Bitcoin.com Mining Pool Official Discussion Thread

[thesteve]

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.

I get very similar profitability numbers with my rudimentary projections as well and I've had to adjust my strategy and expectations accordingly. At first I had the same idea as you to "loan" out BTC for a bit of guaranteed return instead of having a bunch of coins sitting in cold storage, but now it seems like mining contracts are instead better for "loaning" out USD like buying a bond. Mining contracts may not be able to cover the initial investment in terms of BTC but it still seems far superior to buying a government bond that grows your USD by 2% over a year. Buying in very early seems like the only way to make a decent profit in terms of BTC. At the current prices and returns, I will no longer be investing BTC into mining contracts but USD instead. Credit card payments can't come soon enough!

[Kryptowerk]

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.

Thank you very much for your detailed calculations, GreyWyvern!

And I hate the "well it's probably profitable in USD blabla argument". Bullshit, I could just hold my BTC in cold storage if that's the case and make a higher "profit" in terms of USD, without the risk of lending my money. If contracts are most likely to not make a + in BTC it makes them absolutely redundant.
That beeing said, I was lucky enough to buy before the increase in fee/day and upfront costs per TH/s, so right now it looks like at least my 1 months contracts will be break even / maybe slightly profitable. I will report as soon as these are completed.
So, will report back in ~ 10 days.

[GreyWyvern]

Update: As of right now, the 6-month pool.bitcoin.com is a very good deal. Even with regular difficulty increases, the price of BTC in USD does not need to change at all in the next 6 months in order to return a profit in terms of BTC.

Stats at time of calc for ref:
- Initial cost: $450
- Daily fee: $1.50
- Current Daily Returns (before fees): 0.00203755 BTC ($5.56) per day

The values linearly increase by TH adjusted by the slider, so all selections are equally profitable. Enjoy.

All the other plans are currently not profitable unless the price of BTC increases, even the Lifetime Plan.

[GreyWyvern]

For anyone interested, I have posted a fancied-up version of the tool I've been using to examine the profitability of pool.bitcoin.com's plans here:

http://www.greywyvern.com/code/javascri ... itcoincalc

Comments and suggestions are appreciated.

[Kryptowerk]

For anyone interested, I have posted a fancied-up version of the tool I've been using to examine the profitability of pool.bitcoin.com's plans here:

http://www.greywyvern.com/code/javascri ... itcoincalc

Comments and suggestions are appreciated.

Wow, that's sick!
Who are you?

Your tool really looks great. I just wonder, even if I put 0.0% daily Chg BTC vs USD the "BTC value at end of plan" is higher than the money invested. Surely there must be small bug?

Anyway, thanks for your efforts.

[GreyWyvern]

Wow, that's sick!
Who are you?

Thanks. I'm just me as I am sure you are just you.

Your tool really looks great. I just wonder, even if I put 0.0% daily Chg BTC vs USD the "BTC value at end of plan" is higher than the money invested. Surely there must be small bug?

This is probably some float rounding issue. Can you let me know what browser you're using when you get the error? Maybe link to a screenshot.

Anyway, thanks for your efforts.

You're welcome! I figured if I found it helpful, other people might too.

[Kryptowerk]

Wow, that's sick!
Who are you?

Thanks. I'm just me as I am sure you are just you.

Your tool really looks great. I just wonder, even if I put 0.0% daily Chg BTC vs USD the "BTC value at end of plan" is higher than the money invested. Surely there must be small bug?

This is probably some float rounding issue. Can you let me know what browser you're using when you get the error? Maybe link to a screenshot.

Anyway, thanks for your efforts.

You're welcome! I figured if I found it helpful, other people might too.

Here is a screenshot:
I am using the latest Firefox, just tried Chrome, same "bug" there.

Oh, looks like they raised the price for the 6 months contracts since your post. 5 TH/s are now selling for 475 instead of 450 USD (6 months contract).

If they would allow wire transfere / credit card payments I would have purchased already. Do you guys still plan on implementing this?

On an other note: What will happen to the contracts, when the UASF is going through?

[bitkilo]

Wow, that's sick!
Who are you?

Thanks. I'm just me as I am sure you are just you.

Your tool really looks great. I just wonder, even if I put 0.0% daily Chg BTC vs USD the "BTC value at end of plan" is higher than the money invested. Surely there must be small bug?

This is probably some float rounding issue. Can you let me know what browser you're using when you get the error? Maybe link to a screenshot.

Anyway, thanks for your efforts.

You're welcome! I figured if I found it helpful, other people might too.

Here is a screenshot: http://imgur.com/a/B2gLa
I am using the latest Firefox, just tried Chrome, same "bug" there.

Oh, looks like they raised the price for the 6 months contracts since your post. 5 TH/s are now selling for 475 instead of 450 USD (6 months contract).

If they would allow wire transfere / credit card payments I would have purchased already. Do you guys still plan on implementing this?

On an other note: What will happen to the contracts, when the UASF is going through?

Hello Kryptowerk,

The prices of our mining contract can raise and falls at different times depending on many factors, the best thing to do is check in often and see the best price you can get.
As for the credit card payments we are looking to introduce these in the future, at present only bitcoin is accepted for contract worth less than $50k USD.
UASF - i don't see it happening and not too worried about it. Maybe someone else can jump in on how the pool may change ifit somehow pulls off a Trump and gets in.

[zowki]

Wow, that's sick!
Who are you?

Thanks. I'm just me as I am sure you are just you.

Your tool really looks great. I just wonder, even if I put 0.0% daily Chg BTC vs USD the "BTC value at end of plan" is higher than the money invested. Surely there must be small bug?

This is probably some float rounding issue. Can you let me know what browser you're using when you get the error? Maybe link to a screenshot.

Anyway, thanks for your efforts.

You're welcome! I figured if I found it helpful, other people might too.

Here is a screenshot: http://imgur.com/a/B2gLa
I am using the latest Firefox, just tried Chrome, same "bug" there.

Oh, looks like they raised the price for the 6 months contracts since your post. 5 TH/s are now selling for 475 instead of 450 USD (6 months contract).

If they would allow wire transfere / credit card payments I would have purchased already. Do you guys still plan on implementing this?

On an other note: What will happen to the contracts, when the UASF is going through?

We adjust our prices based on supply and demand.

May I know why you're unable to pay with bitcoin? Can you wire to a bitcoin exchange such as Kraken or Bitstamp?

In the case of a fork we plan to mine on the chain with the most hashrate (economic majority). Over 80% of the global hashrate has agreed to Segwit2x so that is the chain we'll mine.

[zowki]

Due to new stock, we lowered our prices.

Grab it while it's hot! https://pool.bitcoin.com/index_en.html

[GreyWyvern]

Here is a screenshot: snip image
I am using the latest Firefox, just tried Chrome, same "bug" there.

That's not a bug. It's showing you the value of one BTC in USD at the end of the contract. Since it increased at a rate of 0.0% per day, it is the same price ($2720.10) as it was when you started. I will re-word that so it's more clear.

[GreyWyvern]

Due to new stock, we lowered our prices.

Grab it while it's hot! https://pool.bitcoin.com/index_en.html

Currently the best deal is still the 6 month plan.

Estimates made with tool http://www.greywyvern.com/code/javascri ... itcoincalc

- 1 month ROI: -29.82%
- 3 month ROI: -17.40%
- 6 month ROI: -1.90%
- Lifetime ROI: -28.71%

As always, favourable BTC price increases and lower than average difficulty increases will increase the ROI from these estimates.

[Kryptowerk]

We adjust our prices based on supply and demand.

May I know why you're unable to pay with bitcoin? Can you wire to a bitcoin exchange such as Kraken or Bitstamp?

In the case of a fork we plan to mine on the chain with the most hashrate (economic majority). Over 80% of the global hashrate has agreed to Segwit2x so that is the chain we'll mine.

Thanks for your answer on the fork question.
I could pay in BTC (and already did for my current contracts). But I have a strict amout of BTC I want to just look at from time to time and say "HODOR!". In other words: They are unspendable.
Anyway, paying with skrill and/or my skrill credit card offers certain benefits for me that I don't want to miss out on. Simplexx fees for BTC purchases are horribly high right now, that's why I'd like to see a direct credit card (or even better Skrill) payment option.


Also, thanks bitkilo for your answer. Will check prices on a regular basis then.

So my guess is prices depend on demand and current BTC exchange rate.


@ GreyWyvern: Sorry, my bad. Would be nice to see a USD val of earned BTC at end of contract stat in addition. Anyway, keep up the great work.

[GreyWyvern]

@ GreyWyvern: Sorry, my bad. Would be nice to see a USD val of earned BTC at end of contract stat in addition. Anyway, keep up the great work.

Sure thing. I have added that to the tool.

http://www.greywyvern.com/code/javascri ... itcoincalc

[rogerver]

When we first launched pool.bitcoin.com network fees were averaging about an extra 10% on top of the block reward, so we decided to pay %110 in an effort to attract more miners to our pool to help resolve the scaling debate.

Today the network congestion is even worse, so we have increased our block reward to 120% effective immediately.

This applies to all private miners on our pool, and all cloud mining customers.
Everyone will now receive 120% of the block reward!
We already paid significantly more than other pools, and now we pay even more, so tell your friends!

We'd love to have someone's help compile more accurate data like we started to compile below.


I'd even be willing to pay a significant bounty if someone can put it together an an easy to view infographic with exact data.
At 120% I'm sure we pay more than every other pool, but we need help getting the word out.

[Jmmo20]

Not sure if I'm missing something.
I'm keen on trying cloud mining.

The 3. Month option has a constant daily payout but if you take the daily fee out you receive less btc at the end that you purchased in the first place to buy the hash rate.

So what am I missing here?

[zowki]

Not sure if I'm missing something.
I'm keen on trying cloud mining.

The 3. Month option has a constant daily payout but if you take the daily fee out you receive less btc at the end that you purchased in the first place to buy the hash rate.

So what am I missing here?

The payout is not constant. It will depend on the bitcoin mining difficulty and price.

For the highest profit potential we recommend the lifetime plan.

[Jmmo20]

Still no way to even break even. Wondering if it's not better to just buy the BTC and put them in cold storage!

[rogerver]

Still no way to even break even. Wondering if it's not better to just buy the BTC and put them in cold storage!

If the price goes up, you would likely be better off that way.
If the price goes down, you will likely do better with our mining contracts, so you can consider them a bit of a way to hedge your position.
(You also get to help promote on chain scaling in the original vision of Satoshi Nakamoto by participating with our pool)

[Kryptowerk]

Wow, 120% block reward is pretty awesome.
If there were a payment method for skrill I would instantly buy contract(s) $2 - 4k.

Oh and I made about +10% in BTC with my one months contracts, they will end soon, I'll post in a few days when I am back with some solid numbers.
Pretty good results, I am happy.

[GreyWyvern]

Here is the end result for my 1-month contract:

BTC paid in: 0.04647645
BTC paid out: 0.05070994
ROI: 9.1%

Plan details
-----------------
Initial cost: $85
Daily fee: $1.40
Hash rate: 5TH/s ($17 per TH/s)

Note that the "paid out" value is only a close estimate. I bought a six-month contract before my one month contract was up, and the payouts overlap in the "User Transactions" area so they're very difficult to isolate.

The $17 per TH/s rate was pretty phenomenal. Pool.Bitcoin.com doesn't offer anything close to that deal anymore for the one month plans, which is a bit sad. I feel like the people who buy in now aren't going to get as much BTC back as they put in and get soured on cloud mining.

The really neat thing is that the tool I made pretty much nails the results! The two difficulty increases that happened during the plan were +6.42% and +13.90% for an average of +10.16%. I adjusted the "% daily chg. BTC vs USD" so that the initial BTC price of $1908.34 USD became the final BTC price of $2492.36 USD when the plan completed (0.865%). This rate is obviously very high, which reinforces that I was lucky to have bought in when I did.



The expected ROI in terms of BTC for this plan was 9.49%! Compared to my actual ROI of 9.1%, I think this shows my tool is pretty accurate!

[rogerver]

We just received more than 10 PH of our own hash rate that we would like to sell quickly, so we now have our lowest prices ever!

$129 per TH for lifetime contracts.

You will likely see a positive return in both Bitcoin and fiat.
We will be using all of the proceeds to buy additional hash rate to grow our pool.

Here are the expected returns for a 100 TH contract:


Order your contract today at: pool.bitcoin.com

[GreyWyvern]

There is now a discount on the daily fee for the Lifetime plans which helps considerably. It adds +5% ROI in terms of BTC just by itself! Pretty nice

One thing to note about the estimate above - It's important to keep in mind that the tool is very sensitive to your optimism or pessimism about future BTC price changes and difficulty increases. For example:

The USD price of BTC 1.25 years from now being $4112.84 (a 58% increase) may seem conservative to some. If you're in the crowd that BTC will at least double every 12 months for the next while, a "% daily change BTC vs USD" value of 0.2 would better describe that outlook. In that case, the estimated ROI in terms of BTC after 1.90 years would be >20%.

However that assumes the avg. difficulty increase will stay at +5.4%. If it goes up to +6.2% then the ROI drops back to break-even.

One thing I'd like to add to the tool is potentially a P relationship between difficulty increase and BTC price increase. There is SOME relationship there, and adding that would help make this even more accurate.

Oh, and how is Segwit2x activation going to affect this??? Hoo boy!

[EricDcEstrella]

Hi, I am really interested in this mining pool, I'm very glad and thankful to become one of the member of this mining pool. Thanks a lot! Looking forward to your respond and invitation. Eric

[rogerver]

If people are wondering why on earth we would be willing to sell something that will likely make a substantial amount of money when we could just keep it ourselves, the answer is simple.
Even at the current listed price, we make a slight profit on each sale.
By selling the lifetime contract now, we can immediately recoup the majority of what the equipment would mine in the next few years.
We can then take that revenue and immediately use it to buy additional equipment, and sell the lifetime contracts for that hash rate too.

If we can sell $1M worth of contracts per week, in ten weeks, we will have ~ $10M worth of mining hardware on our pool, but only had to layout $1M worth of capital ourselves. If I didn't sell the lifetime contracts, we would need $10M worth of our own capital to have $10M worth of mining power on our pool. In short, selling the contracts at a discount of what they will actually earn allows us to leverage our working capital to grow much much faster than we would be able to otherwise.

At the moment our lifetime plan is priced the most aggressively.
Users will likely see a positive return on both the BTC and fiat side of their investment.

I hope I explained that clearly. If not, I'm happy to answer additional questions.

P.S. Don't forget to try out this great calculator made by one of our forum users, Greywvren
http://www.greywyvern.com/code/javascri ... itcoincalc

[koiseptember]

You are really doing great work Roger, everyone is. It makes me happy to see that people are finallying starting to think about shrugging off the abuse they have endured for years. That's really important, and for that, you have my highest respect. Nobody deserves to live in fear, so speak up about it and we'll work together to fix it.

goldenslot

[ZenOfLogic]

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.

Thank you very much for your detailed calculations, GreyWyvern!

