Cryptocurrency mining, and especially Bitcoin mining, is a very attractive activity for many crypto enthusiasts. The possibility of obtaining rewards in the form of some coin with a high value in the market is an incentive for which even large companies and governments are after.

The problem is that, in the case of Bitcoin and some other crypto, mining is no longer within the reach of the common user, since this requires quite expensive special hardware that not everyone can afford, or obtain due to supply shortages. However, there is still a whole universe of altcoins whose mining process is possible using ordinary equipment, like the ones you and I have at home.

In its basic form, all you need to mine altcoins is a PC or phone, an internet connection, and special software, so if you’re thinking of getting into cryptocurrency mining, this is a good guide to get started.

So let’s take a look at the 10 Best Crypto You Can Mine with CPU and GPU today.

1. Ethereum

The Ethereum (ETH) network is currently a Proof of Work (PoW) blockchain which, although it’ll soon become a Proof of Stake (PoS) blockchain, still requires miners to work to obtain rewards.

What you need to mine Ethereum

Today, you can no longer mine ETH using only your CPU, so you’ll need to make use of GPUs. With a configuration with consumer graphics cards – preferably AMD or Nvidia – you can get good results when mining from home. You’ll also need to download a mining program like Geth, EthOS, or Claymore.

Ease of mining

ETH mining can be quite heavy if you don’t have enough computing power, as the network is very active and there are many transactions being processed.

Brief guide on Ethereum mining

The first thing you need to do is set up an Ethereum wallet to store the cryptographic keys that will allow you access to your crypto assets.

The next step would be to join a mining pool, which is necessary as mining has become complex and requires large amounts of hashing power. Some of the most popular pools today are Nanopool and Ethermine.

Another interesting option is cloud mining. In this case, a large mining farm rents computing power to interested people in exchange for a monthly fee, so they can mine cryptocurrencies without the need for special hardware.

The main disadvantage of this method is that most of these services tend to be scams, so you’ll have to do your research and be very careful in this case.

Please see my past blog post, 3 Reasons Why You Should Not Cloud Mine.

Is it profitable to mine Ethereum?

Ethereum mining is still profitable, but it also depends on several factors.

A rule that applies to basically all cryptocurrencies is that you must take into account the initial amount of the investment, in addition to the costs of the mining and electricity platform, especially the latter, since this is what will help you the most to determine if it’s profitable and after how long.

Fortunately, there are online calculators that can help you in calculating these costs.

What you can do with your coins

You have two options: sell ETH for an immediate profit or store it in a wallet as a long-term investment. In both cases, insha’Allah, you don’t have to worry, since ETH is the second most popular cryptocurrency after Bitcoin, so it’s widely accepted in many exchanges and online stores.

2. Ethereum Classic

As with Ethereum, Ethereum Classic (ETC) is a platform for the operation of smart contracts and dApps, with the goal of adhering to the principles of decentralization as much as possible.

What you need to mine Ethereum Classic

To mine ETC you need almost the same software and hardware as for ETH. Although in the case of ETC, the requirements are somewhat lower, since Ethereum Classic allows a greater share of the ETC market using GPUs of up to 3 and 4 GB.

Ease of mining

Mining ETC is fairly easy nowadays as the Ethereum Classic network is not as overloaded as Ethereum due to the lower transaction volume.

Brief guide on Ethereum Classic mining

Since with Ethereum Classic the hardware requirements are lower, mining alone is more feasible. Of course, you can always resort to a mining pool. Once you have your wallet, mining software, and graphics card configured, you only have to start mining.

Is it profitable to mine Ethereum?

The difficulty of mining and the hashrate of ETC is still very accessible, and if you live in a region where the cost of electricity consumption is cheap (about $0.10 KWH), mining ETC can be very profitable.

What you can do with your coins

As with Ethereum, you can use your ETC for trading or purchases on a wide variety of exchanges and online stores.

3. Monero

Monero (XMR) has become a favorite of many investors and miners due to its excellent performance in recent years. Between 2017 and 2018 it went from $10 to $494, providing a profit of almost 5,000%, and it’s still very attractive today.

What you need to mine Monero

Fortunately, you don’t need to buy expensive ASIC equipment to mine Monero, as you can use your computer’s CPU/GPU.

Ease of mining

Anyone with a computer can mine Monero, as the mining process is quite simple. However, the more powerful your hardware, the better.

Brief guide on Monero mining

As we already mentioned, you can mine Monero using a GPU with enough power. You will also need to install the XMR Stak mining software, which is currently fairly easy to configure. Finally, you only have to join a mining pool, MineXMR, Nanopool, or Moneropool.

Is it profitable to mine Monero?

Currently, mining Monero is quite profitable, considering that you don’t need too powerful hardware. In addition, the algorithm that Monero uses today is quite efficient and consumes little electricity.

What you can do with your coins

You can trade Monero on a good variety of recognized exchanges, although it is best to use DEX-type exchanges. On top of that, around 200 businesses that operate online accept payments with Monero.

4. Dogecoin

Dogecoin (DOGE) is another cryptocurrency that you can mine using GPUs and CPUs. This coin was launched in 2013 as a joke, and it ended up becoming a very popular crypto – thanks Elon?

What you need to mine Dogecoin

You can mine Dogecoin with a CPU, though preferably not with your phone. Of course, the best option will always be to build a good rig with several GPUs, as long as your pocket allows it. Regarding software, EasyMiner is a good option.

Ease of mining

Although it’s still possible to mine Dogecoin alone, due to the increased difficulty that the network suffered in 2018, the most recommended at this time is to be part of a mining pool.

Brief guide on Dogecoin mining

Mining Dogecoin is as easy as setting up your Doge wallet, joining a mining pool like Prohashing, Antpool, or Poolin, and start mining.

Is it profitable to mine Dogecoin?

2021 saw great growth in the price of Doge, standing in March at 0.056 with a reward of 10,000 for each new block in the network, with which you would be earning $560, not bad.

What you can do with your coins

Currently, and thanks to the popularity that Doge has gained in the crypto world, more and more online businesses and exchanges are accepting this cryptocurrency. You can even use the BitPay card for purchases at Mastercard points.

5. ZCash

ZCash (ZEC) uses the Equihash algorithm to process transactions, secure the network, and of course, generate new coins during the mining process. For miners, this reward consists of 3.125 ZEC per block, which is quite attractive considering the ZEC price in the market.

What you need to mine ZCash

To be able to mine ZCash, you need to use Nvidia or AMD GPUs, as CPU mining is not profitable. Mining alone is not recommended either, so it’s a better idea to join a pool, such as F2Pool or Poolin. Regarding software, EWBF Cuda and Optiminer are good options.

Ease of mining

Due to the increasing difficulty of the network, ZEC mining has become somewhat complicated on its own, although not as much as other cryptos. Mining a ZEC would take you more than 20 days with powerful equipment.

