Topic: PB Mining -- 5 year mining contracts! - page 128. (Read 378920 times)

Well, Rodeoclown, you got me this week I was asleep.

But...
Paid, on time as usual.

Not true at all. If you compare our payouts from the last few weeks to calculator estimations, you will find that our pay every week is always less than estimations. A cut is taken there.

lol your calculations are wrong, because there is no FEEs...

https://bitcoinwisdom.com/bitcoin/difficulty  

according to calculator, 1000 ghs mines 0.001062 btc every hour with no fees..

goto global stats, take one 1000 ghs valued account, note the btc mined, then after exactly an hour note the btc mined again, substact them , you will see the result 0.001062 btc ..

so you are not defending with that 3% fee statement, you are offending.. and i prefer this site, because of no fee policy..

I'm not here to defend PBMining from scam bashing, etc., I'm just to tell what I know.

The admin of PBMining before launching PBMining itself was selling bitcoin mining hardware on ebay. You can find his profile link and check it out yourself. So, we can assume that he (admin) has his hands on the mining hardware, and is able to get it.

So, next, do not say that the mining hashrate is added instantly after the purchase; you have to wait for it to be assigned. I personally have faced numerous times with a message saying there are non free for now. So that kind of points out that they buy hardware.

Lastly, the big question about fees. I do believe they take fee, and I know exactly how much. There was one time they accidentaly uploaded core php files (probably moving something) for few seconds, and I kind of got to see it. They do not post it anywhere, but I believe there is a 3% fee and if you do the math correct - its enough to cover utility bills and pre-order hardware.

So far, I've been receiving payments every week with no issues, and I'm there since the beginning.

paid again,

thx 

Payday, yay!

Unfortunately it is.

paid, this is too easy

It's amazing how people come up with all sorts of convoluted reasons for how they might be legit.

Occams Razor people.

They hide their mining, they mix their payouts, they hide their identities, they have moved countries because someone discovered their payout address 

Petamine bought 1PH from bitfury and it cost $1.8/gh + ~0.07/kwh about the same time that pbmining was offering $2/gh.

If they actually do have some sort of contract with bitfury or any other manufacturer they would tell us and we could easily verify it with the company.

My guess is that they are purchasing mining power from one or more third parties.  Most of their mining operation is no longer in Canada, and I think they would go broke flying their employees around the world to set up new equipment in different data centers.  One such B2B mining service is run by Bitfury, although they just announced it less than a month ago.  http://venturebeat.com/2014/07/30/bitfury-announces-hosted-mining-services/

1) Indeed, that is complete nonsense. Should everyone with a bitcoin address be worried about being broken into now?

This ties into how I pointed out their "mine" was originally in Canada, and then upped and moved to Iceland as if by magic.

2) Yep, they started at 14TH, and jumped to 29, then 43, and so on, I haven't even seen their latest hash rate jumps, but these were done in a matter of days, according to demand, rather than reflecting any real ability to get hold of hardware. This was at a time when everyone was eagerly awaiting 1st gen 1th miners, yet somehow PBMining was adding TH and TH to their mine in a matter of 2-3 days.

I'm confused. How can someone possibly locate their warehouse/homes through a mining address?


Not decreasing the price after low difficulty increases is exactly what you would expect from a ponzi. Look at the b.mine charts on havelock to see the correlation.

They can't afford to keep lowering the price (like hardware manufacturers can) because their payouts come from new payments. If the $/GH is too low the ponzi would collapse. They need to estimate how much 1GH will pay out in it's lifetime and price their GH slightly above.

Even though the difficulty increases have slowed down, the cost of hardware has been steadily decreasing. If they were using real HW to mine, why would their prices not reflect that? Pbmining used to be priced at or below the best hardware rates when difficulty was increasing rapidly, but when it slowed down their price stopped going down and is now far above the best hardware rates.

I suppose it's possible that the overpriced $/gh could be explained by factoring in electricity costs but even with ultra cheap electricity ($0.02/kwh and 1w/gh) it would still cost ~$0.9/gh over five years. Then there's the argument that they could replace their hardware with next gen cheaper/more efficient hardware but with what money? At these rates if they were actually mining they should be barely turning a profit.

If they are turning enough of a profit from actually mining that they can reinvest in next gen hardware as well as spend boatloads on advertising, I would say they should forget about pbmining and just seek real VC funding for having possibly the most efficient and profitable bitcoin mining operation in existence.


I would argue the opposite. Their growth rate is very abnormal. They add hashrate in random increments from what I've seen.

If it was a normal DC they would be adding several hundred KW worth of hardware at a time unless they built a massive DC with tons of extra space/cooling/electricity/infrastructure which can expand indefinitely.

no, no, yes. See below

Ok, the BlackArrow thing was kind of a low blow. Shouldn't have said it, but I did almost fall for that one myself. If I'd have come up with the cash in time, I would have. So it wasn't meant to be as mean as it sounds.

Back to the subject at hand, they did in this thread post an eligius mining address quite a while back, and apparently had people trying to break in to both their homes and their facility (which at the time was a rented warehouse, nothing too secure). So they went with a mixer to make it impossible to trace it back. (which they're wrong about, but it would take a great deal of effort). I answered "no" to the mining address because *I* did not personally see it. Others in this thread did.

