In absence of valid irrefutable proof, this cloud "mining operation" could very well be just another HYIP, as PB Mining and many others, that prey upon the gullible, the greedy and the uninformed.
Bear with me a few more minutes...
I'll venture a little on the hypothetical realm.
Let's say, for the argument's sake, one can identify a considerably big market in which the "investors" are able and willing to put down perfectly good money today and declare themselves happy to pay them back whatever chunk of their own money whenever they desire, the only limit being the rate of return that is linked to an arbitrary established and generally accepted algorithm.
Rate of repayment is the mining rate of a so called cloud mining operation that gives back less and less money every day because that's what's expected from it, as difficulty rises.
Wait a minute...
This is every ponzi scheme's manager's wet dream.
Not only you don't have to pay back all the money to all the people, but they are perfectly happy to accept the fact that their investment is depreciating by the day and your operation has a continuous inflow of capital due to the fact that the dragon needs feeding.
Every investor is directly motivated to feed the cow periodically if they want it to produce this digital milk.
Until now, all cloud "mining operations" hit all these marks.
The difficulty resides in differentiating between the ones that do in fact mine and the ones that just say they do.
Blockchain analysis could, in time, tell us if in fact the revenue stream of an investor is really fed by a mining operation and where is that operation situated, or how far down the chain is the generated block.
On the other hand, consider how messed up is this: the cloud mining operators that have a problem with disclosing relevant and convincing info about their whereabouts, their equipment, their pools, are not using the most effective tools they have to gain and keep the very trust their business model rely on.
Saying I'm a farmer that produces tomatoes when I'm selling said tomatoes to a ketchup factory does not make me a farmer.
I could be the farmer.
I could be the farmer's son.
I could be the farmer's neighbor.
I could be the driver that the farmer sent to the market.
I could be the wholesaler that bought the tomatoes from the said driver.
...and so on...
For the ketchup factory does not really matter as long as they get their tomatoes.
When the stream stops, all hell breaks loose because no one bothered to ask how reliable is that stream.
No one cared where the farm is because they were selling it at the factory's gate.
No one wondered what happens when there's ice on the road because the deliveries were always on time.
No one asked how old, how healthy or how sane the farmer was despite the fact that the entire operation relied on that...
The disconnect happens even faster in the digital world.
Let's make a little social-economic experiment.
It's success will depend only on the trust the investors will have in the manager and his power of persuasion.
The manager could put up a site, with 2FA and SSL and all that jazz, if necessary.
One bitcoin address will be posted.
Anyone can send to that address any amount they want, larger amounts will be encouraged, if not mandatory.
For that amount you will get a receipt that says you own mining capacity in my mining farm.
That receipt is nothing but the proof that I've got your money.
The contract says I'll give you back some money as you need it back if you ask me nicely.
The same contract says you will NEVER BE ABLE TO GET ALL YOUR MONEY AT ONCE.
There, also says you will NEVER BE ABLE TO WITHDRAW IN ONE DAY MORE THAN the daily percentage the difficulty says you can virtually mine with your virtually owned virtual mining capacity.
I take no risks.
I get all your money.
I can pull the plug whenever I want because some day my electricity bill may prove the operation is "unprofitable".
That about sums it all up, doesn't it?!?
Now, let's explore a little the incentive aspect of these cloud shrouded mining operators.
Let's say I have somehow managed to buy a mining rig and, for scaling the operation, I need money, lots of them and fast.
Now I am plugging it in and I'm currently mining with it.
I see that mining rig producing some value after I factor in the operating costs.
How can I increase the daily profit?
If I sell the value the rig produces, I get exactly what that rig has produced.
If I sell the mining power of that rig, I can charge any amount the market will sustain.
So, what can stop me from selling GHS to the ones that have no mining rigs of their own?
What can motivate me to sell them my mining power instead of the value that mining power produces?
Does any of you think the cloud mining operators have racks of equipment unplugged and idle waiting for any of you to pop up with $50 to make them happy?!?
The rigs are online 24/7, whether their mining for you or for the operators.
If they mine for you, they are getting more money than if they would mine for them.
Only the ones that have personally seen a data center at least once in their lives can begin to fathom the complexity involved in such a operation at such a scale it would be profitable to mine or sell mining capacity at a moment's notice to anyone in the world.
Those who are capable of doing it, are already doing it.
My point is that for me it's impossible to believe that a newcomer in this market could simultaneously engage in the race to the bottom we see in terms of BTC/GHS pricing and be profitable at the same time scaling up a real cloud mining operation and all it is expected in terms of hosting, cooling, securing such a operation, but, somehow shy away from disclosing info about where, who and how are they doing it.
I doubt that being skeptic hurt more people than being brave or dauntless.
Some of us are still here because there was a time when a few of us heard some strange noises coming from outside the cave and didn't rush out to see what's what when they did not have all the necessary tools and know-how. I'd like to believe those were the skeptics. They asked the right questions at the right time and lived to tell the whole story.
I'm sure there are Genesis related stories, as well, but I assume those are for another crowd.
Someone bothered to search on street view the neighborhood...
Few piled on that.
All is now buried under "more relevant matters", leaving the first real and the most important things unanswered.
Where's this wonderful tomato farm?
How exactly does the vines look in the daylight?
Who's working there every day?
Thinking is allowed, encouraged, mandatory even.