This is an impartial review of Genesis Mining by someone who has tried it first hand. Genesis Mining and Cloud mining in general has a very mixed reception on the net. So I decided to share my experiences and try to pick things apart and take on some claims that's floating around.

First of all what's cloud mining? I can give you an official looking information dump. But basically it's like a contract like getting someone to build your house  or paint your house or take care of a property. It's cheaper if you do it on your own. But you can get it done without any trouble if you are willing to let go of some profits.

Following is a TEDx speech from one of the founders and CEO of Genesis Mining. It has only 433,705 views at the moment. That's low views and lots of info missed by lot of people who make lots of claims like GM being a scam.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/marco-streng-6491a67b

https://twitter.com/Marco_Streng

GM has been around since 2013 and they conduct mining operations on multiple geographic locations. They provide a very diverse set of coins. You could mine BTC, LTC, ETH, ETC, Dash, ZEC, XMR and you can Auto convert your payouts into different currencies.

But if it's profitable why are they selling us contracts?Why don't they keep all that mining profit?

This is a very stupid but often unanswered question mostly raised by people who doesn't look at things from a business perspective. I'm going for some hypothetical scenarios here for the explanation:

Think you have 10 millions USD. With that investment you can run mining operations for 2 years. You'd be getting all sorts of discounts on bulk orders. You'd be the first to receive the latest and most efficient tech. You'd also be able to settle in favorable jurisdictions with low electricity cost combined with low temperature. All of this happens because you have some decent money.

Say you can project to make 20 million USD with your investment. You decide to not take the burden of making mining allocation decisions and bring down your investment risk to a zero. You sell contracts worth 15 million USD. The Buyers of the contracts are projected for 33% return and they can allocate their mining however they want. The founders make a quick 50% gain. 

Now you can rinse and repeat with 15 million USD, 22.5 million USD, 33.75 million USD.............

That's not even the end of it. Think it took 3 months to sell all those contracts. What do you think happened? Did the rigs stay inactive until someone made the purchase? I don't think so.

That's how I think Genesis Mining operate. I'm simply a guy who bought some mining contracts who also happen to have good sense of entrepreneurship. I'm not an insider. But this all makes sense.

I'd also like to add another dimension to this. It's expensive to set things up by yourself. If you do it on your own, you may end up spending (for an example) 20% more. So GM can gain 20 USD from a  10 USD investment where you'd have to spend 12 USD. If the contracts go for 15 USD you'll be paying a 25% premium which would make some techies explode in rage. But That's a 25% premium for not having to do anything other than paying up and setting mining allocation and not having to worry about anything at all. Your mind will be FREE....... for a 25% extra expense.

That's Genesis mining for you. It may be promoted by some of the people who promote ponzi schemes like BitConnect. But Genesis Mining is a legit company with a sustainable business model. Their product is crypto mining at a premium so that you don't have to do any work to secure the blockchain and help to make the world a better place while making money like a true capitalist.

But GM does have some problems. One of them is hacking. Outside forces can attack Genesis munging just as they can attack an exchange to steal funds. This is a serious issue. Payouts can end up getting frozen and if you somehow depended on a steady daily payouts, you are in trouble. So there are the same problems you'd face with a centralized exchange. They also have minimum payout thresholds. So if you bought only a tiny amount of Hash Power, you'd be getting your payout every few days.

• BTC 0.002 
• BTCD 0.001
• CURE 0.2
• DOGE 50
• DASH 0.001
• ETH 0.05
• ETC 0.15
• REP 0.1
• LTC 0.001
• NMC 1
• PPC 0.01
• START 0.1
• UNO 0.001
• XMR 0.4
• ZEC 0.00005
• ZET 1

Those are the current payout thresholds. You can gain an idea about how much you can make using following sites:

https://www.coinwarz.com/cryptocurrency?sort=profitusd&dir=desc

https://www.cryptocompare.com/mining/calculator/

Then you can proceed to buy your contract with following currencies: USD, BTC, LTC, DOGE, Dash

Now don't be a traitor and buy with your crypto. Thou shalt always spend your fiat for crypto whenever it's possible cuzzzz Bankers Must be Purged (In totally non-violent ways).

But if you do that, you face some other troubles. 30 Extra Days of waiting. This might get you nervous because you won't be getting a penny for a month. Don't worry they keep it locked and release it all at once. The reason is that traditional payment gateways take up to 15 different type of fees. With a transaction fee ranging from 2% to 6%. This is something https://www.monetha.io/ attempted to solve.

But instead of 2 weeks, GM decide to annoy us with 30 Days instead of 2 weeks. Your funds are safe and you'll get them in your hands. But it's not a great way to build up trust.

So How Do I Recommend Using Genesis Mining?

As someone who does trading, Mining isn't that much appealing to me. But it's a great way to lock up some of your wealth in an actually wealth building way. You could call it a diversification. Don't invest anymore than what you are willing to put in a centralized exchange. Don't forget to brag that you help secure the blockchain and build a better future for everyone if you do sign up. Don't allocate your resources into a coin if you think the coin will pump very soon. Instead, buy the coin from an exchange.

I discovered that Ethash mining contracts allow you to get paid in STEEM. According to https://www.coinwarz.com/cryptocurrency?sort=profitusd&dir=desc ETH and ETC are very profitable at the time. Right after discovering this I allocated 100% for STEEM because I Love STEEM and think it has lots of upside. Plus I'm using STEEM unlike most other coins. So if you get an Ethash contract, set yourself up for some STEEM :-)

As for the obligatory affiliate link, I think this is it: https://www.genesis-mining.com/a/1160126
What most people are spreading around is the discount code. Mine is PL3Qx6 

Use it for a 3% discount and I get a 2.5% or little higher bonus depending how much you spend.

As I've mentioned on a post great post by @kafkanarchy84  what is most vital to a free market is accurate and abundant information. Free market is about hyper-efficient decision making. To make decisions, one needs to know the facts.  Without access to proper information free markets would simply collapse not because of anything that's wrong with the freedom but simply because even the greatest minds of the world will surely eff it up if they were fed wrong information. 

I've given you the facts with the full picture. I consider Genesis Mining to be a solid Business, an OK-ish investment and a good diversification. You don't want to put your money on bonds over this. But ultimately that's your call. If you do decide to buy a contract, use the discount code PL3Qx6