Cloud mining has been a heated topic recently. Some analysts say although the price of coins is going down, the price of cloud mining is rising in general. And some cloud mining providers have even run of stocks of their products.
To me the market a little weird. I think for the cloud mining industry to better develop, it should invite more competition. And buyers should evaluate the risk and returns in advance.
What is your thought on this?
Like the rest of the mining arena, cloud hashing or hosting is really a strange phenomena!
Normal business, trading or investing attitudes dont seem to apply.
Mining generates its own kind of buzz which lots of people want to be part of it.
Admittedly crypto is highly speculative but there are loads of people who are more than willing to invest in hardware pre-orders and current stock that has no hope of breaking even (I deliberately didnt use the completely misused acronym "ROI"). In some cases investments are made purely out of ignorance and lack of understanding of the mechanism and drivers, in some cases its because people want to be part of the process and hold a belief or hope (as I do) that crypto will rise and would rather be involved in putting blocks on the chain than investing $$.
Some people are attracted to the geeky anarchic rebellion against the establishment.
The question "profitable or not" I guess can only be properly answered with hindsight.
Cloud Hashing is just another flavour of a multifaceted industry.
I think the real question is: If you are going to be involved in crypto, what is your preferred flavour?
If it were a sure thing then the providers would be only mining into their own wallets and not selling hashing power.
IMO cloud hashing offers a few benefits over its alternatives
One avoids paying heavy import duties on hardware
It provides a good alternative to people who have to deal with high electricity costs
One can buy a contract and be mining immediately
You can add to your investment according to the market and your profits
You dont have to deal with the noise, heat & maintenance aspects of the industry
You dont need a location to run physical miners
There are no issues with environmental problems
You dont need to worry about your machines underhashing or interupted service.
For the vendors there is an existing market
for the buyers its all down to which flavour they prefer...
For me personally, I enjoy the geeky hobby aspects with an outside chance that I may get rich on it as others have with Bitcoin in the past.
I have always preferred to be in control of my hardware - but am beginning to get quite tempted by some of the latest pricing -
http://cryptomining-blog.com/3425-zeushash-scrypt-cloud-mining-hashrate-now-available-for-16-usd-per-mhs/