As to (b) being acceptable, as long as they aren't running a government or some other criminal enterprise, I don't see a huge issue with it. As I said, I consider it deceptive, but if they are actually doing things to gain revenue and paying us out, I'd not see it as to big a deal.

I think we've all fallen for something a time or two. So far I've not been burned too badly, but it's more that I've not had the money to risk. First one I nearly fell for in the bitcoin world was BFL, and I'm thankful every day for my poverty at the time. I hate poverty, but I hate getting scammed worse.

I don't know enough about playing the spread to know if it's sustainable, but even so, it don't qualify as a ponzi. At some point the diff would indeed plateau. When the diff increase was very little, they did NOT decrease their price, and it looked like they still sold a healthy amount, so it again militates more to the idea that they are buying equipment and selling a portion of the hashpower. As for the payouts being "by the second", they explained that here in the thread some time back. The payout is not based on actual hashing equipment per person, but rather a standard calculator. It's an "ideal" payout. Which again, would only work if they had more hashpower than they were selling. The rate they have increased is unlikely to work within a ponzi as well.

I get a little irritated with people on here screaming "ponzi" and leaving it at that. You actually put out rational reasons why it looks like it, and I have no real problem with that, other than most of your objections have been addressed. But I don't always read the whole thread either, so my irritation is my own problem.

Did they reveal to you a mining address or pictures of their mine? Did they also explain why they are mixing coins and why payouts occur every second instead of every block?


In the event of (a), if they were not mining there is little chance they would have collapsed by now. Look at the bitcoin difficulty derivative (BDD) on havelock. It is essentially the same thing but without pretending they are mining. B.mine = pbmining customers and b.sell = pbmining. Pbmining makes money every time the difficulty increases. If difficulty plateaus and they aren't mining it will eventually collapse (or in BDDs case the game would end) but that could be a while.

In the case of (b) I'm not sure how you would find that remotely acceptable.


Blackarrow is not the only scam I've fallen for and probably not the last. Fact is there are way too many scams in the bitcoin world and many of them are far more convincing than pbmining.

They know scams are thriving in the cloudmining scene and still chose to make their "company" appear as much like a ponzi as possible.

Yes, I'm getting closer and closer to breaking even. A few more weeks and I'm there.

GUYS GUYS!!

ignore trolls pls,


another payday is coming.. and i believe, pbmining will not miss any payment too,

AGAIN

I'm not sure how far I should go here, and my word is all I can offer. But Pbmining did, in private, reveal quite a bit to me including the identities (actual, not virtual) of the people involved. This, while not conclusive enough for a courtroom, was sufficient for me. I am confident that they are a real company based on that, and said so. I do find it troubling that some months and many GH later they still don't wish to provide more concrete proof in public, but some of the shit they endured in their early days would make me skittish too.

Is it POSSIBLE that they are (a) a ponzi, or (b) using the BTC they gather to invest in something other than mining and pay out AS IF it were mining? Yes, it's possible. In the case of (a) I would think they would have already folded, and this has not happened. In the event of (b), so what? we get ours correctly and there's nothing illegitimate about it. Deceptive, but not illegitimate. I don't think either scenario is correct, I think they are mining at a far greater rate than what they sell. But I can't prove it.

Jimmothy, I suspect, is bitter over BlackArrow. I would be too, had I not been too broke to invest at the time.

Bitcoin mining is risky enough on its own.  With the unknown future difficulty increases, we may lose money, even if pbmining is 100% legit.

Do we know that pbmining is not legit?  Not for sure.  We have suspicions, because they have not provided full transparency.  Peer companies have been fly-by-night operations.  I think we realize that doing business with cloud mining companies has more risk than buying your own equipment and mining at home.  Why do we buy from pbmining instead of buying our own mining equipment?  Because the numbers look more attractive.  Buying your own mining equipment requires a larger up-front investment, more expensive maintenance costs, and more personal labor.

Whether pbmining is a ponzi or not, we have a better chance of breaking even by using their service than by owning CEX, PETA, or our own mining equipment.  If pbmining disappears all of a sudden, that's a risk I'm willing to accept.  Why?  Because I invested a small percentage of my portfolio with them.  If the investment proves to be successful, then I earn a small profit.  If it is unsuccessful, then I lose a little bit of money.

TL;DR I have a higher chance of breaking even with pbmining than I do with alternative mining strategies, despite the added risk.

After what just happened with Lunamine i'm in complete agreement. What I've found here though is that the customer base doesn't want to look at this pbmining situation no matter how much you want to warn them. They believe that just because they get a payout that it's "legit" and therefore immune to any further questioning. PBmining (the owner account here) refuses to answer your questions based on "security issues". Dr. G posted an excellent article in the mining thread about public disclosure that I agree with.  The customers here don't want to be warned, partly I think because they bought into the "fun" of it and those that speak out are shamed out of this thread, sadly. I think if you want to get attention from pbmining, you'll need to add pork-puns and claim you got paid first.