Brief guide on ZCash mining

To start with ZCash mining, you’ll only have to install and configure your GPUs, download a ZCash wallet software, install a ZCash mining program – like EWBF – and join a ZCash mining pool.

Is it profitable to mine ZCash?

Yes, Zcash mining can be profitable if you consider a mining hashrate of 140,000.00 H/s, + electricity costs, and pool fees.

What you can do with your coins

With ZCash you can pay directly at dozens of online businesses, either with your mobile phone or anywhere Visa is accepted.

6. Ravencoin

Ravencoin (RVN) is a cryptocurrency that resulted from an open-source project born from a Bitcoin hardfork, and that has become an excellent option for mining.

What you need to mine Ravencoin

This cryptocurrency has an algorithm resistant to ASIC equipment, so you can mine it with no problems using a rig with several GPUs, either alone or in a mining pool.

Ease of mining

Ravencoin is much easier to mine than other cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, or Litecoin since its algorithm – KaWPoW – requires less computational power.

Brief guide on Ravencoin mining

To start mining RVN, you just have to build your rig with enough GPUs, download the corresponding mining software – KawPoWminer, TeamRedMiner, or Gminer – and configure your wallet to receive your rewards. You can perform this process alone or in a mining pool.

Is it profitable to mine Ravencoin?

Each miner earns up to 5K RVN for each block added to the chain. With a rig armed with at least three GPUs at 72MH/s, you can mine one RVN every 0.021 days, which is equivalent to one block every three months. If you want to do it faster, you’ll need to add more GPUs.

What you can do with your coins

Ravencoin is still a cryptocurrency with a low level of global acceptance, but this is changing gradually for the better.

7. Grin

Grin (GRIN) is a cryptocurrency born in 2019 focused on maintaining the privacy, efficiency, and scalability of transactions within its blockchain. The project has been gaining a good following since its inception.

What you need to mine Grin

Grin has the peculiarity that it has two PoW algorithms for its operation. One of them allows mining through the use of high-performance GPUs, and the other is specific for ASIC equipment.

Ease of mining

Due to the aforementioned Grin features, added to how recent the project is, the mining of this cryptocurrency still presents an accessible difficulty for a large number of users.

Brief guide on Grin mining

You can participate in Grin mining using a GPU rig with at least 8 cards with enough power. You can do it alone or be part of a mining pool. You just need to configure your rig and download the appropriate software, such as Gminer or Lolminer.

Is it profitable to mine Grin?

Many people using a GPU configuration similar to the one mentioned above, manage to get around $200 a month throughput.

What you can do with your coins

Grin is still a very recent project and therefore it doesn’t yet have a high level of acceptance compared to other currencies, but it’s possible to trade it on some exchanges such as Hotbit, Gate.io, and others.

8. Beam

Like Grin, Beam (BEAM) is a cryptocurrency that uses the Mimblewimble protocol, which allows increasing privacy, scalability, and efficiency on the network. This crypto was created in 2019, and being ASIC resistant, it has become an attractive option for many users.

What you need to mine Beam

As it’s an ASIC resistant coin, you can only mine Beam using graphics cards of at least 4GB. CPU mining is not profitable.

Ease of mining

The mining difficulty in Beam will be increased every 4 years, as well as its reward decreased. But even so, it’ll be accessible through the use of GPUs.

Brief guide on Beam mining

As we have already mentioned, it’s perfectly possible to mine Beam alone, but there are also a good number of mining pools available to participate in if you want to increase your mining potential. Set up your equipment, mining software, and connect your wallet to get started.

Is it profitable to mine Beam?

At the time of writing this blog post, the price of Beam is around $0.50 and if we take into account its attractive features, in addition to its ease of mining, this is a crypto with a lot of potential.

What you can do with your coins

With each passing year, Beam gains more acceptance and presence on a greater number of exchanges, including some like Hotbit, and even Binance.

The bottom line

As you have seen, there are still a good number of crypto alternatives that don’t require a huge investment on the part of users and that can also provide excellent long-term benefits.

Remember that Bitcoin, Ethereum, or Monero were not worth much in their early days, but constant support from their communities made them what they are today.

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In 2017 I wrote a blog post called, Is Bitcoin Mining Halal or Haram?, and we came to the conclusion that at that time there was no consensus among scholars about whether mining Bitcoin is halal or haram. Rather, we stated that Bitcoin mining is halal because there was no obvious evidence to suggest that mining Bitcoin is haram.

However, years later, this question is still being asked by many so I figure it’s time for an update.

Is cryptocurrency mining halal or is Bitcoin mining halal? The simple answer is, yes. Bitcoin mining is halal. Bitcoin mining is nothing more than the act of verifying transactions on the Bitcoin blockchain by a Proof of Work protocol. Bitcoin miners who successfully verify transactions are providing a service to Bitcoin users as well as providing security to the Bitcoin network and they are rewarded Bitcoin for their effort and there is nothing haram with this.

Great! You have an answer to your question. But now you must be thinking, but what about those who say Bitcoin is haram and in addition to that also say, or imply, that Bitcoin mining is haram?

If this is your thought process, then please read on.

Is mining crypto haram?

In my previous blog post, Is Bitcoin Halal? 10 Scholars’ Opinion on Bitcoin, I noted that some scholars have said that all aspects of cryptocurrency are haram and this includes mining Bitcoin.

Two of the main reasons some scholars have said that crypto mining is haram are:

1. Bitcoin (or any cryptocurrency for that matter) is not backed by a government; therefore, all aspects of Bitcoin, including mining bitcoin, is haram since there is no government approval.
   
2. Bitcoin mining is resource intensive and uses too much energy which in turn is bad for the environemnt; therefore, Bitcoin mining is haram.

But how accurate are these two reasons as to why some scholars would rule Bitcoin mining as haram and can we say that the above-mentioned reasons are, reasonable?

Bitcoin backed by government

For those scholars who say that all aspects of Bitcoin are haram because Bitcoin has no government backing, they mean that governments do not recognize Bitcoin as currency, money, or legal tender; therefore, Bitcoin, and this includes Bitcoin mining, would be seen as haram.

However, over the past 10 years since Bitcoin has been around, more and more governments have changed or updated their laws allowing their citizens to participate in crypto markets with governments recognizing Bitcoin as either a currency, an asset, or even property.

2021 has also marked the first time that a country’s government has not only allowed the permissibility of Bitcoin use for its citizens, but it is the first time that a government has also recognized Bitcoin as legal tender. In other words, we finally have Bitcoin backed by a government.

In June of 2021, President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador made history by passing a bill in the Salvadorian congress making it a law approving Bitcoin to be used as legal tender.

This now begs the question, since Bitcoin is backed by a government, El Salvador, is it then halal for Muslims in El Salvador to use Bitcoin? It seems that the answer would be, yes.

