It's important to note that cloud mining is a high-risk speculative investment.

A few years ago it offered a potentially cost-effective way of mining for Bitcoins and other currencies. However, extensive industrialization of the mining process, coupled with extreme volatility in the value of all cryptocurrencies, means that all but the most serious business attempts at mining at likely to profit at all.

This is made even more stark by the fact that mining providers routinely have a clause that will close down customer accounts if crytpcurrency values mean that account has not been in profit for a period. While this can protect miners against long-term losses, it does increase the possibility of short-term losses.

This specifically applies the shorter the period involved - for some mining providers, it can be 30 days, but for others it is 10 days. And in the event of your account being closed, there are no refunds. 

Therefore you need to take great care if you're attracted to mining for crytocurrency, because the days of low-hanging fruit are long gone, and it is now a serious, and very cut-throat, business.

If you are interested in cryptocurrencies but don't feel happy with the idea of mining, you can also simply purchase Bitcoin as an investment (see our guide on how to buy Bitcoins with Bitstamp). Without further ado, let’s move on to our selections for the best cloud mining providers.

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Bitcoin Pool is provided directly by conwaytransport.com.au and aims to provide the most competitive clouding mining service. Bitcoin advertise that they deliver the highest Pay Per Share (PPS) pool globally with a 98% block reward.

Set up is easy and you can start mining immediately, either on Bitcoin Cast (BCH) or Bitcoin Core (BTC), whichever seems the most profitable to you. Monitoring is also easy to do through mobile apps for Android and iOS, so you can keep track of your account usage and value as often as you want.

There are three different plans currently on offer, with a 6 month contract costing $5, upfront, with a $ daily fee included on top. The one-year contract costs $10,, also with a daily fee of $, while the two-year contract is currently priced at $13, upfront, also with a $ daily fee. Note that the contract will end if the total revenue from the past 30 days is less than the total daily fee for the same period.

Another point of note is that while Bitcoin prices are currently subdued after its peak in , conwaytransport.com.au will end any contract where fees exceed income over 60 consecutive days.

Hashnest was launched in by Bitmain, which is a world-renowned manufacturer of ASIC mining hardware. Bitmain also operates one of the largest mining pools in existence: Antpool. Combined with the photos of a handful of data centers on the Hashnest website, this is persuasive proof that the company is legitimate.

While Bitmain is based primarily in China, Hashnest has mining farms around the world, which benefit from low cost electricity.

At present HashNest specifically rents out hardware for mining, currently offering a selection of Antminers, as well as a StrongU miner.

Do note that if you daily payout is lower than the maintenance fee for a period of 10 continuous days, Hashnest will terminate your contract. Do note that in the HashNest agreement terms orders cannot be cancelled or refunded.

Hashflare is a subsidiary of Hashcoins, another manufacturer of Bitcoin mining equipment which has been around since Its website gives a detailed rundown of the firm’s data center including pictures.

Hashflare offers you the chance to purchase hashpower for a variety of SHA and Scrypt coins such as Bitcoin and Litecoin as well as Ethereum and ZCash. You're also free to choose your own mining pool.

Hashflare is open about its maintenance fees: they are $ for every 10 GH/s of SHA coins and $ for every 1 MH/s of Scrypt coins a day. Ethereum, ZCash and Dash contracts are not subject to any maintenance fees. Your total pay-out will depend on the mining pool you've chosen and how much hash power you've allocated to it.

At the time of writing, only Ethereum mining contract was available, all others were out of stock.

As of January , Hashflare has also temporarily suspended new Bitcoin withdrawals due to a large number of unconfirmed transactions. The company plans to resume withdrawals once this is resolved.

The Hashing24 team claims to have been involved in Bitcoin mining since , although the website itself has only been around since The company appears to have no data centers of its own, rather, it has partnered with big name providers such as BitFury to lease hashpower to customers. Note that Hashing24 is mentioned on Bitfury's website, which may reassure customers that the operation is real.

If you're new to cloud mining, you can also use Hashing24's demo mode to simulate a Bitcoin mining contract to see how much you might earn. This is a good way to help you understand some of the concepts behind cloud mining, but won't necessarily let you project future profits, as mining difficulty and BTC price will vary over time (naturally).

After registering you can currently sign up for Bitcoin mining contracts only, with the contract being open-ended (lifetime). If these are sold out you can also try out Hashing24's auction feature which allows you to bid on hashpower from existing customers.

Regardless of how you purchase your mining contract, Hashing24 charges a flat fee of $ per GH/s per day (although at the time of writing the fee was $ due to a "limited" offer). There's also a one-time fee for purchasing hashing power with a particular host.

Eobot has been around since and is registered in California. Its owners have decided to remain anonymous, so there are no photos or office addresses on the main website.

Eobot's site did not play nicely with our ad-blocker on registration, forcing us to use another browser. However, once sign up was complete, we saw that the website notifies users when someone logs into their account from a new IP address. Two-factor authentication is also enabled by default, meaning that in order to access your account, you need to provide a code sent by email as well as your password.

Eobot offers mining contracts either for 24 hours or ten years. The website is neatly laid out and also offers a fee estimator to allow you to calculate daily profits in exchange for the hashpower you purchase. Its main page is very clear that most investments will take around 52 months to break even.

Maintenance fees are currently set at $/GH/s/day. Unlike other cloud mining websites we've reviewed, Eobot also offers an easy to understand explanation of how maintenance fees work. Contracts are available for a wide range of cryptocurrencies.

Due to the owner's desire for anonymity and in order to stay within the law, direct deposit of funds by bank transfer isn't supported. You can, however, buy contracts with Bitcoin and via a USD credit card using Epay.