Following last period's almost 14 percent jump, the latest Bitcoin mining difficulty adjustment is a more modest increase from 678760110082.99023438 to 711697198173.75659180 for an approximately 4.85 percent rise to this newest all time high.Bitcoin network mining difficulty has reached a new all time high of 678760110082.99023438 up from 595921917085.41601562 for an approximately 13.90 percent increase.The period of sustained malaise which hit fiat currencies this year continues to take it's toll with the United States dollar spending much of May under 1/2000th of a Bitcoin.New all time lows for the dollar threatened to cross 1/3000th of a Bitcoin, but they did cross the 1/2800th mark more than doubling the dollar's pre-2017 low mark.At present fiat/Bitcoin interfaces are sitting around a ~1/2200th of a Bitcoin price for the US dollar, a mark unheard of before this May.Sorry for your loss.Bitcoin network mining difficulty has climbed to 595921917085.41601562 from 559970892890.83813477 for an increase of ~6.42 percent for a strong follow up to last period's 7.28 percent climb.

At present, the all time highs keep climbing while the all time losers keep fumbling.bitcoin precio recordMining difficulty on the Bitcoin network has risen ~7.28 percent to 559970892890.83813477 from 521974519553.62823486 for a new all time high.bitcoin cameroonThe previous adjustment a slight increase of ~0.22% from 520808749422.13983154 to was also a new all time high as has been the trend for much of Bitcoin's ever increasing history.bitcoin exchange ddosFiat currency malaise continues as well with the United States dollar continuing to suffer an increasing number of all time lows against the Bitcoin.dogecoin market priceThe bulk of fiat centered fiat/Bitcoin interfaces are testing a price that would drop the value of a United States dollar to 1/1400th of a Bitcoin on their markets.bitcoin botnet software

The malaise affecting fiat currencies has kept the dollar trading under 1/1000th of a Bitcoin for most of 2017.bitcoin bid askAt the present fiat/Bitcoin interfaces which are outliers from the pack include BTCChina which has illegally cooperated with the PBOC to stop Bitcoin outflows while still allowing fiat outflows leaving it a laggard where a dollar is still a whopping 1/1180th of a Bitcoin, simply for the reason that a dollar can be taken off of their troubled platform.Bitfinex is also an outlier in the other direction where a dollar is a mere 1/1497th of a Bitcoin as it goes through Goxian death pains.This is yet another all time high for Bitcoin mining difficulty following last adjustment's achievement of yet another all time high.As commonly happens Bitcoin mining difficulty increased yet again for another all time high.The difficulty went from 475705205061.62921143 to 499635929816.66754150 for a change of ~5.0305787 percent.

Today Bitcoin mining difficulty increased ~3.24 percent from 460769358090.71423340 to 475705205061.62921143 for yet another all time high.The magnitude of increase is down slightly from the last two adjustments of ~4.535 and ~4.4 percent.US dollars continue trading under 1/1100th of a Bitcoin on fiat centered fiat/Bitcoin interfaces as fiat malaise continues.Bitcoin Network Economy Total BTC 16,408,625 BTC Market Cap 44,221,227,966 USD or 39,616,245,812 EUR or 167,753,577,688 PLN or 35,307,422,930 GBP Transactions 238,689 Transactions 9945.38 Bitcoins sent 2,215,219.39 BTC Bitcoins sent 92,300.81 BTC Blocks Count 472,689 Blocks 140 Blocks 5.83 Difficulty 711,697,198,174 Next Difficulty 700,767,394,906 Network Hashrate 5016288.41 Network Hashrate 63706862.75I’ve been looking for ways to generate a profit from Bitcoin ever since it hit the news back in April 2013.

With so many options you sometimes find yourself lost.Should you buy and hold, day trade, mine at home, start a bitcoin exchange, I can practically go on forever about ideas for making money from Bitcoin.But one idea seems to catch the eye of most of my blog readers more than any other – cloud mining.For those of you who are unfamiliar with cloud mining, it’s basically “renting out” computing power from a company with a mining farm so you can participate in the latest gold rush of Bitcoin mining.Ever since Bitcoin became popular back in 2013, the difficulty to mine increased drastically.This meant you needed to buy expensive hardware, find a place to store it and of course cool it (since Bitcoin miners tend to heat up quickly), only to exchange it with an even more expensive piece of hardware after 6 months, since the difficulty went up yet again.Enter cloud mining.A magical solution to solve your Bitcoin mining problems.No need to buy expensive hardware, find storage space, pay electricity bills or take care of cooling.

