So I've been going over the plans and pricing and wondering if they have been changed since they were first offered. I now tend to agree with @thesteve in that the current plans are very risky. FYI when I use the word "profitable" in this post, it means in terms of BTC, not USD.



I built a tool to help me estimate returns taking into account a rising BTC price and regular difficulty increases. Using a historical average difficulty increase of 5.24% per two weeks, it turns out (if I got my numbers right) that the plans are VERY sensitive to the rate BTC is increasing (due to the fee priced in USD). For example, the Lifetime Plans are only "profitable" (they return more BTC than you pay in) as long as the price of BTC is rising (on average) 0.231% per day. Seeing that BTC has been rising in terms of USD at 0.67% per day YTD means these plans are as of now theoretically profitable, but that rate simply cannot be sustained. It would result in a USD price per BTC of $366,880 in just two years; I haven't heard anyone give estimates anywhere near that amount.



To break even (in terms of BTC) on the lifetime plan, a daily BTC rate of increase of 0.231% would still yield a price per BTC after 2 years of $15,100. Somewhat more believable, but still requires faith that nothing terrible will happen between now and then. The six month plan is somewhat better considering it is cheaper up front, so it requires a slightly lower rate of BTC increase to break even: 0.195% per day.



However the 3 month plan is unprofitable on its face. It requires an astonishing 2.62% rise in the price of BTC per *day* to give back as much BTC as originally paid in. The 1 month plan is now even worse in that it requires the price of BTC to rise 6% per day to be profitable. You can easily see how bad these deals are by taking the USD estimate of "Current Daily Returns", subtracting the daily fee and then multiplying the result by the number of days in the term. Neither the 1 month or 3 month plans now give back a USD amount more than the USD amount in "Initial Cost". They absolutely REQUIRE favourable difficulty increases, or an astronomical rate of BTC price increase. I can't believe the numbers were like this when I originally bought in. I would imagine you have been tweaking them, surely.



It seems to me that I got lucky buying in so early, as well as with BTC's unusual price rise during my one month term. If you suspect BTC will rise at more sensible rates in the future, it doesn't seem like the cloud mining plans are profitable. I don't want to pay BTC into a plan, and then end up with less BTC at the end. I'm *loaning* the BTC to you and I rather expect some guaranteed interest, wouldn't you? Right now it seems more like a lottery. I suppose mining IS more like a lottery than a loan. At this point though, I'm not sure I will buy another plan until I hear more stories of actual returns from other users.



I hope my numbers are wrong.