Did you get scammed or did you just fail to read and understand??
I see the word "scam" being tossed around the internet a lot, and it can be quite frustrating to say the least. First off lets pull out a dictionary and define scam.
Scam
a dishonest scheme; a fraud
So in order for something to be a scam, dishonesty must have taken place. If you lose money on a website because you made a poor decision you were not scammed... I'll give an example.
I use the cloud mining site Eobot, and I hear every now and then someone calling it a scam. They purchased a product from eobot, say GHS 2.0, and when it was no longer profitable they were no longer mining with it. The smart people, myself included knew how to READ! I saw that GHS 2.0 was based on Antminer S5 ASIC miners, I knew difficulty was rising and made sure I had enough to exchange for my very own antminer S5. Those that didn't have enough to exchange got nothing when the cost to run the miner was more then the miner provided.
(Source)
Did this make eobot a scam? NO!!
It was clearly stated on the site what would happen, you were provided everything you needed to know to calculate when it would happen, so if you didn't take action you were DUMB!!! Not scammed, you were just stupid.. It's OK, we are all stupid every now and then... But that doesn't mean go around using the word "scam" incorrectly to everyone who will listen and look even more dumb... Or worse spread their incorrect information to others.
Why do people do it?
It's a natural reaction when you lose money to blame someone, besides yourself. Odds are they don't even realize they are doing it, because they didn't read the terms and conditions in the first place. They have no idea that everything happened the way it was intended to happen, and they just made a poor decision.
Telling these people the truth won't help!
I have tried time and time again, to point out the difference between being scammed and being stupid, the key difference is in one case you were provided with honest information and failed to act on it, and the other being the information was withheld with the intent of taking your money or possessions.
Why does this bother me so much?
Sitting somewhere in the autism spectrum makes it difficult to just let these things go. If I am trying to provide information to someone, then someone else joins the conversation saying "it's a scam", they had best be using the word scam correctly. If not well then I have to waste my time disproving your scam statement, with things like actual facts.
The difference between a bad investment and a scam!
Honesty.... That's the key difference, if they are honest about it THEY ARE NOT SCAMMING YOU! A scam can be a bad investment, but that DOES NOT MAKE ALL BAD INVESTMENTS SCAMS!
Let's show an example of a real scam. coinsforall.io is a zcash mining pool that was created when zcash went live. They got people to mine on their pool, but didnt pay anyone out. They sold all the zcash when it was up around 15 BTC, then bought the same amount back at less than one to eventually pay the miners. They never informed miners that there would be a delay before they got paid. They didn't inform miners that they sold their zcash for profit. THIS WAS A SCAM!
In conclusion, people gotta stop saying scam when they were not scammed, own up to their own decisions and admit yas just didn't read everything you should of.
READ EVERYTHING YOU CAN BEFORE YOU INVEST MONEY INTO ANYTHING....
While I agree that cloud mining isn't necessarily a scam I think unless you're willing to read through all the fine text carefully you should absolutely avoid it. There are some clauses there though that do make me go "Hmm" you may actually be better off buying some dedicated scrypt miners for yourself if you want to own hashpower permanently.
Or alternatively, you could simply rent hashpower short term and keep re-newing because then you'll have a lot more control over what you're doing, I'll freely admit, I've made some dumb mistakes with cloud mining, still getting payouts, but ouch never again.
I am willing, I have done so...
This rant is on the general misuse of the word throughout the internet, not just in cloud mining.
I think you're right on that, too often you have people screaming scam immediately without having any fucking clue on what they're buying. The favourite one is investments generally where like you say they haven't read it all carefully enough, I do think though it's awfully sneaky of some of these companies to do this the way they have they should make it clear of what happens if the investment stops being profitable for instance.
At this point it seems I'll be better off putting my money in speculation or lending on Poloniex perhaps.
Don't margin lol. I've lost more on the polo margin than I ever could on cloud mining sites going under.
lol! I'm talking about just lending :D I do alright on trading actually, but there's a really big problem in trading where you can be severely undercapitalised and just keep on losing money because you don't have enough in to make money on the price difference and it's not something people explain very well, found this great article on the subject though actually.
https://vantagepointtrading.com/archives/10075
So yeah, don't think you're going to make anything if you only put $10 into trading, I've made that mistake myself :( I was talking mainly about simply lending though at a stable rate because then you wouldn't have to worry so much about risk.
I do much better now without risk of margin call, it's as simple as buy low, sell higher... Don't sell lower than you bought plus fees and you always profit. People start losing when they are unwilling to wait.