Quote from: NotFuzzyWarm on August 29, 2017, 03:02:15 AM

Quote from: Didley1JT on August 29, 2017, 02:40:02 AM

By definition, if you're letting people use your computing power to mine, then there has to be less value in it for you than they can make from mining. If it was more profitable for you to sell computing time, then they wouldn't be willing to pay you for it.

This is the reason cloud mining is a bad idea.

From everything I've read, you should either mine yourself or simply buy BTC.

Bingo! By Jove he's got it spot on re: rental hash/cloud mining. The ones really making money are the operators vs their 'customers'.

There are many more factors involved that need to be considered. I'd say that there is definitely a place for cloud mining, and it can be a win-win situation.

Consider some of these factors - perhaps you have, but maybe not all of them. There may be other factors I haven't thought about also:

1. The cloud mining outfit makes some of it's profit through maintenance fees. For example, what if they pay $0.02/Killowatt and sell it to you for $0.12/Killowatt? You might consider the $0.12 per Killowatt to be a good rate - depending on where you are located, yet the cloud mining operation is making good money reselling electricity to you. It's a win-win in this case, and this is what is happening.

2. It is currently impractical to mine with current hardware for many people. Noise and limits of electricity supply. Maybe you can run a few S9's in a garage, but the noise issue makes it very unappealing.

3. The time lost in the Transportation of mining equipment takes time away from the mining equipment's lifetime. Time cannot be replaced. The miner must run 24/7 if possible.

4. Import duties add to the expense of physically controlling your mining equipment, so again - a "premium" price for cloud hashes can be viewed as a bargain from a different point of view.

5. Businesses may be able to deduct mining expenses with a physical miner, but there are many complications to think about when you bring businesses into the mining field in general. It's interesting stuff and not everything is obvious until you get a deeper understanding of the possible finance issues and scenarios.

6. By selling cloud hashes, the miner may be hedging on the price of the mined crypto currency. By selling in fiat vs selling with Bitcoin, every transaction can be a hedge - depending on how you look at it.

7. Miners who are also manufacturing or assembling mining hardware have many many more hedges at play. When is the S10 coming out? With BCC/BCH maybe another year or two has been bought for existing mining hardware! How? Think it through, you might understand why global BTC hash rate dropped the difficulty 500 and some blocks ago from today. Why and How? Think it through, it relates to cloud mining and mining in general

If anyone wants to hire me as a consultant, let me know.