HASHFLARE'S LAST MAINTENANCE FEE 49% - WHY???

Hello, friends!

TL;DR - hashflare has outrageous maintenance fees at the moment. Are they scamming us? Nah. It's all good. I made an excel sheet to explain how the fixed mainteance fee of 35 cents correlates to BTC price drop. Here it is!

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1mfyAh6otaeh9IDC6G6TAE2MY0VwgRunGDBqgMIu_a40/edit#gid=421458081

Detailed version:

It has certainly been a rough month in the cryptocurrency space. Bitcoin has fallen over 50%, everyone's beloved Bitconnect has left the building, and profits on Hashflare are currently next to none.

As seen from the title, my last Hashflare maintenance fee was 49%. WHAT THE HECK. Why could it be that much? Are they scamming us? Are they just trying to keep their heads above water in this dip? The short answer - No.

As highlighted on Hashflare's website, there is a FIXED maintenance fee of $0.0035 USD per 10 GH of power. In terms of TH Power, this is equal to $0.35 per TH. I think this is something people may recognize, but not many people understand its implications. We, in the mining / Hashflare community, are used to somewhere between 13% - 20% maintenance fees. Its annoying, it eats away at profit, but it's always been acceptable. We've kind of just gotten used to it. After all, they do have to pay for the electricity, hardware, and actual maintenance of their machines! But almost 50% of my payout is GONE? That has to be a scam, right? Well, not necessarily. Just sad :'-(

Allow me to lay out why the fixed maintenance fee is a good (and bad) thing.

I, personally, have 25 TH of power. With the maintenance fee listed on their website, this should equal a fee of $8.75 each day. 25 TH * $0.35 = $8.75 Daily Fee

That's not too bad, right? Certainly not. However, as shown in the excel sheet listed, $8.75 is worth A LOT more in Bitcoin when we are trending around $10,000 as opposed to $20,000 - some could even say it's worth 50% more (see the correlation?).

Bitcoin hasn't seen a massive percantage price drop like this in a very long time. For the general majority of 2017, Bitcoin rarely dipped below the 55 EMA. (As denoted by the screenshot below. The yellow line is the 55 EMA).

Even when Bitcoin went from $5,000 to $2,000 or whatever happened back in the summer, there has not been a dip in terms of the dollar amount like this EVER. Obviously, since we were just at an all-time high last month. But the point is, DOLLARS are worth more Bitcoin when the price is negative. BITCOINS are worth more when Bitcoin is positive. Okay, so where am I going with all this? Why is Hashflare siphoning 50% of my profits away?

Well, consider my $8.75 maintenance fee every day.
When Bitcoin is at these price targets, this is how much Bitcoin is required to meet the $8.75 requirement.

BTC @ $20,000 - maintenance fee = 0.0004375 BTC
BTC @ $15,000 - maintenance fee = 0.0005833 BTC
BTC @ $10,000 - maintenance fee = 0.0008750 BTC

This is covered more in the excel sheet, but you get the point. When the price of BTC is low, it requires more Bitcoin to satisfy the fixed dollar amount of the maintenance fee.

I think the sheet should be editable if you just download the file, so feel free to plug in your own numbers!

General notes about the sheet:
I slowly upgraded my way to 25 TH, which I did on January 6. My first payout for the 25 TH way January 7, so that is where BTC price analysis comes in. (Since before I had 25 TH, my maintenance fee wasn't $8.75, it was whatever TH I had multiplied by $0.35). I just did that for convenience sake since I haven't done anymore reinvestments since the 6th. Anyway, I hope this was helpful to some people! If you have any questions / concerns / my sheet doesn't work / anything feel free to leave a comment! Keep strong in this Bear market!