Ummmm... I have a feeling that our next payment will be lower than the last one.  Here is why:

Let's assume that a contract has 1TH, and the difficulty decreased around 6PM EST 12/2/2014.

Difficulty, Theoretical BTC/Hour, # Hours This Week So Far
40,300,030,328, 0.00052BTC, 66 Hours (Sunday - Tuesday @ 6PM)
40,007,470,271, 0.0005238BTC, 42 Hours (Tuesday @ 6PM + 24 Hours for Wednesday + 12 Hours Today)

This means that as of 12PM EST, I should have:
0.00052 * 66 + 0.0005238 * 42 = 0.03432 + 0.0219996 = 0.0563196BTC pending

When I check my account balance, I actually have: 0.04641061BTC pending

0.04641061 / 0.0563196 = 82.41% of expected pending BTC.

I don't think a 4 month break-even is possible.  Assuming someone bought a mining contract on 1/24/2014, they would have broken even on the 7/5/2014 payout.  That's a little over 5 months.  If the person is counting referral commission, then that might explain the lower number.

I received 86% of my expected payment this past Saturday night.  That comes out to about 6/7ths of my expected payout, or one day of theoretical pay missing.  I know that the payments can vary slightly from week to week, depending on payout time.  For example, in some weeks, I received slightly more than the theoretical payment to make up for getting a little less the week before (less than 1% difference).  The payment has never been off by 14% though.

I think everyone who reads this thread is aware that a payment anomaly has taken place.  Now we will look for a pattern.  Ideally, the next payment will be the theoretical payment plus the missing 1/7th of this past Sunday's payment.  Perhaps the payment will return to the normal theoretical payout, or it will continue to be short.  The fact that we haven't received an official statement about the payment anomaly is a bit disconcerting.


The entire business is built on blind trust.  The company's mantra is, "We don't have to prove we are legitimate, because we get enough business as is."

Does cloudmining.website subtract any maintenance fees?  Their website doesn't mention it.  They have a 10GH/s minimum order.  Also looks like it is a temporary promotional rate.  Seems like a very good deal, but they are new and unproven.

If the goal is to spend less money upfront, then AMHash is a better deal than PBmining.  If the goal is to have a higher long-term ROI, then PBmining is the better choice.  Personally, I would rather have a higher ROI.  25GH/s in USD terms is under $15.  Bitcoin is now over $400 (yay!!).  As I mentioned before, if risking $15 on 25GH/s makes you uncomfortable, then Bitcoin mining is not for you.

***What are the payout differences between PBmining and AMHash?  Let's assume we own 1TH/s: ***

PBmining: Looking at bitcoinwisdom.com/bitcoin/difficulty.  Plug in 1TH/s, we would receive 0.08889BTC/week at current difficulty.  Simple.

AMhash: The payout rate before fee subtraction is 25/ (difficulty * 4.295) BTC per unit per second.  1 unit = 1GH/s.  So, the payout before fees for one week is ( 25 / ( 39,603,666,252 * 4.295 ) ) * 1000 units * (60*60*24*7 seconds) = 0.00000000014697 * 1000 * 604800 = 0.08888746BTC/week.  That's pretty much exactly the same as PBmining.  Then the maintenance fees must be subtracted from that amount.

The maintenance fee is 1.89*10^(-8) USD per unit per second or $0.01141 per GH per week. $0.01141 * 1000 units = $11.41 USD

The exchange rate is based on bitstamp.net 24h average.  Let's assume the 24 hour average is $390.  $11.41/$390 = 0.02925641BTC

The AMhash payout for a one week period is then 0.08888746 - 0.02925641 = 0.05963105BTC

***How much does it cost for 1TH, how often do I get paid, and what am I paid?***

PBmining: 1TH is currently 1.4BTC.  Payouts are weekly.  You receive 0.08889BTC/week at current difficulty.

AMhash: 1TH is currently 1.21BTC.  Payouts are daily.  The past 7 days of dividends have been 0.00000845 0.00000830 0.00000824 0.00000805 0.00000795 0.00000799 0.00000788 = 0.00005686BTC per unit for the week.  0.00005686 * 1000 = 0.05686BTC.  This number is a little lower than 0.05963105BTC, because the value of a Bitcoin has risen over the past week.

***What's the better deal?  PBmining or AMhash?***

The current upfront price difference for 1TH is that AMhash is 0.19BTC cheaper than PBmining.  If the value of a Bitcoin is $390 USD for the next 8 weeks, then you will pay 0.02925641 * 8 = 0.23405128BTC in maintenance fees to AMhash, which negates any upfront savings and makes AMhash more expensive.

