Topic: PBmining - legit? - page 32. (Read 67922 times)

Almost ROI. I can say the site is legit until now

Got my payout on time, last night, from my 125GH....paid 4-5 times now, probably won't buy any more with all this mystery, so that sucks, I wanted to double my size.

They run "out of stock" because they have to distribute the funds by hand.  Which whether they are legit or not seems to be what they have admitted they are doing.  That's a long process, so the more people who buy in and get added, the more work they need to do to distribute funds. 

There are a few threads on pbmining, most asking for legitimacy and there's a few unresolved points with them as far as I can tell.

1) They haven't proved they actually mine in any way. They cite security concerns and attempts to social engineer information out of them and calls to their private residences, etc.

2) Their business model seems to generate revenue on the naivety of those who invest in their business. Selling 2gh/s on a 5 year contract will never return a profit.

3) There have been open discussions on whether they are a ponzi or a pyramid scam (referrals), so far the debate still continues.

I wouldn't invest a dime with them, they also say they have been hacked (a note to their homepage) and can't offer any estimate on a potential return on investment.

If they are a scam: Why do they sometimes "run out of stock"?

Of course, somebody could claim: To look more legit. But: If they are a ponzi, why would they even care about looking legit? Wouldn't they just sell as much as they possibly can to make as much money as possible? A ponzi "lives" from new customers, so turning them down from time to time would be a pretty stupid idea, huh?

For my own part: I am now at 3.7 BTCs paid out to me. This took 4 weeks at 1 TH/s.

Now with a few weeks of experience I now can calculate a possible outcome:

The highest payout was about 0,86 BTC (per week), the last one was 0,69 BTC (last week). If the degradation continuous at this level in the future, I will break even in fall. Afterwards, there won't be enough coming through week after week to make a significant difference (around 0,07 BTC).

So:

Let's assume for a second that http://pbmining.com?ref=iflash11 (yep, there is a ref-link included) IS legit, then it still might not be a great investment as the ROI is nearly nothing. If all goes well, I could make maybe half a BTC after one year, but then it's only satoshis. That would mean around 5 per cent interest.

For the risk involved this is not enough in my view.

EDIT PS: I forgot to mention that the price per GH/s dropped from 0,0089 to 0,0064 in the same time. So the price dropped about as much as the payouts for the GH/s bought.

Oh, looks like the debate is over. Again. Thanks for your deep insight, Deep1.

That Site is legit.

Yeah, I'm rather worried by the fact there is no evidence to prove that they are actually mining rather than running an elaborate ponzi. Some proof of their farms/tracing back transactions to a newly created block would be fine, but I doubt they would be willing to do that.

There's a much simpler question regarding their legitimacy: why do they use a coin mixing service for their payouts?
If they're legitimate, there's no reason at all users shouldn't be able to trace back their payout to a block reward.

They're hiding under the excuse of "protecting their personal safety" to keep their identities hidden.
A company without identifiable information is sketchy at best, but let's give em that, let's say they do have a valid reason to fear their safety.

This still doesn't prevent them from posting the tiniest bit of information/evidence their farm actually exists.

They're showing all the signs of a party who made the preparations to make a clean exit when their pile of bitcoin stops growing.

Going to watch this thread....

Below is a pic from the most complete mining calculator I have found, it accounts for difficulty increases over the time frame you tell it you are mining.

Advertised 0.007 BTC for 1 GH/s for 5 years (60 months)

According to my index (signature link) 0.007 BTC is worth around $3.07 USD right now....

According to the calculator 1GH/s (1,000 MH/s) @ a flat rate of $3.07 with no ongoing power cost will net a -$0.36 loss over the next 5 years with a difficulty increase of 1.6361% per day (the current average, this will likely go up over time).

This is at the current price of BTC during a crash, if Bitcoin survives 5 years you can bet the exchange rate will be MUCH higher, and this contract could *potentially* be very lucrative, it could also be a total loss. What will 1MH/s per second be worth next year, who knows? Probably not much considering the droves of TH/s+ equipment shipping right now...

