What contract is good? Considering the risk of operator running away, datacenter downtime etc. The problem is difficulty is not always predictable, huge difficulty can increase due to miners bring shipped. I went to search for various cloudmining plans, they are either unprofitable or untrustworthy. The operator would just mine for themselves instead of selling shares if profitability is high. Trading isn't for everyone, the risk is high, you are more likely to lose money than getting profits if you are inexperienced.
I agree, there's always the risk of the company running away, that's why cryptocurrency has ben plagued by frequent scams. Last one that succeded was probably Lunamine in the cloud mining area, but there were even more among the hardware suppliers. Most recently we had AMT, and MAT, not to mention BFL. So cloud mining is probably as vunerable as hardware.
Question is: If you're interested in mining at all and willing to take the risk, should you buy shares or hardware?
In such case I'd buy shares. Why?
-you start mining immediately, don't have to wait 2 weeks or more for the miner to ship.
-you don't have to pay customs duty, usually a significant sum.
-no need to buy a PSU
-no problems with heat and noise
-you can relax while somebody else checks on your miner.
There are also some other marginal difficulties you face when mining at home, like your kids pulling the wires, losing money when you lose connection because the ISP or electric company had a maintenance, and some miners. e.g. the ones from KNC are known to to burn the cables.
There are many reasons why people offer shares instead of mining, one of them is that they get the money right away, if they mined, they'd be getting more in the end, but it would take 6 months or more.
And don't be fooled, most of them were and are mining for themselves. They usually have 100+ miners constantly online and if you buy a share you just direct the profit from one of these miners to your account, while the rest still mines for them, until someone buys another share
There's some reputable ASIC manufacturer out there, the incredibility high maintenance fees, 50%+ really make cloud mining unprofitable. If you really want to profit, you need to take more risk. You can always place the rig in your garage and place some fans. There are monitors available which can allow you to monitor the ASICs. Use a UPS backup if you are afraid your miners would go down due to electrical problems. Mining is most suited for those who have space in a datacenter and can host their ASIC there.