Unless you have a fear of long-term commitment, PBmining is by far the better deal.

1340GH/s or you spent 1340BTC?

Looks like the price went up to 0.0021 per GH because demand is too high.  I don't blame them.

You can start to get ROI in as little as a few hours if you purchase a contract on a Saturday.

Seriously though, the cost of buying one GH gets cheaper over time, because the expected return of 1 GH decreases over time.  I don't think both have decreased at the same pace, mainly because the value of a Bitcoin relative to fiat has fallen.

Use a spreadsheet and guestimate your payouts.  If you don't think you can break even in under a year, then don't bother investing.  The expected return after the first year is very small.

In a worst case scenario, if you buy a contract and then experience some significant difficulty increases early in the life of a contract, you run the risk of never breaking even.  I know that PBmining customers who purchased contracts through April have been breaking even, but who knows what luck someone will have if they make a purchase today.

My strategy is to consider making a purchase every three months.  The best time to buy is right after a difficulty increase during a period where you think difficulty might not rapidly increase.  Again, run the numbers in a spreadsheet using your assumptions before you make a purchase.

Is it a good idea to reinvest all of your PBmining payouts into new contracts?  If you think every contract will always break even, then yes.  If not, then no.

I think people want closure.  They want to see the crooks behind this scheme in jail.  Hopefully the police will eventually catch them.  Victims just need to continue making noise-- the squeaky wheel gets the most attention.

Individually, many people made small investments.  At this stage, it is not worth their time and energy to do much more, so it is logical to move on and focus on other goals.

As an alternative, people can spend time and/or money towards the mission of finding the crooks involved, but many people know when to cut their losses.  Even if the crooks are caught, the chance of recovering any money is slim.

There is always the possibility that one or more investors has a hobby of tracking down criminals.  In that case, they may throw more time and money towards this cause for entertainment value.

It's easy to say that you would not give up if you were in this situation, but this situation has drained energy from a lot of victims.

What you say is true, but there is a logical reason for it.

Difficulty changes every 2016 blocks.  In a perfect world, a block is discovered every 10 minutes, so difficulty changes every 14 days.  If difficulty is rising at 10%, then a block is discovered roughly every 9 minutes.  2016 * 9 minutes = 18,144 minutes or 302 hours or difficulty increases 12.6 days.

A payout and difficulty change both happened right around August 31.  The next difficulty change happened a few hours before the September 14th difficulty change.  This would result in a very small decrease between the Sep 7 and Sep 14 payouts.  You can expect the next payout to be about 8.5% less.

To put things in perspective, 18 months ago we measured our mining capacity in megahashes.  About 10 months ago, gigahashes became the standard.  Now you need to have some terahashes to get any serious income.  Your payments will only turn to dust if you don't increase your mining capacity.

I think the logic at the time of the vote was that the share price had already dropped a lot, and the dividends were quickly falling too.  Since we could not sell our existing shares and break even, we thought it would be better to receive larger dividends in the short-term as opposed to getting smaller dividends over the long-term.  In any case, I think we all knew that voting for higher dividends would shorten PETA's life.  Even if the majority had voted to reinvest, it would just slightly prolong PETA's life by several months.  In hindsight, with the information that we now know, I think the majority made the right decision.

One other thing to keep in mind is that PETA was hoping to sell a lot more shares at its IPOs.  Since only a fraction of the shares were sold, I think the economies of scale were bad.  This led to higher fees being charged per share, also effectively shortening the life of PETA.

Is there any future in PETA mining?  I think it will come to an end soon.  The fees are relatively high and there are other mining options that seem more attractive.  Even with the more attractive options, mining has become extremely competitive, and the chance of breaking even is diminishing in the near-term.  When breaking even with mining gets more risky, more people switch to the strategy of buying BTC at a low price and selling at a higher price.

You mentioned that you're buying stocks with dividends.  Unfortunately, you have a traditional mindset, where you think the goal of a company is to survive indefinitely.  I think many of us had that mindset when we first bought PETA shares.  We quickly realized that was not going to be the case.  The share price reflected that.  When you reinvested dividends in additional shares, you were effectively buying shares that other people no longer wanted.  You did not add additional mining capacity.  If you keep following this reinvestment plan, you will eventually have close to zero.

