Some of the cloudmining services out there like Hashnest aren't too bad IMO, Hashnest tells you the daily maintenance rate for the miners they sell and they also provide a neat chart to view past earnings for miners per TH in the case of SHA256, and things mostly go smoothly over there. Last time I checked you can also redeem the miners when they become unprofitable if you have enough of the contracts for a specific miner so you can get physical hardware afterwards as well. There's definitely better ways to invest your coins out there though.
cex.io used to do this back when they were an actual cloud mining company, and it was a huge factor in proving their legitimacy. unfortunately a legitimate operation proved unprofitable as the difficulty rose, so its not really a thing anymore. most of the current running services are well disguised ponzis.
At first, I felt sorry about these people. But after I've found out what cloud mining is, I started to think, that their loss is just their fault. Cloud miners services offer you to buy mining power. That's alright. Also, they say, when your account profitability turns negative, a system closes your account automatically. That's fair too - your account should profit.
thats just fucking shady, the moment a system determines your account doesn't profit, they just cut you off without an option? huge red flag.
But that is the stumbling block between users and cloud mining services. Users think that they've scammed when their account just stopped making a profit. But some users start flooding saying that one or another company is a scam and nobody should trust it.
to be fair, im sure the majority of the people that buy into cloud mining dont even bother to research the service's legitimacy and are pouring money into a ponzi, but there is the off chance that the operation legitimately is not profitable anymore. but the former is far more likely with the lack of legitimate services out there.
They spoil the reputation of good products. Just because they were too stupid to read a contract. I have nothing left to say. I don't understand these people!
just because they failed to read the terms doesnt mean the terms were fair.
I havent kept up with the bitcoin community and news as closely as I have done in the past, but cloud mining is generally unprofitable and most operations should automatically be dismissed as a disguised ponzi, in my honest opinion. Any shows of
maintenance fees,; upkeep costs, etc. can easily be faked with a few scripts. in addition, basic pictures of mining farms can be faked too. i personally never recommend anyone to go for cloud mining, especially since these operations usually run purely off bitcoin, its fairly easy for these scammers to set up and tear down. no licenses for bank transfers involved either, so legally, they can just appear overnight and start operating without any real setup or liability.