PBmining, also known as Piggy Back mining, was once the greatest cloud mining companies operating in the market. Offering dirt cheap rates for their GH/s, it attracted the attention of many with some users depositing over 10 Bitcoins to the site. Sure it gave a return on investment for some who had jumped on early but as of recent times it has encountered trouble. Many speculate the company was simply a Ponzi at heart but with the site promising refunds in January only time will tell…

Cloud mining has been one of the industries that has seen rapid growth. With the popularity of bitcoin increasing so did the interest in mining these coins which was effectively mining money by most standards. Cloud mining companies started up with one aim which was to mine on the customers behalf. Allowing the customer to pay for a lump of GH/s the miner would mine making profit for both the operator and the customer (eventually.). However behind this facade many companies have started up Ponzi Schemes which are one of the biggest nuisances to the health of Cryptocoins. With many companies paying out “mining profits” from other users deposits, a whole raft of companies have gone down under due to them being unsustainable eventually folding on themselves.

PB Mining under attack from customers…

The posting of our lead developers facebook profile has caused some serious threats and blackmail attempts against him.  We suspect these are the same individuals who were threatening our company back in January.  The exposure of his personal life is proving to be damaging and could give him very good reason to leave PB Mining.  If this happens, then legal action will be taken against those who have posted his personal information, including that which was deleted soon after.

The Company have been under fire recently as accusations went rife that the company was simply a ponzi scheme which had reached its last stages. As baseless as these accusations may seem many people found red flags as the company had no hardware (or no proof of it), was not very transparent and was offering 5 year contracts. As the payouts started dropping many customers became enraged but the company claims the situation was caused directly by the pressure from users and other blackmailers who may have targeted the company.

As seen above the threats came from many directions and with the privacy of the one employee violated may have led to the panic occurring with in the PB Mining community.

Another reason behind the company’s sudden despair may be the rising difficulty which the coin is maintaining. Pushing many miners out of the game the rising difficulty has seen profits for miners dwindle with many turning their miners off completely due to electricity costs being higher than profits.  The graphs below display how the Hash-rate has been match by the difficulty pushing competition between miners to new levels with only big farms and newer miners being able to turn over profits on some occasion.

On the other hand the flailing price of the Bitcoin may also be to blame for the slimming payouts. With electricity still being paid in fiat, the price hike downwards has led to the operations becoming unsustainable forcing lower payouts.

In conclusion we may have to wait till January to see if PB Mining will honor refunds to those who were effected the most. Whilst cloud mining is becoming unnecessarily risky the mining game may still have some steam left.