[Note: This piece is the part of the Business Catalog and has no relation to the original news feed.
Update: Cointelegraph has received copies of documents verifying that Cloud Think is a registered limited company in England and Wales.]
CloudThink is a cloud mining service and mining hardware developer headquartered in the UK, with a second company running their mining operations in Taiwan. Unlike other cloud mining services, some of which simply allocate hashing power to their clients without further involvement, CloudThink offers daily payouts based upon the company's trading performance and guarantees customers a minimum level of profit based on the package contract they purchase.
Customers visiting the CloudThink website are offered a range of different packages to choose from. All of the packs are based on a fixed-term contract, with payment upfront for the service, daily payouts for all accounts, and varying levels of guaranteed and expected profit margins.
Users choose a package based on two main factors — the length of time they wish to invest for, and the amount of money they want to put into CloudThink. The most basic package starts at US$499 for 6 months of cloud mining. This package offers a minimum guaranteed profit of 10%, and CloudThink describes an expected profit of 13-17%. At the other end of the scale, the most expensive package is for a two-year contract with a US$5,000 investment. The company says this comes with a guaranteed 45% profit, and they expect profits in the 65–100% range over the course of the contract.
CloudThink explains that profits come from a mix between bitcoins being mined by the cloud mining hardware, benefits derived from improved hardware that the company is also developing on the side, and the profits from a team of traders within the company. Daily profits are paid out from the mining activity, and monthly profits come from the trading team. All payments are made in bitcoin.
CloudThink says that it uses a mix of mining hardware from Bitmain, Spoondoolies and KnC, but that 30% of its power is also based in custom hardware it is developing, and which it later plans to also sell on the open market. CloudThink also generates the electricity used in their Taiwanese mining facility.
CloudThink aims to make the world of cloud mining easier to understand by offering fixed contracts with minimum profits that the company guarantees, rather than simply allocating to customers hashing power from a remote data center. The service specifically targets itself at users who may not know a great deal about cloud mining. It does this by removing much of the difficult jargon normally associated with a technical service like this.
Founded in 2015, CloudThink is headquartered in Manchester, UK, where it is registered as a limited company. The company says it uses a second company in Taiwan to carry out its mining operations.
Packages range in price from US$500 to US$5,000, and all contracts are to be paid in bitcoin, unless an order is particularly large and can be bank transferred. On top of that, there are no maintenance or additional fees.
Contracts can be canceled within the first 3 months of a 6-month contract, and within the first 6 months of a 12 month contract, but this forfeits any profits and attracts a 2% fee.
Cointelegraph: How did CloudThink get started?
Richard Coleman: CloudThink started off in late 2012 as a small company in Manchester, United Kingdom, by a group of private investors which saw the opportunity digital currencies and mining had to offer. Originally, the company invested in a selection of mining hardware bought and assembled from providers all over the world that was used to mine cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Dogecoin, Litecoin and more as time passed.
We soon realized that if CloudThink was to become the multinational corporation which it is today, we had to build our own mining equipment. In 2014, we acquired a mining farm which was operating independently and privately. This was also the time when other external investors (we cannot disclose their information for now) have come to us and helped us to fund our research and production.
Here, we began researching and building our own mining equipment, which made our Company very profitable. Besides mining all profitable cryptocurrencies, our company trades them on many markets to make profit from differences in the exchange rate.
CT: What's the background of the CloudThink team?
RC: CloudThink has only recently surfaced to the general public and our team is only beginning to meet the cryptocurrency community. We are more like a family. We even have more than two to three members from the same family working at CloudThink.
The team is comprised of our board members, technical engineers, professional market traders and security analysts. Most of our employees have come from companies run by our investors and some were already working in Taiwan before we acquired it. They are all professionals and very experienced in cryptocurrencies.
CT: What are the advantages to customers of cloud mining over normal cryptocoin mining?
RC: The investment packages we offer are different from regular cloud mining contracts. We don't just give the investor hashing power and hope that it will still be profitable at the end of the contract. This is no longer a profitable business plan. Investors receive interest proportional to their investment amount and contract length. The interest is calculated daily for all packages by analyzing our performance from trading activities, mining and some future projections which are connected to our mining hardware research and production.
Initially, our cloud mining packages were only available to certain invite-only investors. We have since moved forward. Our current public offering is limited and represents our confident step towards building the future of Bitcoin together. Investors can trust in our state-of-the-art data centers and renewable energy to provide them with the optimal bitcoin investing experience available on the market.
Our services are designed specifically to work with a single investment, letting you avoid unpleasant monthly payments or confusing fee calculations. No matter what, we keep it simple. The investor will always have access to statistics, market movements, and a wide selection of tools for Bitcoin users and others.
The funds received from investors trough investment packages are also used to research and build new, very efficient mining equipment which we add to our Taiwan mining farm every few weeks to increase our mining profitability. Investors also have the privilege to receive professional investor consultancy and reports whenever needed, a simple secure wallet, an integrated coin mixed with 0% fees for increasing their privacy when dealing with cryptocurrency, and a mobile app.
CT: What mining rigs do you use in your Taiwanese facility?
RC: Most of our mining equipment has been bought new or used from private and individual providers. Our selection is comprised of hardware from almost all hardware providers like Bitmain, Spondoolies and KnC. We now have a little more than 40% in custom-built mining hardware that is more efficient than the equipment we bought at first.
We realized that it is much more profitable if we can invest in research and production to develop our own mining power. We have a very important advantage in Taiwan by being able to power most of our equipment with renewable energy. We are currently in the process of removing and selling the old equipment and replacing it with our new equipment.
CT: Any exciting news or upcoming features you can share with us?
RC: I am very happy and excited to say that CloudThink will surely be in the spotlight in the next few months with announcements like:
- We recently opened an online, used mining hardware shop comprised of SHA-256 and scrypt mining hardware, power supplies and mining accessories from our Taiwan branch. The products are used (most of them), but fully functional and without any defects. They also come with a guaranteed 6-months warranty to assure our clients that equipment bought from us will work without any faults or defects.
- After we sell our old equipment, we plan to market original CloudThink products like custom-built SHA-256 and scrypt mining equipment, physical wallets and more to increase the public's interest. The equipment will be very efficient and reliable, but unfortunately we will be selling the new equipment only to select investors and clients for reviews. Most of the equipment will be used at CloudThink. There is no need to sell it in mass for now.
- New online services such as a fully automated cryptocurrency exchange like ShapeShift, but with almost no fees, and an advertising platform for publishers and advertisers.