Quote from: Fiyasko on December 31, 2014, 09:33:51 PM

I would advise against any kind of cloudmining or other hosted mining, the "contract" or terms can change at any time, the place could go up in smoke, the hoster could run with all the funds, etcetc, there are So Many Things that can go wrong, and the return is Very low.

Think about it this way, if the seller of the hosted hashrate, is selling hashrate, that means that you are likely paying More than it's actually worth, otherwise, why wouldn't he just keep the hashrate all to himself?
Cloudhashers make extra profit off their hashrate by charging more than it's worth, because people without a decent amount of starting capital can't afford an Actual peice of mining hardware.

Just my input

I think theoretically large mining operations could be hedging their bets against long-term changes in the market

People have to invest some serious capital to get a major mining operation up and running. Maybe they are profitable now but BTC is very volatile.

what new equipment will be coming out in 3 months?

what will they be able to earn in 6 months?

how high can the difficulty go in 6 months?

what will the value of BTC be in 6 months?

what unforeseen events could happen and would it cripple them?

why not least out some of their hashing power at say even 80% of what they expect to earn in 12 months? It'd be a quick recoup of some of their cost.

As the old saying goes, "a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush."