I have been asked about my experience with this service. Tad bit lengthy, but worth your read if you're considering this...

TL;DR My recommendation is to stay the hell away. It's not an outright scam, but it's not too far from being one. You can verify I was a customer of Sinohash in mid 2017 (Pg. 7 of this thread). Bought and hosted 50x S9 miners at Sinohash. Actively participated in mining-related discussion here at bitcointalk.org. For the good news, my Bitcoins sent as payment for 50x S9's were not stolen and I eventually saw all 50x active workers in my pool dashboard. But that's where the good ends.

Analysis based on limited information tells me that Eric himself, or someone working for him secretly uses his customer miners for his own benefit, and then blames downtime on technical issues or other adhere circumstances. There were countless incidents, more than 20 per month. Total uptime for 95%+ hash rate was less than 50%. And this statistic single-handedly makes it a very expensive hosting service. In retrospect, I wish I had put all those BTC into the most expensive cloud mining contract instead.

What makes me believe the downtimes were mostly not tech-related?

1. Main reason is that he did not manage to give believable explanations when asked about root causes of incidents. Other clients of his were told different reasons for outages and we found this out during our private discussions while trying to figure out "why the heck my miners are down yet again?". As Eric did not bother to communicate most of the time, we talked among each-other. Not only were we communicated different reasons as root causes for outages, but also timings and scale of the outages varied by a large margin. It's odd knowing that someone who should have his miners in the same facility is experiencing a 100% outage while I'm experiencing a 25% outage, and a third person has 50% outage.
2. If you have no electricity or internet connectivity in your facility, you naturally assume 100% outage for 100% of hash rate. Howcome each incident left operational a different number of miners, 5, 10, 25 or 40? Sometimes all 50 were down but those were quite rare. If you have no electricity, how do you keep some miners up and operational? Why do weekly worker graphs (pool statistics) look like stairs of 10 steps not 1? Or maybe he just wanted to keep some of miners operational so that I would silently swallow my frustration and think "at least I got something working so I will not complain today...". Or are my suspicions far-fetched? Is this guy doing the best he could to keep some miners operational when the electricity feed is down - i.e. with a fuel-based backup generator? Sometimes as often as 10 times a week. LOL! He never gave satisfactory answers but one time he elaborated that they "manually turned SOME miners off and RELOCATED them". Having no better option, and did not yet want to exit, I just stayed optimistic that things will improve once the "3rd facility" is up and running in "~4 weeks".

Even disregarding the previous I gave this guy benefit of the doubt and did not opt to give bad feedback immediately after my full exit (on 20.th of July, just 2 months after start). Seems like nothing has improved for customers who joined since then so this feedback as a caution is badly needed.

As a service provider, to take advantage of someone, you don't necessarily have to run away with his equipment. You can "borrow it" and if the customer complains, you just say there are problems with unstable electricity or Internet service provider. In legal terms, it's a dead end for customer. You need a proper signed contract to have a chance at any recourse. Terms outlined on a web-site can be modified at will.

Be your own judge. But if you're tempted to give Sinohash or *any* other hosted mining a try, do not blindly trust anyone because of associations with reputable companies. Do not start any service relationship without a signed contract where terms of compensation (due to excessive downtime) are clarified. I know from my own experience all this paperwork can be mere "nice to have" when seats are limited and you just want to get started ASAP!

Regards,

Seems like our main block announcers are off duty...

!!!!!BLOOOOOCCKKK by BCTaylor!!!!!!

Another pleasantly overweight specimen - 16.13432235 XBT

Heads up on scaling developments, worth to keep an eye on.

- http://bitsonline.com/china-bitcoin-roundtable-segwit2x/

"NYA" will be signalled by miners supporting SegWit2x aka. "New York Agreement", starting on Monday 19.th of June (tomorrow). Estimate support is expected to breach 80%.

Plan foresees SegWit activation before August 1; at first, compatible with BIP141/SegWit and BIP148/UASF software, and then followed by incompatible hard fork to bigger (2MB) blocks 3 months after SegWit activation (expected somewhere in late November).

If you're mainly after investment profit, then Kano. If you are OK with paying double pool fees (2% Slush vs 0.9% Kano) for a prettier web interface and functionality to signal/vouch for future network upgrades (EC, SegWit, EXTBLK, BIP100), then Slush will be good. There are pools that charge even less in service fees, but they tend to be too tiny. I mine at Kano myself and the current hash rate of 80PH/s ensures blocks are found more frequently than "once in a blue moon".

Hashnest is an all-in-one cloud mining service and should not be compared to Kano or Slush which are mere mining pools.

Was unaware. Wow. So out of sync node clock is yet another dirty contribution. Waters are already muddied enough by Internet infra and BGP issues. Although... I guess that block timestamp issue can be fixed with a central Bitcoin NTP server /s

No. As you can see at the same link, 466705 by Kano pool on 2017‑05‑16 is a full 40 seconds later than Bixin propagated to blockchain.info but we won the orphan race regardless. This can be possible due to an unfavorable circumstance within a single BGP ASN area. Imagine a broken sea cable, and a small backup line which gets fully congested and lacks throughput during peak hours. Furthermore, complete outages of 15-30 seconds between two big ASNs always occur, a simple BGP routing issue somewhere in the Internet does suffice. No broken cables or devices required.