And what about mining Bitcoin? El Salvador has not only recognized Bitcoin as legal tender but the government will launch a Bitcoin mining initiative for the country as well. We’ll touch on that later in this blog post.

Now, are we saying that all countries recognize Bitcoin as legal tender or all countries approve the use of Bitcoin – and this includes Bitcoin mining – of course not. We know that China has just recently banned Bitcoin mining in their country.

Update: China has now banned ALL cryptocurrency activities.

Regardless of this, we are observing a growing acceptance by governments worldwide to explore the use of cryptocurrencies in their countries and/or allow their citizens to use cryptocurrencies even when there are no clear laws or guidelines in place or even if the government does not implement a law stating that Bitcoin is legal tender.

Bitcoin energy consumption

Another argument made by some scholars as to why Bitcoin mining is haram is because it is commonly stated that Bitcoin mining electricity consumption utilizes large amounts of energy to mine transactions and is therefore bad for the environment.

This has also been mentioned by our sheikh, Assim Al Hakeen, and I have touched on this in a blog post called, 10 Reasons Why Bitcoin is Haram. Sheikh Assim Al Hakeem Bitcoin Fatwa.

I have also been of the mindset that Bitcoin mining is resource-intensive and uses a high amount of energy to mine Bitcoin. However, the question that I failed to ask myself was, Bitcoin mining is resource-intensive compared to what?

When comparing Bitcoin mining to the energy consumption of the banking and gold industry, two industries that Bitcoin is regularly compared with, then we begin to see a different story.

Galaxy Digital has released a report called, On Bitcoin’s Energy Consumption: A Quantitative Approach to a Subjective Question, which states that Bitcoin mining uses less than half the energy of what is used in the banking or gold industry.

The chart below shows that the banking industry uses around 263.72 TWh per year and the gold industry uses about 240.61 TWh per year and Bitcoin uses less than half the energy of both of these industries, 113.89 TWh per year.

So, is Bitcoin mining resource-intensive? Does Bitcoin mining use a lot of energy? The answer is, yes. But so are other industries that are a mainstay of human life – the banking and gold industry. As we stated, annually, they both consume more energy than Bitcoin.

So if the argument is that Bitcoin mining is haram because it is resource-intensive and not environmentally friendly, then the same argument must be made for the banking and gold industries.

So what are possible solutions? Are there alternatives as to how we can mine or verify Bitcoin and cryptocurrency transactions in a manner that is environmentally friendly?

The answer to that is, yes. We are now seeing cryptocurrencies such as Cardano, Dash, and Ethereum already utilize or plan to move to a Proof of Stake (PoS) protocol which utilizes less energy consumption than a Proof of Work (PoW) protocol.

Cardano claims that their PoS protocol utilizes 6 gigawatt-hours of energy annually which is far less than Bitcoin. Now, will we see Bitcoin move to a PoS protocol? I doubt it, as many Bitcoin advocates hold the belief that Proof of Work is the most robust and secure way to secure the network and do not want to see that change, but it could be that future cryptocurrencies will put their focus on PoS rather than PoW to address environmental concerns.

In addition to moving to Proof of Stake, another solution would be to utilize renewable or clean energy for mining cryptocurrencies.

Remember how we noted that El Salvador has also launched a Bitcoin mining initiative? Well, the El Salvadorian government is planning to utilize their geothermal resources, volcanic energy, to mine Bitcoin thus making Bitcoin mining environmentally friendly by utilizing renewable and clean energy.

So, do we finally have Bitcoin that is backed by a government? Yes.

Do we have Bitcoin being mined by clean energy or do we have cryptocurrencies moving to a more environmentally friendly way of verifying transactions by protocols such as Proof of Stake? Again, yes.

Since this is the case, then I foresee scholars changing their opinions on their ruling of Bitcoin and not making such blanket statements.

Muslim countries and cryptocurrency mining

Now you may be saying, well, that all sounds great for El Salvador, but what about Muslims in Muslim countries? Is cryptocurrency mining halal in Muslim countries?

Well, I have another blog post called, Muslim Countries Where Bitcoin Is Legal Or Illegal, where you will not only see a list of Muslim countries and their legal stance on Bitcoin but you will also see that some of the countries highlight cryptocurrency mining initiatives that are underway in their respected countries.

Pakistan is one of those countries. Pakistan has launched a cryptocurrency mining initiative for the province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa to build Bitcoin mining farms with the hopes of opening up their mining farms to investors in the future.

Kazakhstan has also been taking lead in the Muslim world when it comes to having government-backed cryptocurrency mining initiatives and has already produced a number of cryptocurrency mining farms.

In an article by Aizhan Abilgazina, A New Kind of Mining: Kazakhstan Stakes Its Claim in the Cryptocurrency Industry, Aizhan states,

Kazakhstan has seen a significant growth in cryptocurrency mining activities with around $200 million having been already invested in 13 mining farms that are operational around the country with four more under construction.

By Aizhan Abilgazina

The Kazakhstan government also has plans to actively seek outside investors who are seeking cryptocurrency mining in their country.

Last month, Kazakhstan’s minister of digital development, innovation and aerospace industry, Askar Zhumagaliyev, announced that the department is planning to attract 300 billion tenge, or $738 million, worth of investments by 2023 for activities related to cryptocurrency mining.

Source – Asia Times

The only downside I see to cryptocurrency mining in Kazakhstan is that half of their energy consumption comes from coal and coal tends to be considered as “dirty energy”.

Conclusion

Again, we are seeing an evolution as to how governments, more specifically, Muslim governments, are interacting with cryptocurrency and the blanket argument that Bitcoin does not have government backing and therefore Bitcoin mining is haram does match realities on the ground.

And in all fairness, many of the scholars who said that Bitcoin and Bitcoin mining is haram had declared such opinions years ago. Times change, new information becomes available, and it may be that these scholars have also changed their opinion.

We have come a long way since Bitcoin and cryptocurrency hit the world stage over 10 years ago and as our overall understanding and education of cryptocurrency has evolved, so has the opinion of our scholars.

So, is Bitcoin mining halal? According to a number of scholars, yes. You are providing a service and being compensated for that service. The only thing you must do now is to check your government’s legal rulings on cryptocurrency.

And in the end, Allah knows best.

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Assalaamu Aleikum and welcome to part 3 in our 4 part Is Bitcoin Halal Series. Today we’ll touch on, is bitcoin mining halal or haram? We’ll talk about the general opinion on bitcoin mining by our scholars and we’ll also take a look at bitcoin mining hardware you can use to mine bitcoin as well as bitcoin cloud mining.

But let’s answer the main question, is bitcoin mining halal or haram?

At the time of writing this blog post, there is still no consensus among the fuqaha that Bitcoin in and of itself is haram. If you are mining bitcoin yourself with your own bitcoin mining hardware, then we cannot say that this is haram.

