Topic: NiceHash stops paying back -- scam or not? - page 2. (Read 467 times)

I'm one of the miner mine using nicehash before but I didn't receive any notification that they are going to pay the affected wallets including mine.
But I heard many news and even the video on youtube that they officially trying to recover all funds and slowly paying back users but honestly, I didn't receive any cents from nicehash. During that time I'm regretting mining directly in nicehash their miner is easy to use and easy to configure that is why I use their service to mine and earn BTC as payment I just holding them in Nicehash wallet because I thought they are safe but in the end, it's nightmare.

Now, I learn a lot about mining altcoin so I decided to mine directly to mining pools. Every 2 to 3 hours you will receive the mined coins directly to your wallet which is safe compared on using nicehash. 

A company that suffered the kind of losses that NiceHash suffered, would say anything to ensure that they were able to fend off as much as possible attacks they can at the moment which is what they have done. The point is the funds stolen does not only involve investors funds but also their own working capital which would drastically affects their operation and also responsible for them not to be able to meet up with their liabilities. Now that its seemingly impossible for them to pay, they would not come out to make the announcement because it would only open them to series of liabilities and they surely don't have money to hire lawyers especially if its a class action. So, aside from the tough operating conditions, they would still continue to struggle into the future.

I agree with you. However, the main problem is that they stopped paying back the stolen funds, this being their second lie. First was that at beginning of 2018 every client will be fully reimbursed by that time. After, they said they will pay each month a small part, instead of paying back everything in a single installment.

One thing....
Let's take ETH mining for example
In summer 2017 the price was going between 200-300 on average, now it's  150$
The hash rate went from 30Th to 90Th during that period but it's double right now at 165th.
The reward per blocked dropped from 3eth to 2 eth.

So, there is no point in comparing what you could get two years ago and what now.
The mining profitability went down almost 20x times compared to the peark in 2017.

Not defending nicehash here but it's not their fault mining is not that productive anymore.
Maybe they are cutting the earning a bit but not by 20x times.

Many of you heard about the NiceHash hack from December 2017, when almost 5000BTC were stolen.

Many things happened since then:
- the CEO Marko Kobal resigned from his position soon after the hack, contributing to the rumors that the hack was an inside job
- NH states that all the customers will be reimbursed in full at the beginning of 2018, after a group of investors would help the company; with this move, nobody could sue them since stolen funds were (supposed to be) paid back
- NH states that a police investigation started
- the CTO Matjaz Skorjanec leaves the company to his father
- the CTO Matjaz Skorjanec, a well-known hacker (developer of Mariposa botnet), got arrested in autumn of 2019
- instead of paying back all stolen money at the beginning of 2018, NH paid a monthly percentage to the clients, starting with 5-10% monthly and lowering the percentage in a few months to 1%
- they kept paying 1%/month until December 2019, reaching a total of 82% paid back in what they called the "repayment program"; although the percentage paid back monthly was very low (1%), at least there was a hope
- since January 2018 nothing was heared anymore about the police investigation, nor about the investors.

However, in December 2019, a shocking announcement was made: NiceHash, the largest hash-power broker marketplace is forced to pause the Repayment program at 82%.

The reason for stopping paying back is the following: "Unfortunately, NiceHash will not be able to fulfill its promise to fully reimburse all users and achieve the 100% reimbursement status or the Repayment program in the foreseeable future. We have been repaying the old balance to our users through our fees and thus cutting our income. Our income and thus Repayment program assets are subject to taxation. The current state of the Repayment program is at 100,04% of the original loss value in our accounting books".

Could this be the final of the alleged scam from December 2017? Many said it was no hack, but an internal job. The managers resignation might also be linked. Many suspected that although NH stated they are paying back cutting their profits, they were actually paying back from customers' earnings, which earned less and less money from selling their hash power (for example, 1xNvidia 1080Ti would produce per day in summer of 2017 about 9$ and today it produces only 45 cents). After all, if it was a scam, they kept 18% of the "stolen" funds, which mean about 850BTC.

However, even if it was not a scam, they are now responsible in front of the law. If until now they could not be sued since they were paying back, not the situation changed. Although they say that the taxes for paying back 82% took to a total amount paid by them to 100.04% of the stolen funds, they have to convince a court of law that they can stop paying back the remaining 18%.

I'm curious of other opinions about this case.