Cloud Mining from Freepik.com

Cloud Mining

(1) What is Cloud Mining?

Cloud mining is utilizing remote datacenters with shared processing powers to mine cryptocurrencies. Without handling the hardware itself, these cloud mining centers enable people to mine cryptocurrencies like bitcoin, ethereum, or other altcoins from the comforts of their computer screen. All the necessary hardware/rigs for crypto mining are owned and managed by the cloud mining services. All the customers need to do is register and buy contracts to allow them to partner with these service providers.

Some cloud mining services only offer mining for Bitcoin, some for Ethereum only, but others do offer multiple cryptocurrency varieties that people can purchase mining contracts of.

Best Platforms for Cloud Mining

(2) What are the best cloud mining platforms?

Upon doing a bit of research on this subject, I came across a few articles and lists on the web mentioning some of the best cloud mining services they know. For this question, I'm going to list down 3 of those cloud mining services.

Hashshiny.io

Hashshiny webpage: https://hashshiny.io/

The Hashshiny cloud mining services was founded in 2017. They developed the world's top platform for this service. They are able to offer 1.5% of the BTC Hash Rate in the world.

Genesis Mining

Genesis cloud mining website: https://www.genesis-mining.com

At the end of 2013, Genesis Mining founders met each other using the same platform to buy and sell BTC. They wanted to build their own farm because they got fascinated by the tech.

They were able to set up a mining service and built it in Eastern Europe. Since they have founded the service, they have grown tremendously.

Currently, they can service 2 million customers from 100 or more countries. They are able to offer more than 10 mineable crypto contracts. Since they were founded in 2013, their transactions have exceeded over 100 million.

Hashflare

HashFlare website: https://hashflare.io/

HashFlare has become one of the largest providers of computational power for cloud mining bitcoin, litecoin, ETH, and other cryptocurrencies or altcoins.

Since 2016, HashFlare has been an independent company. As a company, they were able to make mining accessible for common users and not only for crypto enthusiasts. Through their company's effort, altogether, they have successfully provided cloud mining service to more than 2.5 million users.

The Advantages and Disadvantages of Cloud Mining

(3) Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of cloud mining?

Using cloud mining services has both sets of advantages and disadvantages.

Some of the advantages people could think of for using cloud mining are the following:

• Lower power consumption. These cloud mining services will optimize their services as much as they can, so depending on where you're at - the power consumption cost will be relatively lower when using cloud mining.
• Heat and noise are one of the things that need managing when doing crypto mining. If you're just renting the equipment elsewhere, you do not need to deal with those things.
• Lower risk. Since the investment that you're putting out is not that high. Doing cloud mining minimizes the risk, versus buying a mining rig that will cost significantly more.

Some of the disadvantages of using cloud mining are the following:

• Demand. There are times when you cannot purchase contracts anymore because there are none available.
• Profit. Since cloud mining profit heavily relies on the market, profitability is not guaranteed.
• Fraud and scam. Cloud mining websites are not all legitimate, so you really have to do tons of research to make sure you will not be scammed out of your money. Fraud also happens when they use the information you provided for illegal means.

---

Closing Remarks

I hope that you were able to learn a lot in our discussion about Cloud Mining. Thanks a lot to @besticofinder for creating this homework task for us. To @steemitblog for the initiative, and to @steemcurator01 & @steemcurator02 for the support!

Thanks so much, see yah!