I'm trying to have a factual conversation about the likelihood of August contracts breaking even.  I respect your opinion that you think August contracts will break even, but you are not supporting it with any facts.


Ok, so you did some math.  I would be curious to know more.

Are you taking past contracts and calculating how long they took to break even?  Are you then taking that data and extrapolating future break-even dates?  Are you assuming that difficulty increases will decrease or remain constant?  What is the average difficulty increase that you predict over the next 30 weeks?  These details would go a long way in helping me understand how you arrived at your opinion.

Have you actually plugged this in to a spreadsheet, or are you telling us what your intuition is guessing?

Yes, February contracts broke even in July, and I don't doubt that April contracts have broken even or are breaking even now.

This does not automatically mean that all future contracts will break even.  Past performance is no guarantee...


For a mining contract to be profitable, you have to receive more mining income than the purchase price of the contract.  While the cost/GH of contracts has fallen significantly since February, so has the weekly mining income from each GH.

This calendar year, difficulty has risen around 16% on average.  If someone purchased a contract at the beginning of August, and difficulty continues to rise 16% each time, then they will never break even.  This is part of the risk we take with Bitcoin mining.  Hopefully we will have some more single digit difficulty increases in the near future to increase our odds for profitability.

It all depends on when you invest and what your assumptions are.  The people who invested in February broke even in July.  On the flip side, if you invested in July and always have 20% difficulty increases, you will never break even.  Let's hope difficulty is more gentle than that.

With a 1TH contract, I'm not sure you would earn anything significant after the second year.  Time will tell.  I'm not sure how you arrive at your 3 year break-even figure.

I think there is a HUGE difference between PBMining.com and Cryptcominer.com.

With PBMining.com, I've run some scenarios in a spreadsheet that show their business can be sustainable, i.e. it is not necessarily a ponzi.  I think what makes people suspicious is that they think there is no way that the current contract price can pay for 5 years of electricity.  I would say they are correct about that, however, the hardware gets replaced with more efficient hardware over time.  Then you probably ask where they get the money for the replacement hardware.  I think the contract price is high enough to cover that as well.  Many people can only visualize today's reality.  A year from now, the cost of purchasing and maintaining 1 GH will be significantly lower.  Nobody ever mentions that the expected return during the second year might be as little as 1% of the contract price.  With a 1TH contract, there may not be enough earnings to send a weekly payout after the second year.  If the difficulty rises too fast, then you might not break even.

With Cryptcominer.com, I just don't see how their business is sustainable in any way.  With this type of investment, there should be a prospectus to review.  The website is very vague, focusing on the high returns and the commissions that you can earn.  Whenever you invest in something that pays more than the risk-free interest rate, then there is risk.  If higher interest is paid, then the risk is higher.  20% a year is already high risk, so 21% a week could be 52 times more risky.  How long have they been in business?  It looks like one WEEK!  They say they guarantee the returns, but what is the real worthiness of a guarantee from a company in business for just a week?

In any case, PBMining.com and Cryptcominer.com both carry different investment risks.  If you're going to invest with either company, only invest what you're willing to lose.

I would argue that the whole point of buying the hardware is to use it to make a profit.  If the current price is $1.97/GH, then it is outdated, even at 0.7W/GH.  They originally promised 0.6W/GH and a December-January delivery date.

If you preordered in August 2013, you would have paid $4,680.  Last week, they sent email stating that they are adjusting the purchase price to $1.97/GH ($1,379) for existing orders.  I really do hope they honor their word and send you a $3,301 refund (or 2 additional Monarchs and a partial refund).

I agree with you partially-- yes, the hardware isn't totally real-- no, it isn't a scam.  It is true that the price per GH cannot sustain a 5 year contract with today's hardware.  PBmining.com made a statement in another thread that a mining contract would not use the same hardware for all 5 years.  Since most of the mining will take place with future hardware that doesn't exist yet, I would agree that the majority of the hardware used to support your contract is not yet real.  There is a good chance of it existing in the future.

But think of it logically.  If a contract is going to break even, it will break even within the first year, maybe even as long as the first 18 months.  People who bought a contract in February already broke even in July.  If the same difficulty increases take place, then people who bought contracts in July might never break even, receiving only 85% of their purchase price back (according to my own calculated guesses).  The other school of thought is that difficulty increases will slow down, allowing contracts purchased today to eventually become profitable.