You are purchasing the mining equipment and/or maybe you are joining a mining pool, and this is not haram. However, cloud mining may be considered haram because there is a high percentage of gharar (uncertainty) associated with cloud mining and the sharia prohibits business dealings that are not transparent or unclear due to uncertainty.

You can learn more by reading the blog post or watching the video below in case you would rather not read. You can also use the menu in the video to go to different parts of the video.

If you choose to mine for bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency, simply make sure to follow the laws of the country you live in and make sure to do your proper research before investing any money or time into bitcoin mining. 

Always keep in mind that you should verify all information for accuracy, the age of the content you are reading, and carefully consider your own financial situation before making your decision.

This blog post is for informational purposes only.

Links to videos in this blog

• DIY Bitcoin Mining: Hardware (part1)
• DIY Bitcoin Mining: Software (part 2)
• Raspberry pi and GekkoScience Compac USB Stick Bitcoin Miner 8gh/s+ (BM1384)
• Working USB Bitcoin Farm with Raspberry Pi running Minera
• Bitcoin Mining in July 2017 – Still Profitable?
• 3 Reasons Why You Should Not Cloud Mine

Video Transcript

Assalamu alaikum and thank you for joining me for today’s blog post. Today is blog post number three of our four-part series, the, Is Bitcoin Halal Series. In part one we covered currency. In part two we talked about, is trading Bitcoin halal or haram? And in today’s blog post, we’re going to get into bitcoin mining. Is bitcoin mining halal or haram? 

So, let’s hop into that real quick today. Okay, now as we covered in the first and second blog post that we had. Number one, currency. We mentioned that the fuqaha as of yet have not classified bitcoin as money.

In our second blog post when we talked about trade when mentioned that, when it comes to trading bitcoin, bitcoin is not subject to rules of riba al buyu. So, the rules of trade don’t really apply to bitcoin. Again, because it doesn’t fall into the categories we talked about.

And if you haven’t read that blog post, if you haven’t caught that video, go back and check them out. Again, check out the first one that talks about currency and the second one that talks about trade.

We got into a little bit in regards to showing you the different categories and classes of trade- of items of trade that the fuqaha broke them up into classes- and we talked about that and what that means in regards to rules that apply to trade to items that fall into those categories. So, again, go back and check that out.

What Scholars Say About Bitcoin Mining

So, with that being said, we’re going to get into bitcoin mining. So, with bitcoin mining, people are always asking, “Hey is mining for bitcoin halal or haram?” So, as we mentioned, Bitcoin in and of itself is not haram.

So, the fuqaha have not unanimously, there is no mashoor (popular), there is no consensus that Bitcoin in and of itself is haram. It’s more of a wait-and-see approach with the fuqaha and to exercise caution when you’re using it.

And also, it seems like it’s also more about paying attention to the law of the land of the country where you live in; seeing if Bitcoin in your particular country is legal to use or not. But when it comes to bitcoin mining, bitcoin mining in and of itself, we cannot say that it is haram.

Now, there are some things that you should pay attention too. So, I’m going to look at mining from two different perspectives. The first one being mining for bitcoin yourself; meaning, you purchased the hardware. You join a mining pool and you’re mining bitcoin or any other altcoin that’s out there.

And the second one is cloud mining. And I actually did a video, a blog post, on cloud mining. So, that’s out there for you to check out as well. So, let’s go ahead and first let’s talk about bitcoin mining. I’m sorry- mining yourself – not cloud mining – mining yourself.

First thing I want to talk about is, if you want to get into bitcoin mining there are some things that you probably want to pay attention too; certain equipment that you want to take a look at. So, I’m going to go ahead and share with you some equipment that you may want to take a look at. I’m pretty sure some of you out there have already done some research on this.

Some of you have contacted me through my website here and let me know that you’re new to Bitcoin. So, if you’re new to Bitcoin this probably will be even more [of] benefit to you. In the hopes that we won’t have you wasting time or money.

So, I want to talk about some equipment that you should look at. Some things to think of and then I also want to touch on bitcoin mining when it comes to cloud mining because there are some concerns there that I think- where you have to pay attention to the sharia in regards to cloud mining.

So, let me go ahead right now and let’s go ahead and hop into mining on your own with hardware that you have either purchased or rented so let’s go ahead and take a look at that right now.

Bitcoin Mining Hardware

Okay, so, for those of you thinking about mining bitcoin at home, I wanted to share with you hardware that you should look at. So, this is a really good video where this guy, his name is Fred, he’s going to show you an inexpensive way to set up a mining rig at home that’s not going to break the bank.

He’s going to use bitcoin miners that are USB sticks. Now one thing I want you to pay attention to is, look at the date as to when this video was published in 2013. That’s old. That’s old. So, we have to keep in mind that the Bitcoin, the hash rate on the Bitcoin network has gotten much higher.

It’s increased dramatically since then. So, keep that in mind when you’re looking at videos on YouTube that talk about setting up mining rigs for yourself at home. You want to keep in mind, look at when the video was made. Look at the products that they’re using. It’s really important. You have to be able to make sure that whatever you purchase is going to be well worth the investment.

So, let me go ahead and – let’s make this big here. Let’s close here. Press play. I’m going to fast forward here. Handsome young gentleman right there but we’re going to fast forward. All right, so, here’s the setup. Here’s the setup. So, if you look over here to the left, you’re going to see the Raspberry Pi 3.

This is going to be your minicomputer. This is going to be the casing to protect this Raspberry Pi. I highly recommend to have a protective case for it so this way – it’s so exposed that you don’t want something to fall on it or you drop it or you, God forbid, you step on it by accident.

So, you want to have a protective case for your Raspberry Pi 3. You want to have a fan because, your fan, that’s going to keep your bitcoin USB sticks cool. And this is going to be your USB hub. It’s going to be your USB hub where you will go ahead and plop those suckers in right there. Plop in your USB mining sticks in order to mine. And this is going to be your memory card.

Now, one thing I will say is – let me go ahead and let the video play out here – one thing that I will say is keep in mind that these Bitcoin Erupters, these are ASIC Bitcoin Erupters. These are no good in 2017. At the time of the making of this blog post these are no good. No bueno. No good. Don’t get these. I don’t think you’re going to see any profit whatsoever with those. They’re just not going to cut it nowadays.

This video here is pretty much going to be him explaining to you, showing to you, the different hardware and he’s going to get into showing you how to set up the hardware and he does a really really good job of that – Let me go ahead and fast-forward here. Let’s see here. Again, getting into the setup – Here we go right here.

Like I said, this is going to be just an excellent video overall. I mean, it shows you all the hardware equipment that you’re going to need to use to build your own mini mining rig. You know, to build this rig isn’t going to break the bank. You don’t need to spend thousands of dollars.

It’s a great do-it-yourself little video on that so, I am going to include this in the show notes there. So, you can go ahead and check this out. Let me go ahead and escape out of this video and pause it.

So, again, he just showed you a layout of what equipment to use, and I had mentioned that even though he was showing the Bitcoin Erupter – just again, just want to make, drive the point home, when it comes to this Bitcoin Erupter, you’re going to see this out on the market. They are still selling this. Don’t buy this. Don’t buy it.

You’re not going to make any money with this. You’re going to lose money. Don’t buy this. Okay, this is old. 2013 video, old. The premise of the video, the equipment he’s showing you how to set up is good. But this particular USB mining stick, that’s past its prime.

So, what do you want to look at? Let’s go to this video here. This video, check out the date on this video. 2016. So now this is 3 years later. This video, I will also include this link in the notes of this blog post – let’s go ahead and make this big here, close this.

And I’m going to press play – alright so, in this video you’re going to see again that he is also using a Raspberry Pi 3 as his minicomputer. You can see there that he has the protective casing. You always want to make sure that you’re going to protect your minicomputer. You want to protect your investment. I want to go ahead and fast forward, to here – let me back up – there you go.

So, you can see right here, so this right here is going to be your Gekko 3. This is going to be the Gekko, I’m sorry the Gekko 3, the GekkoScience. The GekkoScience USB mining sticks. These are going to be superior to the Bitcoin Erupter. And as you can see here, this person also has a USB hub, a multi-port USB hub, and a fan because I’m telling you these suckers run hot. Blazing hooooot! HOT! So, again you can see now in 2016 we see that we are using the Gekko miners.

Let me show you another video here. This one here. Now look at the date of this video. This one was published in March of 2017. So, this is this year. And – let me make the video, enlarge it here, close this out, press play – and I’m just going to sort of walk through this video here. He is also using a Raspberry Pi 3 still in 2017.

This is still good to use and you can see here what he’s showing you is his little farming set – let me pause the video – this is his USB board. He is using the GekkoScience USB bitcoin mining sticks and obviously you can see the fan because again we said that this runs hot. When this sucker mines, it’s really, really hot.

And over to the left, I think at some point he’s going to show you, he’s showing you the, his mining sticks there and then over to – I think the left-hand side up here, you’re going to see his power supply. So, this is the power supply that he is using, but again I just wanted to show you these videos just so you can see the equipment, what these people are using.

Let me go back for a second here. So, in this video, so this video I said this is going to be a great do-it-yourself tutorial on what hardware to use and how to put it together, that’s part one. He also has a part two that’s pretty good to check out as well.

The part two is just a software – but this really gets into software meaning like bitcoin wallets. What wallets to use. So, they’re good, again, the videos are old, but they still have value in them. There’s still value in this.

So, let me do this right now. Let me hop over to the Islam and Bitcoin website. I’m going to go over to the products tab and I’m going to click on mining.

So, let me click on that and that’s going to bring up the mining page here and on this page, you can see that this is where I have listed all the equipment that relates to bitcoin mining.

I did my best to put equipment on this page of quality. I only put equipment on this page that I thought would be worth it and disregarded anything else. So, the top of the page you’re going to see the Gekko USB mining stick. I go ahead and give you some background on it here so that you can read up on it. This is, like I said, it’s going to be far superior than the Bitcoin Erupter that he was showing you in that older video there.

Here you’re going to have your USB multi-hub-ports. That’s where you’re going to, you’re going to use this to put in your USB mining sticks. This is a 10 port USB 3.0 hub. Down here this is a 12 port USB 2. I would go with this, I think this is going to be better, you’re 10 port USB. Why? Because it’s a 3.0. So, the 3.0 is going transfer data faster. And I think that’s going to help you when it comes to mining.

So, let me scroll down here and this is going to be your Raspberry Pi, your minicomputer. So, you can purchase it on its own, on its own without the casing or you can go ahead and purchase it with the kit.

The kit gives you everything you need. I totally, highly recommend if you are going to go this route just get the kit. Save yourself some time. Don’t try to go out there and try to put things together piece-by-piece. You’ll probably end up spending more money. This kit is going to give you the protective case, the power supply, your cables, your memory card, so you’re going to be good to go if you go that route. So, I would suggest doing that.

So, let me show you this video.

Now this video, look at when this one is produced, Bitcoin Mining in July of 2017, so now we’re pretty much caught up to present day. At the time of making this video, this blog post I should say, at the time of making this blog post, this video is still valuable for today.

Now, why do I think this video is important? He is going to talk about – let me go ahead and make this big – this video, he is going to get into showing you different equipment to use for mining. So, you see right here, he’s going to get into the Antminer, the Bitcoin Erupter. He’s going to mention just as I did that this no good to use. No good to use.

So, what I’m going to do now is – I want to fast-forward in this video to about here – he goes through some equipment, but the one that you want to pay attention to is when he talks about the Antminer S9. This is going to be your workhorse.

This is going to be the Bitcoin hardware, the mining product that is going to turn you a prophet insha’Allah. The price tag though is pretty darn high. Check out this video. Check out this video. He gets into all the analytics. He talks about your electricity costs, the price of the equipment, how much bitcoin you going to earn per day. It’s an excellent video and again I’m going to put these links in the notes of this blog post. So, check that out.

Let me go back over to the website here and I’m going to scroll down just to show you on this page the Antminer S9. Here you go. Like I said, this is going to be the “big daddy”. The big worker. Check out the hash rate. This thing is hashing at 13.5 terrahash. That is larger, bigger, than the hash rate of the Bitcoin Network right now.

With that being said though, look at the price. That’s a lot. $2,500 you may find it for $2,300. That’s a big chunk. That’s a big chunk. That’s a big price to pay for that; however, insha’Allah, that is going to make you a prophet insha’Allah. That is going to turn you or profit.

If you scroll down the page here you’ll see that I also have the power supply for it. So, you have the power supply for the Antminer S9.

Can You Make Money Mining Bitcoin?

So, let’s get into talking about the reality of making a profit. I’m not showing you all of this just because I want you to come to my website and purchase the equipment. If you do, great. Alhumdulilah. That would be wonderful. But I want to be honest with you.

As your Muslim brother, your brother in Islam, we’re supposed to be honest with each other. If you are looking to purchase the Gekko USB stick, keep in mind that this is not going to make you some huge profit.

I don’t want you to think that if you go ahead and get the USB stick and you go ahead and get your USB hub, you get your Raspberry Pi 3 and you put your mining rig together that you’re going to all of a sudden just, alhumdulilah, you’re going to make a $1,000 per month in bitcoin. $500 per month in bitcoin. That’s not going to happen. It’s not going to happen.

Keep in mind that the hashing rate of these USB sticks are very low. So right here you can see that it says 8 gigahash. I think it goes up to 13. It’s not going to be a lot. You could potentially lose money with this. I think you may just break even.

