Topic: PBmining - legit? - page 14. (Read 67909 times)

I bought into this a few days ago. I only bought 100 GH/s because I have this feeling that I wont really make anything on it. In fact I would be happy to see just break even in 5yrs. It all depends on the difficulty not increasing drastically I think. This term it doesn't look like it is predicted to be a big increase so I shouldn't see a big drop per day. If we get a few terms with bog increases I may not have any chance to ever make it back. Either way it will be an experience that I will learn from one way or the other.

This is what makes it very difficult to measure if you will ever ROI on your cloud mining contracts. With difficulty skyrocketing as it is now (and will likely continue to do) even a small change in the rate of difficulty change would have a huge impact on your overall revenue over the course of your contract.

Pbmining.com commenced operations in January 2014, and has additionally been selling Bitcoin mining hardware since spring 2013.

Location and legal info:

Originally based in Saskatchewan, Canada, most operations have now been moved to Iceland. PB Mining further tells us that while registration details were available on the website initially, these were later removed for reasons of heightened security.

Canada recently introduced laws which required Bitcoin entities to register with financial regulator FINTRAC or face being ‘de-banked’. However, operations for PB Mining remain unaffected at present.

A significant source of traffic for the service is generated from the Mexican market.

Security:

PB Mining does not offer two-factor authentication, and it does not permit certain special characters often used to make secure passwords. However, as its mining rewards are automatically sent to an external address, funds are not stored on the site and therefore cannot be stolen.

Mining contracts are fully insured against loss should any of the mining equipment malfunction under any circumstances.

Well this period is looks like miners are going to get a small break, less than 10% increase in difficulty.   That will be good for the people that just bought the PBMining GHS, but I don't expect it to last yet.

To help give you some perspective, I remember back in early February signing up for a cloud hashing contract from a guy who had miner that ran at around 500 GH. He stated to me that this miner was generating 8 payouts per day at that particular moment in time = 0.08 BTC.   Fast forward 4 short months and that same miner would generate 0.1 BTC per week.  So we've almost reached the point where a given hashrate from 4 months ago will now generate only 1/10th the amount of bitcoin.  The conclusion is that the average person who dables in mining cannot keep up with the increases in difficulty.

Well I would hope so...Mining becomes more difficult each 11-12 days or so.  Thus it would be harder to make a profit.

I am not saying this makes them legit but if they were going up or staying the same it would be rather scary...

I have to say my payments have been getting smaller each week.  From .02 a month ago to .013 this week.

I just remembered the following news story from a short time ago, also regarding a bitcoin related business in Saskatchewan.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/dominion-bitcoin-mining-hit-with-cease-trade-order-1.2633904

So they're based in Canada and some canadian pressed charges against them so they banned all canadians until the law is clearer so that they won't get into troubles from their own country-men ?

From PB Mining's buy a contract page:

"As of June 21, 2014 we are no longer allowing orders to be purchased by residents of Canada. By continuing with this purchase, you are agreeing that you are not a Canadian citizen. We apologize for the inconvenience, and we will allow Canadians to purchase contracts again once we are get a clearer understanding of the regulatory requirements that need to be met."

Pretty poor dashboard ... Anyway if difficulty goes up more than 12% (average) breaking even won't be possible.  So from here it is even worse with PBMining, which is probably what they are counting on.   However this period might be different, although the phantom 20 pH/s seems to have been back for a while.  Maybe we will still get a break on the difficulty increases.

I am mining with them. Their contracts are valid until coins mined is less than expenses. Everything kinda makes sense and I have already received the first withdrawal..

They do seem a lot more legit than PB mining. You really cant mine for 5 years without paying electricity wtf! Does anybody know any names associated with PB mining?

And a fake perhaps, see https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=657647.new#new

indeed a Bit cheaper, about 100 Bits cheaper meaning BTC0.0001

bitcoincloudservices.com is similar to PBMining, with 5 year contracts and no additional fees, and a bit cheaper. Also no details on their mining operations. Big difference though is that they will be working on transparency, first by publishing TXID's on the dashboard page.

What if all these companies are no ponzi...

The mining argument is wobbly anyway. I don't think one single cloud company is actually mapping physical GH's to a user account. I rather think it's all shares. Must be, if they want to live up to the 24/7 mining claim. If your account is mapped to failing hardware then 24/7 mining is no more.

Now another place starting up even cheaper than PBMining!  http://lunamine.com/contracts/  

However you will have to pay for electricity.   From the home page:

I totally think it's a ponzi or some terrible scheme.  But to play devil's advocate, they could be merge mining other coins and taking the profits from those and not Bitcoin.  Providing all Bitcoin profits to the end user.  They could also realistically acquire bulk hardware purchases cheaper than what we see as retail pricing.  So there may be more breathing room in there.


It's quite possible that PBMining is buying coins from some other dubious source and then distributing them.  For instance, say an American hacker has hundreds of thousands of coins that he hacked or stole.  He can't put these through an exchange because they would get reported to FinCen.  So he has to find another source to give him cash for the coins.  PBMining works out a deal with him for cash for coins at a reduced rate.  PBMining then mixes small batches of coins and distributes to end users.  This isn't a Ponzi, but it does rely on someone selling them coins at a discounted rate.

Another possibility is that PBMining is reselling a Chinese mining outfit's coins.  Right now the banks in China won't allow them to really deal in Bitcoin without going through a lot of work-arounds.  PBMining could work out a simple cash deal, give the mining outfit cash for discounted coins.  But do it in such a way that no red flags are going to go off at the bank.  (Which would happen if they just came out and offered the same deal to the public to get a better rate.)  

Nobody really knows what the game is.  We're assuming it's a ponzi, but it could be anything really.  What it doesn't seem to be is 1ph of mining going on in Canada.  

10 months ago Bitfurys did 400 GH/s at 350 watts. The new S3 does 500 GH/s at 400 watts. Your ideas are so far from the facts it's laughable.

When I checked a few days ago they were paying a few percent above what they should be able to mine in theory.   They aren't holding back for the GH/s that you purchased, that was the point.   There isn't any room for them to keep anything back with what they are paying out.   

To be honest, I'm afraid from them.

I don't trust them.