It Is All About BTC, LTC, ETH, DOGE, KAS mining as well as other alternative crypto currencies
It seems that the Bitcoin cloud mining service CEX.io has been testing FIAT trading in their exchange for a few days already and a limited number of beta testers are able to deposit and withdraw USD. Currently there are GHS/USD, BTC/USD and LTC/USD trading pairs available for everyone (you can trade in USD), so you can not only buy and sell hashrate directly for USD, but also trade with Bitcoin and Litecoin in USD. In order to be able to get early access and participate in the beta test that will allow you to actual deposit and withdraw USD however you will need to send a request for an invitation and get your account verified. There is a list of specific requirements that you need to meet in order to be allowed to beta test the new functionality.
Here is the list of requirements below:
1. Your age is not less than 21 years
2. You have the following documents required for verification:
– Passport or National ID
– Proof of Residency
3. You agree to provide us with scans of your passport or national ID, and agree to present the documents via Skype call as a part of the video verification process.
4. You have a bank account, which allows you to send bank transfers or transfer funds via VISA/MasterCard.
5. You are aware that the minimum funding/withdrawal limit for beta testing is 50 USD.
6. You have a web-camera with resolution not less than 1 MP for live video verification.
7. You have Skype installed.
8. You are proficient in basic English.
9. Your CEX.IO account is older than 3 months.
10. Two-Factor Authentication is enabled on your CEX.IO account.
It is about time for us to do a quick report on the latest Bitcoin cloud mining services that we have started using and reviewing – Bitcoin Cloud Services and Lunamine. These two services are still very new, but they do look promising and are very attractive because of their very low prices per GHS even compared to other similar services with very low prices such as PBMining, let alone to other typically more expensive services such as CEX.io and other even more expensive services. It is normal that users want to get the best price per GHS from a cloud mining service in order to ensure a fast ROI and then get to the part where they actually make profit from their investment. So new services with very attractive prices do generate a lot of interest, however this also raises some concerns, especially if the people behind the specific cloud mining service do not wish to reveal much about their mining hardware and operation. This is precisely why we do always recommend to start small when you are testing a new cloud mining service and never invest more than you can afford to lose in case things turn out bad and the service turns out to be a scam… and we’ve already seen quite a few of these. Let us get back to the new Bitcoin cloud mining services that we have recently started testing…
Today we’ve passed a little over a month using the Bitcoin Cloud Services and the good news is that the service is still here and still pays daily. They do offer 5 years long contracts with no extra fees associated with the hashrate you purchase, currently the price of 1 GHS worth of Bitcoin cloud mining hashrate is 0.0028 BTC with a minimum order of 40 GHS or in order to check it out you need to invest a minimum of 0.112 BTC. The main disadvantage that the service still has is that there is still no history for all of the payments you have received and there is no information available for the total mined coins since you have started the mining contract. This makes it very hard to actually calculate the numbers as you only have the amount of the last daily payout available and these numbers do change with the change in difficulty of the Bitcoin network. Other than that things seem to be running smooth so far, you can check our detailed review of Bitcoin Cloud Services from the last month for some more details about the service.
The second service that we have started testing a little over 20 days ago – Lunamine, though the service itself is pretty much a month old already, is also still here and running just fine. The approach here is slightly different, there is no defined time for the contract, instead it runs for as long as the hashrate you have purchased is actually profitable – the mined coins minus the electricity cost is higher than zero. The minimum contract you can get here is 100 GHS for $150 USD or about 0.2551 BTC (~0.0025 BTC per GHS) or the more attractive price wise 1THS contract available currently for $1300 USD or 2.2108 BTC. Even though we’ve been testing the service for shorter time we’ve seen quite a lot of improvement in terms of the control functionality such as the ability to reinvest the mined coins for additional hashrate. The user control panel here is also more detailed and offers clear information about the total mined coins since the start of the contract as well as history about the withdraws you have made so far. The payment here is not automated, you need to request a payment to be made to you for any amount from your account balance. You can check our detailed review of Lunamine from the earlier this month for some more details about the service.
BitPay, a Bitcoin payment processor, has announced a new free plan which offers basic payment processing free-of-charge, forever, making it even more attractive for new businesses to start accepting payments in Bitcoin from their customers. The new free plan allows merchants to use any plugin, API, or app from BitPay’s library and the only difference as compared to the $300 USD monthly Business plan is the lack of phone support and Quickbooks sales integration. With the free plan you still get support, however it is email only. BitPay is aiming to have one million merchants accepting Bitcoin by the end of 2016.
Coinbase, another similar service, has been offering for quite some time a plan to merchants that has no fees for the first $1,000,000 USD in transactions, after that the fee is just 1% to instantly convert Bitcoin to cash. The idea for accepting Bitcoin payments is to lower the fees for the seller and thus the price for the end user as compared to the fees when accepting credit card payments for example. This should help widen the Bitcoin adoption as a method to pay for services and goods with the merchant still getting his payment in USD or another currency even though the client pays in Bitcoins.
– For more information about the Bitcoin payment processing services offered by BitPay…