Some people, some people are able to make a profit with this but not everyone. And the people who make a profit with this they do so by tweaking, and I don’t know how they do this, if some of you know please tell me. Leave comments in the blog post below. They are able to tweak their USB hub. I think they’re able to tweak it so that they maximize the data transfer rate in this USB hub which then allows this USB stick to maximize its hashing rate.

It can hash at a higher rate and transfer the data faster. Like I said, I really don’t see you making a huge amount of profit with this. I don’t want you to be delusional and have all these dreams and hopes that if you get this it’s going to make you a lot of money off the bat.

I think if you’re just looking to get your feet wet with bitcoin mining. You want to try it out on your own. You want to do it in a manner that is relatively easy then this is a good way to go, but know that you’re probably not going to make huge profits. I think that you are probably going to make something in the realm of maybe $0.20 per day. $0.30 per day. It’s not going to be hundreds of dollars.

If you live somewhere and you don’t have to pay electricity costs even better. That’s good. If you have to pay electricity then you have to figure out if you’re going to lose money or not. Again, this is good if you just want to get your feet wet. This is good if you want to earn some bitcoin, mine some bitcoin, but you’re not really concerned about making huge profits.

There are some people out there who do make profits and they do so by tweaking, again, they are able to tweak their USB hub. But again, don’t look at this as though you’re going to make huge profits. You’ll make some, you’ll get bitcoin, inshallah no doubt about it you’ll get bitcoin, but it won’t be this huge, it’s not going to be huge amounts.

And the price for this, the price is really, let me see how much it is. The price to get into this if you want to mine with it. Here you go right here, so we can see here you’re looking at about 70 US dollars. 69/70 US dollars to purchase a Gekko USB mining stick.

If you see right here, look here, it says, you can go from 8.5 up to 15+ gigahash, gigahash speed and if you see here it says that your USB port must be set at a higher speed rate. It should be set above specs in order to hit that 15 gigahash rate.

So, I think the people who are really making some kind of a profit, they are tweaking out their USB hub. Okay? All right. Again now, the way that you’re really going to make some money is if you go the route of going for the [Antminer] S9.

I don’t think this is even released yet but the price tag is really high. I don’t think that most people can afford this. I really don’t think so. I know some of you out there do mine bitcoin. You’ve contacted me and you’ve told me that you’re doing it. I don’t think everybody can afford $2,500 though.

So, that’s all I wanted to show you in regards to the hardware. Again, I will post all the links there. Mining bitcoin on your own from what I’ve seen there is nothing haram about this at all. You’re purchasing the equipment, you’re joining a mining pool, bitcoin in and of itself is not haram. Mining, it’s not haram. No one [scholars] said it’s haram.

So, if you want to do this, give it a shot. Give it a try. Okay, so let’s talk about cloud mining. I want to talk about cloud mining now.

Bitcoin Cloud Mining

All right, so now that we’ve finished covering bitcoin mining as it relates to purchasing your own equipment, building your own mining rig, now we want to touch on cloud mining.

Now, when it comes to cloud mining – let me go ahead and click on the blog tab here – now, I had published a blog post sometime back that was called, “Should I Cloud Mine?” – let me go ahead and click on this – “Should I Cloud Mine?”

And in this blog post I covered my experience with cloud mining, and I cloud mined with Genesis. So, let me go ahead and lower the volume here just to show you that – let’s see here. Where do I want to go? Let’s try, is it here? We’re just doing some guesswork here. So, let’s wait for this to pull up, yes.

So, in this blog post, again, I talk about my experience with Genesis Cloud Mining. It’s a very thorough video that I produced. Very long, about 45 minutes long. I know, very long. But in the video, I actually do cover my experience with Genesis.

As you can see here, I even get into showing you the daily payouts that I was paid from my cloud mining. Again, you get to see the dashboard. You get to see all inside my account. We talk about the pricing of the contracts. It’s a very very thorough blog post. I definitely would say that you should go ahead and check that out.

But now as I’ve gained more knowledge in regards to how cloud mining works and my studies in Islamic Finance, I’ve now come to the conclusion that I believe that cloud mining is no good. And I do not recommend cloud mining and that led to a blog post that I published called, “3 Reasons Why You Should Not Cloud Mine.” “3 Reasons Why You Should Not Cloud Mine.”

And the number one reason that I would say why you shouldn’t cloud mine it because of what it’s called “gharar”. Gharar means uncertainty. Technically I believe it means deception but according to Islamic Finance when you are dealing in contracts, gharar is normally understood to mean uncertainty.

Now, when you purchase a cloud mining contract, there is no way for you to truly verify that the bitcoin you are receiving is from that company actually performing any mining. There is no way for you to really authenticate, to verify that the bitcoin that you are receiving or any of the altcoins that you are mining for.

There is no way for you to truly authenticate that they are actually mining those coins and that the payout that you are receiving, that the bitcoin that you are receiving, is actually from, actually from them mining.

Now what’s interesting is, don’t just take it from me, there’s a gentleman by the name of Andreas Antonopoulos – I’m going to turn up the volume here and just play for you a segment of this video that I published, and you can always go back and check it out for yourself. You can check out the full blog post, the full video here.

I just want to play a portion of it for you so that you can see, you can see for yourself – if I can get it here. Come on. – All right, so you can see for yourself Andreas, his take on cloud mining. So, we’re going to play that right now.

“Yeah, 95% of cloud mining schemes are scams. They are straight up Ponzi schemes and the reason is, there is no effective way to prove whether the money you’re making comes from the mining share that you’ve invested in or simply from the money that the people after you are investing into the same scheme which is what a Ponzi is.

Cloud mining in itself is almost always a Ponzi. I have not seen a single one that I would trust, yet, I’ve seen hundreds of examples of them collapse. So, if they’re making money from mining but they’re not actually running any hardware, they’re just putting some money in and money keeps pouring out every month, I would take a 95 to 5 percent bet on that myself that it’s a Ponzi scheme.” ~ Andreas Antonopoulos.

Conclusion

All right, so there you have it. Now, what he touched on is what we would call gharar. And again with an Islamic contract, when you’re doing business between two parties, there shouldn’t be gharar in the contract. The element of gharar should not be in the contract. Now with that being said, I completely understand that the sharia does allow for some percentage, a small percentage of gharar depending on the circumstance.

So, what do I mean by this? I will share with you an example that was provided to me by my teacher. Now, let’s just say you are a grocery store owner. You own multiple grocery stores and you are interacting with a farmer and you’re purchasing barrels of apples from a farmer.

So, you’re purchasing apples from a farmer and the farmer is selling you one hundred barrels of apples. And let’s just say maybe each barrel weighs about 50 pounds and you’re going to distribute these apples all across the different stores that you own throughout the city.