And I hate the "well it's probably profitable in USD blabla argument". Bullshit, I could just hold my BTC in cold storage if that's the case and make a higher "profit" in terms of USD, without the risk of lending my money. If contracts are most likely to not make a + in BTC it makes them absolutely redundant.
That beeing said, I was lucky enough to buy before the increase in fee/day and upfront costs per TH/s, so right now it looks like at least my 1 months contracts will be break even / maybe slightly profitable. I will report as soon as these are completed.
So, will report back in ~ 10 days.

Dammit. I just invested .95 bitcoin for a one month contract. I thought I had done the math correctly, but I hadn't accounted for the daily fees. Without the daily fees I would be fine, (slight increase in my bitcoin at the end of the contract) but now I'm looking at a, pretty much, gauranteed loss of about .11 bitcoin. This is TERRIBLE.

[ZenOfLogic]

If people are wondering why on earth we would be willing to sell something that will likely make a substantial amount of money when we could just keep it ourselves, the answer is simple.
Even at the current listed price, we make a slight profit on each sale.
By selling the lifetime contract now, we can immediately recoup the majority of what the equipment would mine in the next few years.
We can then take that revenue and immediately use it to buy additional equipment, and sell the lifetime contracts for that hash rate too.

If we can sell $1M worth of contracts per week, in ten weeks, we will have ~ $10M worth of mining hardware on our pool, but only had to layout $1M worth of capital ourselves. If I didn't sell the lifetime contracts, we would need $10M worth of our own capital to have $10M worth of mining power on our pool. In short, selling the contracts at a discount of what they will actually earn allows us to leverage our working capital to grow much much faster than we would be able to otherwise.

At the moment our lifetime plan is priced the most aggressively.
Users will likely see a positive return on both the BTC and fiat side of their investment.

I hope I explained that clearly. If not, I'm happy to answer additional questions.

P.S. Don't forget to try out this great calculator made by one of our forum users, Greywvren
http://www.greywyvern.com/code/javascri ... itcoincalc

Thanks Roger. Big fan here. My one concern is this: I just bought my first contract, for one month, for just about .95 bitcoin. Looking at the numbers, the $27 daily fee means I'll most likely lose about .11 bitcoin total for the month. So I'm pretty bummed and I'm trying to figure out how to hedge against this loss. My question: Is there a way to create your contracts so people like me can NOT lose bitcoin value? At the least I would like to be able to break even (again, in bitcoin. I don't care about dollar value).

[GreyWyvern]

Dammit. I just invested .95 bitcoin for a one month contract. I thought I had done the math correctly, but I hadn't accounted for the daily fees. Without the daily fees I would be fine, (slight increase in my bitcoin at the end of the contract) but now I'm looking at a, pretty much, gauranteed loss of about .11 bitcoin. This is TERRIBLE.

Thanks Roger. Big fan here. My one concern is this: I just bought my first contract, for one month, for just about .95 bitcoin. Looking at the numbers, the $27 daily fee means I'll most likely lose about .11 bitcoin total for the month. So I'm pretty bummed and I'm trying to figure out how to hedge against this loss. My question: Is there a way to create your contracts so people like me can NOT lose bitcoin value? At the least I would like to be able to break even (again, in bitcoin. I don't care about dollar value).

Yes, the trouble with the one-month plans is that there is very little time for difficulty changes and BTC price increase to affect the outcome, so they need to be obviously profitable from the start unlike the longer plans. In fact, it looks like pool.bitcoin.com has abandoned the 1-month plans entirely now: https://pool.bitcoin.com/index_en.html#buyhashrate There are only 3-month plans and up.

As for hedging, all the remaining plans are currently at great prices! The 3-month and 6-month plans are profitable in terms of BTC even if the price of BTC vs USD does not change, assuming difficulty increases stick to the average. While the Lifetime plan only needs a very conservative 0.06% daily increase in BTC vs USD price to break even.

[GreyWyvern]

I just bought some more hashrate! Thanks for this opportunity, peeps.

Viva Bitcoin.com!