Especially if it's a ponzi scheme, and without some transparency, who knows...

As a small-time miner and a business owner, this sounds insane to me. Would I sell 1 GH/s for $3.07 for 5 years? Hell no!

At current rate increases, just the projected increase in energy costs alone would sink them...

To me it sounds insane, like insane as in not possible?

Maybe they are betting on the cost per GH/s coming way down, which it will according to Moore's Law, but not accounting for increased energy costs?

How could you anticipate the value of Bitcoin, cost of energy and efficiency of chips in such a volatile market for 5 years out?

If it can be transparently verified (as it should be if its legit), I'm in, but I don't see that happening.

Just my .02 bits...

I agree, what sort of hardware they are running would be nice to know/reassuring...

I have about 30GH with them now. So far so good. I may chuck a little more in from time to time but I am hesitant to go big until there is a bit more transparency. 

This lad had a valid point, they have sold a good bit of mining equipment on ebay with good feesback.

That's assuming they haven't made a deal with a hardware manufacturer.

Not possible. They're offering roughly $3/ghps. That's essentially the going cost of hardware. If they have unlimited free electricity, then yes, it's possible. Who here believes they have unlimited free electricity? They might break even for a year. There's no way they'll survive 5 years.

I am sure that it is part of their plan to continue upgrading their equipment over time, making money on the resale of equipment, etc. Having the returns accrue at theoretical rather than actual detaches their contracts from actual hardware, so if they didn't have all the hashrate for a month or two, but they did have the bitcoin capital they could swing it. They also would be hashing at a greater rate than returns require. I think this is really, if they are indeed legitimate, where they will make their money over time. All they need to do is maintain the edge between profitability ahead of the difficulty curve over time. Their contracts should have years 2-5 in the bank by the end of year 1 and just pay out from that pot of money over time, no hashing (or electricity) required. In the mean time, that pot of money keeps them agile. The business model is actually pretty smart in my opinion, if that's actually what they are doing.

I think the concern here is that there isn't really any hashing going on and this is nothing more than a difficulty hedge fund, a ponzi, a way to launder bitcoin, or a combination of those. Transparency is what people want.

Running the numbers, they are just too good to be true. Running miners for 5 years will cost more in electricity than they made from the contract sale. That's not even counting the cost of hardware. They'll only be able to keep paying out as long as they continue receiving new sales. Once the new sales dry up, they will fail.

I think the point is, anyone saying the company is legit doesn't know that to be true except the owners.  Since they apparently do not show anyone their hashing power and have refused to show it, etc.  They are pretty closed down and there is very little info about any of them.

It's quite possible that you could earn your money back and then some.  It depends on if you got in early enough and if the Ponzi is growing.  So long as it grows, they can keep feeding people.  So you COULD make out, but you'd be in a minority. 

I bought in as well, so am just concerned that they'll take the money and run as anyone else.  I hope it's legit, but I refuse to invest any more money in it until I see evidence that it is.  So far, I haven't seen that.

Still a few months away, exactly.

Oh my, thanks for sharing.

Of course I know what a ponzi scheme is. But if they pay back my complete invest (which still is a few months away) then I begin to wonder what strange kind of ponzi this is, huh? Maybe I get my money back because I was early enough, but I doubt that. In a ponzi scheme only the inner circle usually makes a profit. Every week I get payouts makes me believe more that the reason is more simple: They simply could be legit.

So far I got back more than 30 per cent of my initial invest. By the end of this week it will be close to 40 per cent. I will NOT add to my position with them as I think that in the end it will not pay much more then the initial invest. After 12 month I might have one additional BTC (probably much less) and the rest of the five years there will be some satoshis mined here and there.

But if I make - let's say - one BTC, this would still be a 12,5 per cent profit which is far better than other things.

Let's see ...