Now, what happens is, when you go to purchase those apples from that farmer, 9 times out of 10, most of the time, you are not going to open up all 100 barrels and check each and every single apple to make sure that all the apples are in good quality, that they’re not rotted, that they’re not damaged, or to even check to make sure that there are apples in the barrels.

Realistically you are not going to do that. You may randomly check some barrels here and there, but most likely you’re not going to open up each and every barrel and check every single apple, you’re not going to do that.

And the fuqaha realized that for sake of practicality, for sake of ease, you’re not going to do this. So, this type of uncertainty is allowed. This is a slight uncertainty that is permissible.

However, you can argue that cloud mining is different. Cloud mining is different. You’re not opening up, it’s not like you’re dealing in barrels of apples. You’re giving money to someone trusting that that person is going to mine bitcoin for you and there’s no way for you to verify that the person is actually mining bitcoin for you.

You don’t know whether they are doing that or just giving you your own money back in small proportions as bitcoin and telling you that you are actually receiving bitcoin from their cloud mining services. You simply just don’t know. It’s an uncertainty that is just there. At least I believe so.

So, just to wrap things up, when it comes to the question, is bitcoin mining halal or haram? Generally speaking, we can say that there is nothing haram about it if you purchase your own mining rig and you have your own equipment or let’s just say you are paying someone else to cloud mine for you but you actually can, maybe you can go to their house or their apartment and you can actually look at the mining rig itself and you trust this person and you know that you are actually receiving bitcoins from their cloud mining process.

However, when it comes to these organizations [companies] that are out there in other countries that you yourself, you can’t visit their location, you have no way to verify whether or not you are receiving bitcoin from their cloud mining services, this would be known, at least from my understanding, this to me seems to be gharar.

And I do know that in Islamic Finance when you have a contract between two people, two parties, the element of gharar should not be there. So, that wraps it up for this blog post when it comes to, “Is bitcoin mining halal or haram?”

Insha’Allah you found benefit in it. I ask that you do share this. Again, especially if you found benefit in it. So now we see that we’ve advanced in our series, the, Is Bitcoin Halal Series. The first blog post that we had dealt with currency, “Is classified as money according to the Sharia?” The second blog post we touched on trade.

In this blog post we now touched on mining, bitcoin mining. And in the next blog post that we have coming up we’re going to touch on investing in bitcoin, “Is Investing in Bitcoin Halal or Haram?” Please stay tuned to check that out. That blog post is coming up sooner than later insha’Allah and I just wanted to thank you for checking out this blog post today.

Assalaamu Aleikum (may peace be upon you). Is cloud mining worth it? Is cloud mining profitable? Let’s discuss the top 3 Reasons Why You Should Not Cloud Mine. I know, I know. How could I say such a thing?

Well, if you want to know why I believe you should not cloud mine and you don’t want to watch the entire video or read the transcript below, then here it is in a nutshell. The reasons why I believe you should not cloud mine are the following:

1. It is too difficult to make a profit with cloud mining
2. There is no such thing as profit-loss-sharing with cloud mining
3. Some cloud mining websites may be Ponzi schemes

If you would like a more in-depth explanation of these three reasons, then please do watch the video or read the video transcript below.

Show notes – these are the videos referenced in this video.

• Video: “Bitcoin Q&A. Feb 2017” – Andreas Antonopoulos

There is no such thing as profit-loss-sharing with cloud mining.

…Andre Rishi

Video Transcript

As-salamu alaykum and thank you for checking out this latest video on Islam and Bitcoin. Today’s video, 3 Reasons Why You Should Not Cloud Mine. That is correct. I said 3 Reasons Why You Should Not Cloud Mine. Today’s video is actually a shorter version of the previous video that I may call, Should I Cloud Mine?

The reason I decided to make this video was because, in my previous video, I went into detail when it comes to taking a look at two particular cloud mining services. So my previous video, we looked at Eobot Cloud Mining services as well as Genesis Mining. We looked at that in detail.

We looked at the pros, the cons, the pricing packages, all the different alt coins you could mine, I even shared with you my experience with Genesis Cloud Mining and showed you my earnings.

Again, we went into detail, however, I think there are a lot of people out there who probably really don’t care to take a look at a cloud mining services that in-depth and they really just want to know the reasons why should I or why should I not cloud mine.

So I figured I would make a much shorter version and share that with you today. However, if you are that person who you really want to learn more about Eobot Cloud Mining services and Genesis Cloud Mining, which Genesis is probably, probably the most if not, one of the most popular Cloud Mining services then I do recommend that you go check out my previous video called Should I Cloud Mine?

So let’s get moving. Let’s get cracking as they say. All right, so, do know that I am not going to address the Sharia aspect of whether or not it is halal or haram to cloud mine, simply because I do not know. I am a student of knowledge and that information, I simply do not know.

I am operating under the Islamic principle that things are considered permissible until proven otherwise. And as of now, there is no consensus amongst the ulema that cloud mining is haram. Therefore, I am not going to say that it is.

Again, I’m operating off the Islamic principle that things are considered permissible until proven otherwise. Now if sometime in the future, I do hear that the ulema has come up with some fatwa or some ruling that cloud mining is haram then insha’Allah, I will make another video posted here and we will all be the wiser for it, all right? Cool, so let’s get right into it, Three Reasons Why You Should Not Cloud Mine, three reasons why I think it ain’t worth it.

1. It is too difficult to make a profit with cloud mining

Reason number one, it is too difficult to make a profit. It’s too difficult to make a profit. In my last video I shared with you my experience while I was cloud mining with Genesis Mining.  I showed you my daily earnings, my payouts and with all of that going on, I was not able to make a profit. I wasn’t even able to break even.

The reason why I think it is too difficult to make a profit when it comes to cloud mining is because you are constantly competing against the changing difficulty when it comes to the hash rate on the Bitcoin network.

Now, when you purchase a cloud mining contract, the number 1 thing that you want to pay attention to is the hash rate on the Bitcoin network. Your– the package that you purchase on the cloud mining, with a cloud mining service, the terahash, I believe should be greater, should be greater than the current hash rate on the Bitcoin network.

If it’s not, well then, you’re not going to successfully mine an abundant amount of Bitcoin. You just won’t. You’re just throwing money away.

As we know, the hash rate changes on the Bitcoin network every 2016 blocks. So every 2016 blocks, the hash rate changes. It either goes up or it goes down, most of the time it goes up, which means if it goes up, that means you will have to also increase the hash rate that you have with your cloud mining service and you’re not going to do that for free, it costs money, right?

So you’re putting in money to increase the hashing rate that you have with your cloud mining packages and I easily see that purchasing upwards of I think 10 per, 10 Terahash with the cloud mining service can easily take you upwards of 700 USD, maybe above a 1,000  USD and that is a lot.

I don’t think most people have a 1,000 USD just to throw into cloud mining. They don’t. I think most people will be able to manage about 50 USD maybe even 100 USD, but most people will not spend 1,000 USD, 700 USD, and even 500 USD.

