00004143

This is just a few blocks do you need more how about different sized hashrates o their cloud. how much do you need. do you see the rewards are lower than the fees. THIS IS NOT EVER POSSIBLE UNLESS YOUR RIPPING PEOPLE OFF some of them have fees that are doube and truiple what the reward was OMG SCAM!!!

Dude.. do you see the "shares" count? Thats how long it took the pool to find the block. To use a highly technical term: "luck".
cex.io fees are defined in dollars and per GH per month. From the above its clear those fees are calculated per block on each block. If a block took twice as long as average, you'd expect to pay twice as many on fees. If a block takes half the average time, you'd expect to see half the average fee. Reward remains the same (ignoring variations in transaction fees), and therefore long unlucky blocks will yield a negative return, short, lucky blocks will yield a positive return. This is completely normal.

What could indicate fraud is if the average length is statistically (very) unlikely. But its not according to the man who should know:
http://organofcorti.blogspot.be/2014/12/december-7th-2014-weekly-bitcoin_10.html
http://organofcorti.blogspot.be/2014/12/december-14th-2014-bitcoin-mining-pool.html

An unlucky week, but a CDF of 88% is completely within the expected range. Or do you think slush (72%) and bitminter (78%) and eligius (77%) are also scamming and even more than cex ?

Here is the thing: if organofcorti tells me cex.io numbers dont add up, I wont hesitate for a second to change my view, but when someone who doesnt understand the first thing about this, hasnt even realized his dragon miners are costing him a fortune because you cant do a long division, if someone like that makes gratuitous  claims, I will gladly ignore that.

I am so sorry I should have read your reply.

And this is why YOU should not be making assumptions or predictions based solely on opinion. The "shares" that you see there are NOT how long it took the "Pool" to solve the block, the "Shares" you see in that example are MY cloud shares that were submitted by ME. Please PLEASE tell me you were not so stupid to think that a bitcoin block today si only 216576 Shares You said and I quote

"Dude.. do you see the "shares" count? Thats how long it took the pool to find the block."

this is why your view on CEX.io is messed up, you dont even know what you are reading.

Again pay attention CEX fees may be defined in USD but they are charged in shares submitted which is way more than the 10cents per GHS per month they claim. Hell in those 4 blocks right there I already have 11 cents USD in fees ADD IT UP that was only for 4 of the 40 blocks (average) per day they solve. They say 10 cents per GHS per month heck they are charging almost 3 cents per block and roughly 11 dollars a day and on long blocks like 6 hours or more you are paying the whole 10 cents per ghash in that 1 block solved. so from the math we see here we can estimate 50 GHS of cloud mining will cost you 363 USD a month in fees. that is $7.26 USD per month per GHS.

you should expect to recieve 2/3 of the reward the machines bring in and pay 1/3 in fees roughly.

You need to do some better research on these guys bro and start understanding what you are reading. I recommend you get an account and study it, cause the shit your basing your opinion on is waaaay offf from whats really going on in there.

[PeaMine]

I was very excited and eager to get into cloud mining, but after reading this thread I'm full of dread.
Is there a cloud mining service you'd recommend that can accept credit cards?
Hashnest looks profitable but only accepts bitcoin which I'm very low on these days.
AMHash is sold out it seems, but they also look good.
Genesis Mining takes cards, but from their fees and pricing looks like it would be a bad deal compared to the rest.
KnC may be a good choice, but not sure if they take cards or not.
Any recommendations?

[elrugrim]

Thank you for working on this.

[inBitweTrust]

yep , Hashie.co was another scam....

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=822446.1400

[Muhammed Zakir]

I was very excited and eager to get into cloud mining, but after reading this thread I'm full of dread.
Is there a cloud mining service you'd recommend that can accept credit cards?
Hashnest looks profitable but only accepts bitcoin which I'm very low on these days.
AMHash is sold out it seems, but they also look good.
Genesis Mining takes cards, but from their fees and pricing looks like it would be a bad deal compared to the rest.
KnC may be a good choice, but not sure if they take cards or not.
Any recommendations?

I think ZeusHash is pretty good - accepts credit cards/bank transfers and knC Cloud accepts USD bank transfer.