Also, keep in mind that a "5 year contract" is mainly a marketing ploy.  With each difficulty increase, you will earn less and less.  To put things in perspective, you'll earn 98-99% of your income in the first year, 1% in the second year, and pocket change beyond that (assuming a 1TH contract).  In fact, I think a 1TH contract purchased today will only pay out for 2 years, since the amount mined will become so small that the payment can't make it through the Bitcoin network.

I guess that's self-evident.  One is still in business, while the other suddenly disappeared.

Just because we don't understand a business model doesn't automatically make it a scam.  If I understand you correctly, you think that PBmining.com does not have a sustainable business model.  Since it is not sustainable, it will eventually fail.  The solution is to not invest if you think that will be the outcome.

In reality, the cost of maintaining 1GH today is much more expensive than it will be one year from now and beyond.  For example, one year ago, I bought a miner that cost approximately $85/GH and used 6W/GH.  The $/GH and W/GH have dropped dramatically over the past year.  I believe the business model assumes that we will have future efficiency improvements.  It is these improvements that are the key to success.  If these assumptions are wrong, then the business will fail.  Because the development of mining equipment is highly competitive, I feel safe in predicting that in one year $/GH will be 0.30USD/GH or less and that power requirements will be 0.25W/GH or less.

I'm not defending Butterfly Labs, but they did send an email one week ago stating that they are now shipping their outdated equipment that people paid for last year.  I'm not sure if that means everything is being shipped at once, or over a six month period.  I think if we're talking about how certain businesses can still be in business, we should be talking about BFL too.

According to https://tradeblock.com/mining/, Black Arrow and Spondoolies-Tech both have equipment that get 0.5W/GH.  I have not independently verified this, and their information has been known to contain errors.  Spondoolies-Tech's SP31 (October) is supposed to get 0.55W/GH.  Black Arrow released a press release stating that they will have 0.3W/GH equipment around the middle of next year.  There may also be other B2B mining equipment that is not widely known, or these cloud mining companies have an arrangement to buy equipment at wholesale for agreeing to purchase a minimum quantity over time.

The assumption is also that it is not necessary to pay for cooling, since the mining facility would be in Iceland, where fans can bring in cold air.  If not for that, then yes, cooling would consume significant power.

What if they have a lot of capital and mine for themselves, but sell contracts to improve their economies of scale?  The fact is that we don't know their business model.  I think if the business fails, it won't necessarily be because it is a ponzi, but because they made some risky business decisions.

I'll assume that's your sense of humor   Why would I knowingly want to give away money?  I donate to charity, but that's for a good cause at least.  I could take that money and gamble with it, and I would have a 49% chance of coming out ahead.  I just don't see how buying any PETA shares would ever be profitable, unless day trading.  Even with successful day trading, it doesn't seem like there would be much profit.  The math didn't add up for me, and my scenarios were more optimistic than what has actually happened over the past couple of months.  I do wish the best for the current share holders though.

I think the best chance of making any money mining is via cloud mining, however, with difficulty rising an average of 16% every 2 weeks, that's even risky.  I know the thought is that the difficulty increases will eventually level off, but how soon and for how long?  It's a very competitive environment.

When you buy the contract, it is stated that all fees are paid for up front.  This is not a guess or speculation, but a statement made by the company.


I thought that really good hardware was closer to 0.5W/GH.  Even Butterfly Labs has equipment that reaches 0.7W/GH.

Let's try a mathematical example:
I buy a 1 TH contract for 2.9BTC.  At today's exchange rate of about 475 USD / BTC, that is 1,378USD.
Equipment is probably 0.60USD / GH, or $778.  That leaves 600 USD for power and profit.
At 0.5W/GH * 1,000, that's 500 watts.  In a day, that's 12kWh or 0.36USD.  In the first year, that's $132.  That leaves 468USD for years 2-5.

In year 2, they will have new equipment.  Let's assume it is 0.10 USD/GH and power is now 0.25W/GH.
Equipment cost 0.10USD/GH * 1000 = 100USD
At 0.25W/GH * 1000, that's 250 watts.  6kWh/day or 0.18USD.  In a year, that's $66.  Now there is 302USD left over.

In year 3, they will have new equipment.  Let's assume it is 0.05USD/GH and power is now 0.1W/GH
Equipment cost is 50USD, electricity is 100 watts or 2.4kWh/day or 0.07USD/day or 27USD a year. Now there is 225USD left over

Repeat for year 4 and 5, and you still have money left over.

I hear Iceland has cheap electricity, and cooling is nearly free.


It just depends on your assumptions and calculations.