A single S9 probably would not make sense. Keep your mind free of the hassle. For a Bitcoin mining business, 10x S9's or equivalent is absolute worthwhile minimum, unless it's just a hobby. As general advice, you should go with Ethereum mining instead. As Ethereum mining has been more profitable than Bitcoin mining for 4 consecutive months in a row, it just makes more sense as an investment opportunity for virtually anyone who gets started with crypto mining today, or is at a point of having to replace legacy hardware. I'm getting my own feet wet in Ether mining just this week.

In regards to S7's, I know an investor in wind turbine farm business. He bulk buys S7's on second hand market for peanuts, and then feeds the excess electricity into S7s when production significantly exceeds demand. He says its "much better than selling it back to grid". Your observation is correct, for mining all year around, their worthiness is questionable to say the least. At the end of their life cycle. Perhaps scrap metal for good in 12-18 months.

And then there are other interesting and worthwhile hybrid mining business models where older units or low quantity of miners could make fiscal sense. I don't know much about such hybrid models, but there are now a number of booze makers who find valuable use for the heat generated by crypto miners. Ref: https://news.bitcoin.com/south-florida-distillers-bitcoin/

Signal SegWit for trolling purpose for 1 block? Lets see if it makes their panties wet

I'm afraid Bitcoin still requires 2-3 hard forks until we get to a point of maturity where it's no longer required.
In terms of scaling alone, no single number for base block size will be ideal for eternity. To avoid having to fork multiple times in the future for this single reason, liquidating the block size with a BIP100-like solution would be a mandatory first hard fork to implement.

Did you check SegWit code? I don't understand much of it, do not program c++, but I can tell that monstrosity is HUGE for a soft fork . Just for safety reasons alone, it would make sense to attempt to trim 40% of code and release the exact same functionality as a kosher clean hard fork.

So lets deploy a complex anti-tank missile system to take down a bird?
Just give the code that disables covert ASICBOOST, and I don't think anyone would mind if Kano pool signaled in support.

How long can it take to provide this code? 10 minutes for 1 or 2 lines of code? I come to think the crazy UASF boys want to refrain from providing anti ASICBOOST code as a standalone fix so they can continue promoting SegWit as the solution. I'm not exactly sure where our pool leader stands. For me personally, signalling for SegWit activation as a standalone soft fork upgrade is a no-go. Signalling for NY agreement, or similar fork with broad consensus would be a much better action to take.

Used to support bigger blocks as well as SegWit not too long ago. Now I'm only for bigger blocks. The main developers behind SegWit are willing to pick the most radical activation mechanisms to push their agenda. Imposing re-org risk on a legacy chain without overwhelming consensus makes everyone involved a terrorist.

There's a NY agreement which already involves SegWit AND bigger blocks. Unlike UASF, the NY agreement is backed by overwhelming consensus from all major bitcoin businesses. Any UASF promotion should be stopped right away, yet the promotion is just heating up. If UASF fails, people behind this destructive implementation practice must permanently leave Bitcoin.

4.17% of network in last 24 hours.

Feels good to beat those 200-250Ph/s pools

Blockmines on yolo mode

That's what I always say about PPS - you pay a little extra for insurance. A pool cannot and shouldn't risk going bankrupt to compensate for bad luck.

Donald Trump's plane was ready for landing. As he was asked to turn off communication devices, he ordered shutdown for whole Internet.

All down since Today 04:17 UTC ...

Same scenario for everyone? It's 4th major disruption in last 7 days alone, but previous ones have been resolved in around 1-3 hours.

Edit: Restored at around 13:12 UTC

Afraid we'll get back to $1700-1800 in 2 days.
There's no substance at all behind the last bull run.

My strategy is to sell most during bull runs, unless those price hikes are backed by:

a) Protocol upgrade
b) Mining reward halving

Lucker...

In some areas in UAE and Kuwait, permanent residents, born in country are eligible for free electricity for a lifetime.
This is what happens if you have 50 MegaWatt solar farms everywhere, but not enough citizens to put it in use

Import tariffs are an issue though...

If it were up to me, I'd contact that North America farm to skip the middleman

Nevertheless, transparency is a good thing and it could be an option to consider then! And as icon73 pointed out - if they do guarantee hash rate, any risks are at their own cost. As I understand, customer is expected to receive cloud mining contract payouts regardless if the miners providing this hash rate stay up or down.

Green light so far. But since it's a "fresh out the bakery oven" product, it makes sense to try out with small amounts first.

Also contemplating whether T9s would be worth the extra energy costs in long run due to better product longevity.
I'd consider myself very lucky if half of my S9 ASICs last for 2 years, sustaining original hash rate.

If an average T9 does last the expected 2 years without any faults, it could be a better option for ultra-low electricity cost mining farms.