   ~~MZ~~

[mmmaybe]

Thanks for an important thread, I'll be following and contributing where I can

[julian071]

I was very excited and eager to get into cloud mining, but after reading this thread I'm full of dread.
Is there a cloud mining service you'd recommend that can accept credit cards?
Hashnest looks profitable but only accepts bitcoin which I'm very low on these days.
AMHash is sold out it seems, but they also look good.
Genesis Mining takes cards, but from their fees and pricing looks like it would be a bad deal compared to the rest.
KnC may be a good choice, but not sure if they take cards or not.
Any recommendations?

I think ZeusHash is pretty good - accepts credit cards/bank transfers and knC Cloud accepts USD bank transfer.

   ~~MZ~~

Zeushash is totally inprofitable tho. I have some hashing there because I ordered a replacement IC-board for my miner that never materialised, and (stupidly) opted to convert that to cloudmining when they officialy cancelled it. The fees are so high that I consider that money lost, even though it is in SHA256. Luckily it was a relatively small amount, however it would have been spent much better giving it to some charity.

ATM the fees at Genesis are about 30%. As Puppet has pointed out many times, if difficulty rises a lot you will stop making money on your contract with the fees being what they are. But at the moment it's profitable, about 0,27 BTC / TH / month. Check the thread for Genesis-mining for updates on their profitability.

[Puppet]

And this is why YOU should not be making assumptions or predictions based solely on opinion

.

I dont. All my criteria are explicitly stated and applied as objectively as I can. Its not a matter of 'opinion', either the evidence is there, or its not.

The "shares" that you see there are NOT how long it took the "Pool" to solve the block, the "Shares" you see in that example are MY cloud shares that were submitted by ME. Please PLEASE tell me you were not so stupid to think that a bitcoin block today si only 216576 Shares You said and I quote

A block can be found after any arbitrary number of accepted shares, it all depends on network difficulty, the difficulty setting of the pool and :drumroll: LUCK.
What you still fail to understand is that your # submitted shares will correlate linearly with the  # shares the pool needed to find the block, assuming roughly constant hashrate. So what I said is still completely ttrue, and if you are going to insult me after the nonsense you have been posting, I suggest you start your own thread where you provide proof that organofcorti and me have no idea what we're talking about.

[EBK1000]

I like this thread, thank you Puppet

Zeushash has stopped Mh/S Scrypt as the fees are more than the earnings as they are using Gridseeds etc. everyone that had Scrypt at Zeushash has lost their investment, me included

[EBK1000]

I am interested in contributing to this thread as I have tried multiple cloud services over the last few months. I will write some short reviews and post it here...

[Puppet]

I am interested in contributing to this thread as I have tried multiple cloud services over the last few months. I will write some short reviews and post it here...

Please dont. Im not interesting in hearing how well ponzi's work prior to their collapse. Its meaningless.
Unless you discovered some evidence of scamming, keep you "experience" to yourself.

[bitode]

2. No endorsement from any asic vendor

You claim that Zeushash has no endorsement from asic vendor, but they owned by Zeus miner and they are a asic miner vendor. Zeus miner's website has a direct link to Zeushash on top navigation in their website: https://zeusminer.com/

Also Cointellect uses Zeus miners as their very first pictures from their datacenter shows:

https://www.facebook.com/cointellectturkiye/photos/pb.334666763367284.-2207520000.1419858547./355357207964906/?type=3&theater

Additionally they also mentioned that they are using LKETC and Zeus in their news which was published on 18th of September: https://cointellect.com/news/view/?id=14

Even http://dc.cointellect.com broadcasts from LKETC's datacenter as they broadcasts their servers which hosts A1 hosted contracts.

So I think number 2 should be dropped for Cointellect and Zeushash.

[EBK1000]

It's amazing how fucking grumpy everyone is here, I will surely not share any knowledge of any scams if I find them

[raskul]

It's amazing how fucking grumpy everyone is here, I will surely not share any knowledge of any scams if I find them

you already said that you have invested in more than one. which means you wouldn't be able to tell a ponzi if it came along and bit you on your backside.
there aren't many which are actually genuine and i'd reckon that at least one of those that you have invested is a pure ponzi.

[Puppet]

2. No endorsement from any asic vendor

You claim that Zeushash has no endorsement from asic vendor, but they owned by Zeus miner and they are a asic miner vendor. Zeus miner's website has a direct link to Zeushash on top navigation in their website: https://zeusminer.com/

Zeusminer isnt a manufacturer of sha256 hardware, afaict its (allegedly) a reseller.