All you need to do is “chip in” with a larger company on their mining expenses and in return you will get a portion of the earnings.When you deal with cloud mining you rent out GH/s or TH/s, which measure how much computing power you will be able to mine with.But is this really worth the money you spend on it ?I have to admit I was never a big fan on mining myself, it always seemed too technical and I preferred to just go ahead and buy my Bitcoins.But since I got so many emails lately asking me to look into cloud mining I decided to put it to the test.In order to see if a mining contract is worth your money, you basically need to calculate how much money you will make from the money you invest.Just like any other investment, you want to check your ROI.To accomplish this I’m going to use a mining calculator, which is a small piece of software that does all of these calculations for me.So armed with my mining calculator off I go to test the profitability of cloud mining:Our first stop is probably the most reputable cloud mining company today, “Genesis Mining”.

Founded at the end of 2013, Genesis Mining is a company of 10 employees registered in Bermuda.The company used to offer Bitcoin mining contracts and Altcoin mining contracts but it seems that today they only offer the former.I’m not sure why this is, but one assumption could be that it’s related to the decline of most altcoins in the past year.Prices start from $22.49 per 0.05 TH/s and all the way up to $19,500 for 50 TH/s.The interesting part about this pricing model is that unlike other cloud mining companies, there’s only a one-time fee and not a monthly fee.Having said that, if you take a closer look at their pricing page, you’ll see that it states, “For lifetime contracts as long as the contract is profitable, a small maintenance fee is deducted”.It took me a while to find out what the fees are, but it appears that Genesis Mining deducts 0.0015 USD per 1 GH/s on a daily basis for mining Bitcoins.We will keep that in mind in our calculations.Now let’s see how profitable we can become using Genesis Mining.

We’ll start out using the lowest price possible and just get 0.05TH/s.At the current difficulty and exchange rate we would be making about $3.59/month, or $0.1196 a day.Let’s not forget to deduct the fees that would be $0.0015 * 50GH/s = $0.075 daily (this is 62.6% of the total profit!).So this brings us to exactly $0.046 daily, or $1.338 monthly.This means we will break even after 16 months.Not sure I’m willing to wait that long to get my 20 bucks back.If I take a look at purchasing 1 TH/s for $419, I get a monthly profit of $26.44 which basically gives me the same outcome since the fees are calculated linearly.Moreover, there is one thing that is missing from this equation.We have no idea what the Bitcoin exchange rate will be in five months or a year from now, nor what the mining difficulty will be.This is what makes cloud mining a bit risky.I mean if Bitcoin booms again, we can cover our whole investment in just one month, but if it goes the other way around….you get the point.

Same thing goes for the mining difficulty.It seems that the difficulty is evening out lately, but it’s mainly due to the fact that so is Bitcoin’s exchange rate.These two parameters tend to be in a positive correlation to one another.Meaning if one goes up so does the other.But they have a negative effect – a higher exchange rate makes you richer, while a higher difficulty rate makes you poorer.But here comes the really interesting part:Some people consider cloud-mining companies to just be elaborate Ponzi schemes.Meaning there are no huge mining farms located in some remote location and no major mining operations.Some people believe this is just a way of luring in customers and using their money to pay out the customers who came before them.In my recent research on BitcoinTalk and Reddit I found some interesting perspectives on this.I won’t name specific companies but I will review several of the claims made:“They are still trying to attract new customers to buy at roughly the same price we paid initially… at the rate it is going we are on track to reach negative returns.

At which point our contracts would be cancelled after 10 days of negative returns.Meanwhile we are locked into these contracts with no option to sell.Please stay clear of this service!”~ BitcoinTalk user“Last November I invested just over 1 btc… since then I earn daily 1/3 of what I should be making, from my investment, the other 2/3 are fees.. I guess?And for as for roi, its going be a very, very long time seeing I am earning less then 5 cent a day @ 60 gh/s.” ~ BitcoinTalk user“No, they make no sense.I suspect many of them will turn out to be Ponzi schemes.” ~ Gavin Andresen, Chief Scientist of the Bitcoin FoundationI have yet to find any positive comment, post or thread about cloud mining that seems unbiased.A lot of these cloud mining programs supply referral programs which give people an incentive to sign other people up (another characteristic of many Ponzi schemes).In conclusion, I guess cloud mining still hasn’t proved itself to be a legit and profitable answer to generating a profit through Bitcoin.