Even with the latest pull back of the crypto market today (Jan 16th) mining has become mainstream, so mainstream that even my Mother-in-law asks me questions about it. But, because of the increased interest in cryptocurrency, interest mining has soared. This increased interest has made hardware cost soar and availability plummet which has made it near impossible for someone to start on their own mining rig. Enter cloud mining! This review of Hashflare.io will hopefully answer some questions a new prospective miner may have and help you easily get you in the game.

Hashflare.io

Who am I?

Who am I and why take my advice? Hopefully this will help.

My basic details are in my bio, but apart from that, I hold a bachelors degree in Computer Science, with a major in artificial intelligence and a minor in mathematics. I have been a part of 3 startups, worked for world’s largest public company and currently manage a team of top level developers who use the latest technology and apply it to real world applications for one of the largest publicly traded companies in the world. Additionally, I have spent a long time mining cryptocurrency on GPU and CPU rigs. Most recently mining Ethereum, Electroneum, and SiaCoin.

Finally, because of the difficulty in finding hardware, I cloud mine on HashFlare.io. I recently purchased a 12 month 7.5 TH/s SHA-256 contract for BTC and have been compounding my earnings for the past 8 days and I hope this helps new people who are considering mining as well.

My actual dashboard — Note the increased hash power because of reinvestment.

Why Cloud Mine?

From a GPU miner perspective, it’s simple. Finding hardware to build your own rig has become too expensive and hard to get. At time of writing, purchasing a AMD RX580, one of the top cards to dual mine with, is next to impossible to get. Unless you’re willing to pay a huge markup, as much as 3 times MSRP on Amazon. The second reason to cloud mine is it is easy. When you cloud mine, you do not need to deal with power, heat, or noise. And take it from me, even a basic GPU rig will create a lot of heat and noise. If anyone says different, they are lying. My last build (see picture here) creates enough heat to warm a 15x15 room with the windows open when it’s 32 degrees out (0 Celsius.)

7 GPU Rig — 5 nVidia 1060s and 2 AMD RX580s

Why HashFlare?

After reviewing various options and listening to peer feedback, Hashflare kept bubbling to the top. Yes, there was an issue with timely Bitcoin payouts, but that has been resolved. So why did I choose Hashflare over the other options? 3 reasons. First, they have 12 month contracts available, while Genesis mining has been sold out for months. The second reason is their simple interface and ease of use and purchasing. And third, reinvestment of earnings. All of which I’ll dig into.

Contracts

Hashflare will let you buy 12 month contracts for BTC (SHA-256), Ethereum, ZCash and more. What does this mean? Simply put, you will pay a fixed amount for 12 months of processing power. For example, for $1650 USD, you can purchase 7.5 TH/s of SHA-256 for Bitcoin mining. Once purchased, you’ll get a daily update of earning. It’s really that simple.

My Actual Dashboard

Ease of Use

Hashflare has a very simple interface to manage your cloud operation. There’s very little to really do. You can purchase hashing power, reinvest your earning, or withdraw. You can even toggle reinvestment or withdraw with one button.

Buying is simple, you select your algorithm (in my case SHA-256 for Bitcoin), set your desired hashing power and click proceed. You will use their pool for Bitcoin mining, but that’s okay. It’s one less thing to manage for someone new. You can pay with Bitcoin, credit card or wire transfer. I will say paying with Bitcoin is the simplest option as many US and Canadian credit card companies will auto decline Hashflare purchases as they are a European company.

To buy hashing power, just slide the ruler to your desired amount, then click proceed.

Reinvestment

The final, and biggest, reason I really like Hashflare is I can reinvest my daily earning and buy more power every day. Essentially compounding your earnings over time!

Why does that matter? At time of writing to purchase a dedicated ASIC miner (Bitmain Antminer S9) that will hash 14TH/s will cost $2320 USD (not including power supply, add $199 to that) and take over 3 months to ship. That’s only if you can get in on the latest batch. The cost for a Antiminer S9 is currently $5000+ on eBay for those who want one today on the secondary market.

With Hashflare’s reinvestment option you can purchase a 12 month, 7.5TH/s contract and reinvest. After approximately 90 to 100 days of reinvestment you will have ~15TH/s of processing power, which coincidentally is the same amount of time it will take to ship a S9 if you were lucky enough to buy one of the latest batches directly from BitMain. I will openly admit, that’s not an exact science as there are other variables to consider, such as hash difficulty and price of BTC. But as you can see in the screenshot of my actual reinvestment dashboard, I’m currently purchasing 0.04 and 0.1 TH/s daily. This purchase will continue to go up as time goes on.

My last 7 days of reinvestment and initial purchase of 7.5TH/s

Not Everything is Perfect

One thing that I did not like about Hashflare was their earnings forecast. I honestly find them too bullish. The daily forecast is quite accurate, but anything 1 month and further is far too optimistic in my opinion. As difficulty increases the rate of return will go down. But assuming nothing changes, my $1650 investment will earn $3717.17 after 12 months. Not bad.

Current forecast as of 1/16/2018

But is it still profitable?

Yes! Will you get rich? Not likely. But you will earn real money cloud mining and get actual Bitcoin. I use Coinwarz.com’s calculator to help set a real world earnings expectation.

As you can see my $1650 (hardware) investment with a 25% pool fee (good blended rate to use to take into account Hashflare’s fees) will earn $2,855.21 in profit assuming BTC stays at $12,320.94. Run the below calculator yourself here. We zero out any power information as we don’t pay the bill.

Calculated on 1/16/2018

Final Thoughts

Is it worth it? Short answer is yes. If you really wanted to start mining and have “skin in the game,” without dealing with the headaches of heat and hardware, cloud mining is a great option and HashFlare makes it easy. It’s especially great for someone who does not have access to cheap power, since cloud mining is not in your home.

If you find this helpful and want to take the next step and start cloud mining yourself, please use my referral link to Hashflare here.

https://hashflare.io/r/DC1C2DA1

Note: I do not have any personal interest in Hashflare. I’m just a customer.