What is Bitcoin Cloud Mining?
Cloud mining or cloud hashing enables users to purchase mining capacity that of hardware in data centres.
Two operators, Hashflare and Genesis Mining, have been offering contracts for several years.
Bitcoin cloud mining enables people to earn Bitcoins without bitcoin mining hardware, bitcoin mining software, electricity, bandwidth or other offline issues.
Bitcoin cloud mining, sometimes called cloud hashing, enables users to buy the output of Bitcoin mining power from Bitcoin mining hardware placed in remote data centres.
Then all Bitcoin mining is done remotely in the cloud. This enables the owners to not deal with any of the hassles usually encountered when mining bitcoins such as electricity, hosting issues, heat, installation or upkeep trouble.
Sometimes you may want to mine a more volatile altcoin like MWC which is superior for scalability, privacy, anonymity and fungibility by utilizing MimbleWimble in the base layer.
With mainnet launching in November 2019 it has risen from $0.22 to over $8.00 in its first two months.
What are Bitcoin Cloud Mining Advantages?
No excess heat to deal with
Quiet because of no constantly humming fans
No electricity costs
No bitcoin mining equipment to sell when bitcoin mining is no longer profitable
No ventilation problems with hot equipment
No preordered bitcoin mining hardware that may not be delivered on time by bitcoin mining equipment suppliers
What are Bitcoin Cloud Mining Disadvantages?
FRAUD!!!
Unverifiable or otherwise shady Bitcoin cloud mining operations
No fun! If you like building your own Bitcoin hashing systems.
Lower profits – Bitcoin cloud mining services or mining company will have expenses
Bitcoin mining contracts may have the ability to cease operations or payouts in the contracts if the Bitcoin price is too low
Lack of possession of the Bitcoin mining hardware
Lack of ability to change the Bitcoin mining software
Best Bitcoin Cloud Hashing Services
Being listed in this section is NOT an endorsement of these services and is to serve merely as a Bitcoin cloud mining comparison. There have been a tremendous amount of Bitcoin cloud mining scams.
Hashflare Review: Hashflare offers SHA-256 mining contracts and more profitable SHA-256 coins can be mined while automatic payouts are still in BTC. Customers must purchase at least 10 GH/s.
Genesis Mining Review: Genesis Mining is the largest Bitcoin and scrypt cloud mining provider. Genesis Mining offers three Bitcoin cloud mining plans that are reasonably priced. Zcash mining contracts are also available.
Hashing 24 Review: Hashing24 has been involved with Bitcoin mining since 2012. They have facilities in Iceland and Georgia. They use modern ASIC chips from BitFury deliver the maximum performance and efficiency possible.
Minex Review: Minex is an innovative aggregator of blockchain projects presented in an economic simulation game format. Users purchase Cloudpacks which can then be used to build an index from pre-picked sets of cloud mining farms, lotteries, casinos, real-world markets and much more.
Minergate Review: Offers both pool and merged mining and cloud mining services for Bitcoin.
Hashnest Review: Hashnest is operated by Bitmain, the producer of the Antminer line of Bitcoin miners. HashNest currently has over 600 Antminer S7s for rent. You can view the most up-to-date pricing and availability on Hashnest's website. At the time of writing one Antminer S7's hash rate can be rented for $1,200.
Bitcoin Cloud Mining Review: Currently all Bitcoin Cloud Mining contracts are sold out.
NiceHash Review: NiceHash is unique in that it uses an orderbook to match mining contract buyers and sellers. Check its website for up-to-date prices.
Eobot Review: Start cloud mining Bitcoin with as little as $10. Eobot claims customers can break even in 14 months.
MineOnCloud Review: MineOnCloud currently has about 35 TH/s of mining equipment for rent in the cloud. Some miners available for rent include AntMiner S4s and S5s.
Best Bitcoin Cloud Mining Contracts and Comparisons
Bitcoin cloud mining contracts are usually sold for bitcoins on a per hash basis for a particular period of time and there are several factors that impact Bitcoin cloud mining contract profitability with the primary factor being the Bitcoin price.
For example, Pay per GHash/s would be 0.0012 BTC / GHs for a 24 month contract.
Contracts vary from hourly to multiple years. The major factor that is unknown to both parties is the Bitcoin network difficulty and it drastically determines the profitability of the bitcoin cloud hashing contracts.
Bitcoin network difficulty is a measure of how difficult it is to find a hash below a given target.
The Bitcoin network has a global block difficulty. Valid blocks must have a hash below this target. Bitcoin mining pools also have a pool-specific share difficulty setting a lower limit for shares.
The Bitcoin network difficulty changes roughly every two weeks or 2,016 blocks.
There are all types of cloud mining options for other forms of blockchain technology.
Best Litecoin Cloud Mining Services and Comparisons
There are limited options for Litecoin cloud mining contracts. If nothing on the list below meets your needs, you can buy Bitcoin cloud mining contracts (listed above) and simply convert the bitcoins you earn to litecoin.
Hashflare Review: Hashflare offers scrypt mining contracts with a minimum purchase of 1 MH/s.
Genesis Mining Review: Genesis Mining offers Litecoin cloud mining contracts.
Minex Review: Minex is an innovative aggregator of blockchain projects presented in an economic simulation game format. Users purchase Cloudpacks which can then be used to build an index from pre-picked sets of cloud mining farms, lotteries, casinos, real-world markets and much more.
Minergate Review: Offers both pool and merged mining and cloud mining services for Litecoin.
Eobot Review: Eobot offers Litecoin cloud mining contracts with 0.0071 LTC monthly payouts.