Also Cointellect uses Zeus miners as their very first pictures from their datacenter shows:

See above.
Besides, Ive already granted them the point "3" for pictures/video of their installation, but it wasnt based on the ones you linked.

Additionally they also mentioned that they are using LKETC and Zeus in their news which was published on 18th of September: https://cointellect.com/news/view/?id=14

Even http://dc.cointellect.com broadcasts from LKETC's datacenter as they broadcasts their servers which hosts A1 hosted contracts.

Claiming to use some particular hardware doesnt score you any points in my rating. Having the manufacturer endorse you as a large customer, does.

[eneloop]

[...] you should have checked their WHOIS which is completely whois guarded. and the registrar is enom and the phone number they ahd displayed was for Enom abuse not to anyone involved in HAshprofit.

Puppet do you use anything from whois in your predictions?

It's in #6, but I agree to handle whois guarded services more critical. I don't see any reason to publish business information on one side but use some kind of whois guard on the other. I would even go a step further and tag all of them as scammers because only whois gives an official relationship from a website to a company.

[Puppet]

[...] you should have checked their WHOIS which is completely whois guarded. and the registrar is enom and the phone number they ahd displayed was for Enom abuse not to anyone involved in HAshprofit.

Puppet do you use anything from whois in your predictions?

It's in #6, but I agree to handle whois guarded services more critical. I don't see any reason to publish business information on one side but use some kind of whois guard on the other. I would even go a step further and tag all of them as scammers because only whois gives an official relationship from a website to a company.

Yeah, its tricky. In general, if a verifiable business address is posted (that doesnt belong to a 'vrtiual presence' provider) and as long as no one reports the address is fake/abandoned/empty, I tend to grant that point, sometimes reluctantly like for hashprofit,  regardless of whois. After all, whois info can be faked just as well, whoisguard is turned on by default by some hosting companies. So by itself its not a smoking gun, but its an element I take in to consideration when judging point #6.

[cyberpinoy]

And this is why YOU should not be making assumptions or predictions based solely on opinion

.

I dont. All my criteria are explicitly stated and applied as objectively as I can. Its not a matter of 'opinion', either the evidence is there, or its not.

The "shares" that you see there are NOT how long it took the "Pool" to solve the block, the "Shares" you see in that example are MY cloud shares that were submitted by ME. Please PLEASE tell me you were not so stupid to think that a bitcoin block today si only 216576 Shares You said and I quote

A block can be found after any arbitrary number of accepted shares, it all depends on network difficulty, the difficulty setting of the pool and :drumroll: LUCK.
What you still fail to understand is that your # submitted shares will correlate linearly with the  # shares the pool needed to find the block, assuming roughly constant hashrate. So what I said is still completely ttrue, and if you are going to insult me after the nonsense you have been posting, I suggest you start your own thread where you provide proof that organofcorti and me have no idea what we're talking about.

You really need to study Ghash a LOT better.

The number of shares you see can correlate any way you want to rationalize it but the truth is those are the shares I was charged a maintenance fee on. I was not charged a flat rate per ghs per month as they state in their contractual agreement. those examples show you i submitted X number of shares and my maintenance fees are determined by the amount of shares my cloud put in. If this were not true would not each and every block mined have the same EXACT same cost in maintenance fees? If it was a flat rate charge per GHS per month, like they say, then each block should have the same exact fee right?

To be honest it would be hard to be fair and charge the same amount for each block because you dont know how many blocks could be solved i a month and they would still end up charging more than the flat rate they say they charge. I am not sure how they could do it to make it fair and reasonable, but what they are doing now is a flat faced lie and contradiction to their own agreement.

[Puppet]

FFS.. No. Of course not. Its not rocket science. You pay $x per month flat fee. A month is a unit of time. Actual fees are then appropriated per block.  So if a block takes 2x longer to mine than average, you would expect to pay 2x more in fees on that block, because it took twice as long. and vice versa, a block thats found in half the average time will only cost you half as much in fees. Because the fees you pay per time unit, not per block. I already explained this to you several times and this is my last reply to you. Your inability to do math and comprehend simple concepts doesnt make cex.io a scam. Please take this elsewhere.