Best Dash Cloud Mining Services and Comparisons
There are limited options for Dash cloud mining contracts. If nothing on the list below meets your needs, you can buy Bitcoin cloud mining contracts (listed above) and simply convert the bitcoins you earn to Dash.
Genesis Mining Review: Genesis Mining is the largest X11 cloud mining provider. Genesis Mining offers three Dash X11 cloud mining plans that are reasonably priced.
Best Ether Cloud Mining Services and Comparisons
There are limited options for Ether cloud mining contracts. If nothing on the list below meets your needs, you can buy Bitcoin cloud mining contracts (listed above) and simply convert the bitcoins you earn to ether.
Hashflare Review: Hashflare is a large Ether cloud mining provider with reasonably priced Ethereum cloud mining contracts.
Genesis Mining Review: Genesis Mining is the largest Ether cloud mining provider. Ethereum cloud mining contracts are reasonably priced.
Minex Review: Minex is an innovative aggregator of blockchain projects presented in an economic simulation game format. Users purchase Cloudpacks which can then be used to build an index from pre-picked sets of cloud mining farms, lotteries, casinos, real-world markets and much more.
Eobot Review: Eobot offers Ethereum cloud mining contracts with 0.0060 ETH monthly payouts.
This Ethereum cloud mining guide will show you how to mine Ethereum using Amazon cloud servers.
Bitcoin Cloud Mining Scams
There have been a tremendous amount of Bitcoin cloud mining scams like the possible $500,000 Bitcoin cloud mining ponzi scheme that was uncovered. Potential buyers should be extremely guarded and careful before purchasing any bitcoin mining contracts. Services to beware of:
Scrypt.cc Review: Scrypt.cc allows purchase of KHS in a matter of seconds, start mining right away and even be able to trade your KHS in real time with prices based on supply and demand! All KHashes are safely stored and maintained in 2 secured data-centres.
PB Mining Review: Claims to operate Bitcoin mining ASIC hardware. When customers buy a bitcoin mining contract then they will begin earning Bitcoins instantly. At Piggyback Mining, they cover the electricity costs and all Bitcoin mining pool fees. The Bitcoin mining contract is 100% insured because they want customers to succeed.
Bitcoin Cloud Services (BCS) Review: Appears to have been a $500,000 Ponzi scam fraud.
Zeushash Review: Appears to have halted payouts.
Bitminer.io Review: Based on user reports they appear to have halted payouts.
Cryptocurrency Cloud Mining Companies
Hashflare Review: An Estonian cloud miner with SHA-256, Scrypt and Scrypt-N options and currently appears to be the best value.
Genesis Mining Review: Genesis Mining is the largest Bitcoin and scrypt cloud mining provider.
Hashing 24 Review: Hashing24 has been involved with Bitcoin mining since 2012. They have facilities in Iceland and Georgia. They use modern ASIC chips from BitFury deliver the maximum performance and efficiency possible.
Minex Review: Minex is an innovative aggregator of blockchain projects presented in an economic simulation game format. Users purchase Cloudpacks which can then be used to build an index from pre-picked sets of cloud mining farms, lotteries, casinos, real-world markets and much more.
Minergate Review: MinerGate is a mining pool created by a group of cryptocoin enthusiasts. It is the first pool which provides service for merged mining. This means that while mining on our pool you can mine different coins simultaniously without decrease of hashrate for major coin.
Hashnest Review: Hashnest is operated by Bitmain, producer of the Antminer line of miners. HashNest currently has over 600 Antminer S7s for rent. You can view the most up-to-date pricing and availability on Hashnest's website.
Bitcoin Cloud Mining Review: Supposedly has been mining Bitcoin since mid-2013. All Bitcoin miners are located in a state-of-the-art data centre in Australia and they have direct access to high quality equipment and 24/7 support.
NiceHash Review: NiceHash offers you to sell and buy hashing power. Selling hashing power is as simple as connecting your miner to our stratum mining pools while buyers can buy hashing power on demand, on pay-as-you-go basis. Claims to bring an innovative easy-to-use and risk-free cloud mining service. You can mine the vast majority of popular coins, based on SHA-256 (Bitcoin, etc.), Scrypt (Litecoin, Dogecoin, etc.), Scrypt-N (Vertcoin, etc.) and X11 (DarkCoin, etc.).
Eobot Review: Claims to be the easiest, cheapest, and best cloud mining solution. Start with as little as $10 using PayPal and choose between any cryptocurrency including Bitcoin, Litecoin, Peercoin, Namecoin, Feathercoin, Dogecoin, NautilusCoin, and Vertcoin.
MineOnCloud Review: MineOnCloud appears to have obselete hardware. It was launched on November 2013. They offer Bitcoin mining contracts for SHA256 using a very stable ASIC 28nm chip. They have two bitcoin mining contract options - a day pass and an annual contract. Customers can choose the Bitcoin mining pool and change every month for free with year contract.
Scrypt.cc Review: Scrypt.cc allows purchase of KHS in a matter of seconds, start mining right away and even be able to trade your KHS in real time with prices based on supply and demand! All KHashes are safely stored and maintained in 2 secured data-centres.
PB Mining Review: Claims to operate Bitcoin mining ASIC hardware. When customers buy a bitcoin mining contract then they will begin earning Bitcoins instantly. At Piggyback Mining, they cover the electricity costs and all Bitcoin mining pool fees. The Bitcoin mining contract is 100% insured because they want customers to succeed.
Bitcoin Cloud Services (BCS) Review: Appears to have been a $500,000 Ponzi scam fraud.
Zeushash Review: Appears to have halted payouts.
Bitminer.io Review: Based on user reports they appear to have halted payouts.
To be able to answer 'what is Litecoin?', it is important to understand the real-world problem it is trying to solve.