If you’re going to spend that much, you might as well purchase Bitcoin outright. I have had more success, I have had more success having sabr (patience) and watching the market when it comes to Bitcoin. You know, checking up on the latest news, looking at the latest developments, seeing what the development team, the core team is doing working on Bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency that I’m looking to purchase.

I’ve had more success by purchasing the Bitcoin outright than I have with cloud mining services. Like I said, when I cloud mine, I wasn’t able to make a profit. I wasn’t able to even break even.

The difficulty in that is that the changing hash rate on the Bitcoin network, and in order to keep up with that changing hash rate, you are going to consistently have to continuously put more and more money into your cloud mining service in order to purchase a higher and higher hash rate in order to successfully mine Bitcoin to try to keep, to keep ahead or to make a profit, and I think it’s just too difficult for most people to do that.

So, that is my number one reason why I think it ain’t worth it to cloud mine.

2. There is no such thing as profit-loss-sharing with cloud mining

Reason number two, reason number two why I say you should not cloud mine is because there is no such thing as profit-loss sharing, and what do I mean by that?

I mean it would be nice if when we purchase cloud mining packages, it was done in a manner whereas a profit-loss sharing, meaning both parties benefit from it and if both parties are losing, we both cut our losses, right?

It doesn’t work that way. And what do I mean by that? Now, whenever you purchase a cloud mining package, let’s just say, I’m just making up numbers here, let’s just say you purchase a 5 terahash cloud mining contract for 500 USD, right? You purchase a 5 terahash cloud mining contract for 500 USD.

Now let’s just say the Bitcoin network is currently mining the hash rate of the Bitcoin network is at, I don’t know, let’s say 4.5 terahash meaning the hashing power you purchased is higher than the Bitcoin network, OK?

Now, as we mentioned earlier, over time we know that the difficulty rate of the Bitcoin network changes, it usually increases so let’s just say now the difficulty rate of the Bitcoin network increased to 6 terahash or 6.5 or higher than that.

Well that means your 5 terahash is really no good, it’s really no good. You’re not going to be able to make substantial gains in mining Bitcoin if your hashing power is lower than the hash, or than the hash rate of the Bitcoin network.

Now, it would be great if the cloud mining service said, “Hey look, you purchased $500 or 500 USD contract with us, I tell you what, you keep cloud mining with us, you keep cloud mining and make a profit. We also make profit because we take from you fees in order to make a profit for ourselves so we would allow you to keep mining on the network so long as it is profitable for you.

If we find that there’s a certain point where the hash rate changes on the Bitcoin network and you are no longer making profit, we will give you back the money, we will give you the difference, right? We will give you back whatever the difference is that’s where, you know, your cloud mining package became obsolete.

So maybe that, maybe they’ll say, “We’ll give you $200 back because really you got $300 worth or I’m saying like $300 that you put in, that’s where you really made a profit. Anything after that, you lost, you lost because the hash rate of the network increased so you didn’t make any profit.

So we’ll give you back $200 that way you make some profit, we make profit, we’re all happy, we can walk away, everyone walks away happy or we’ll give you back your $200. If you want, you can reinvest it again in another cloud mining package and we’ll go again from there, both of us making profit, both of us being happy.”

This is not how it works when it comes to cloud mining services. They keep all your money. They keep it all. So let’s just say you purchase, you know, a $500 cloud mining package, generally speaking, once you do this, the hash rate changes on the Bitcoin network, it goes higher, it goes to 6, 7 terahash and then you, your package no longer allows you to mine Bitcoin.

It’s not like the company turns around and says, “You know what? Well, let’s give you some of that money back because we clearly see that your package is obsolete.” They don’t do that.

So that’s my second reason why I would say one should not cloud mine because there’s no true profit-loss sharing between the client and the one running the service. It would be great if it would be like investors, right?

I invest, you invest, we both invest, together we both share the risks, and then after that, we both cut our losses if we see that there’s a loss. None of us is really– none of us gets– loses financial in a huge way per se. That’s not how it works and that’s my second reason why I would say one should not cloud mining, there’s simply no profit-loss sharing.

3. Some cloud mining websites may be Ponzi schemes

Reason number three and my last reason as to why I say you should not cloud mine is because it can all be a Ponzi scheme. Yes, it can all be a Ponzi scheme, we don’t know. We have no way of truly verifying whether these companies are actually doing what they say they are supposed to be doing, which is mining Bitcoin.

Unless you have the means to go to that particular facility or you know someone that you trust that can go to that facility for you, open up the doors, take a look inside, verify that they are cloud, that there are cloud mining rigs in there, and that these rigs are up and running 99.9% of the time, then hey, we’re really all just going on trust, right? That’s what it is.

Now I’m not saying that every single cloud mining service out there is a lie or a sham, but the potential for fraud, the potential for someone to be running a Ponzi scheme in the realm of cloud mining services is very, very, very high.

And like I said, if you don’t have the means to physically go there and check out the facility to see for ourselves that cloud mining is actually taking place, then it’s all based on trust.

Now you might be saying, “Well yeah, I hear you, but I purchased a cloud mining contract and I’m getting daily payouts. I’m looking at my wallet every day and it showed me that I’m getting cloud mining payouts.”

Well that just may be the case, but you don’t know whether the cloud mining payout is really them just shifting money around. Maybe they have a whole bunch of people who have pulled into this, and all they’re doing is giving you bits, a drip-drops, drip-drops, and payments of Bitcoin payouts from other people’s money that they put into the pot.

Worst case scenario can be is that they are giving you your own money that you put in. So let’s just say you invested 500 USD, they can turn around and give you back 200 USD back in Bitcoin telling you that you really received Bitcoin payout from cloud mining when you didn’t.

All they did was turn around and give you back your own money, give you back $200 then kept $300, kept $300 for themselves telling you, “Oh I’m sorry, your, the cloud mining package that you purchased is now obsolete because that hashing rate that you have purchased is no longer strong enough to mine the difficulty rate on the Bitcoin network so hey sorry, it’s no good for you. But if you’d like, you can always purchase more hash power with us.” Right?

That could be the case and it becomes a vicious cycle or it can become a vicious cycle where you continuously try to keep up with the hash rate of the Bitcoin network by purchasing more and more hashing power with the cloud mining service with the hopes that one day, you’re going to make all this money, you’re going to get all a ton of Bitcoin back just by you know, cloud mining.

You know as they say, “If it seems too good to be true, maybe it is.” Right? But you know what, don’t take it from me. There’s a gentleman in the Bitcoin space called Andreas Antonopoulos. If any of you have been following Bitcoin for a while, you probably know who he is.

So I’m going to put a clip of a video that he is in of an interview that he took part of, where he talks about cloud mining services. I’m actually going to put a link to that video in the show notes on Islam and Bitcoin in case you want to watch the entire interview that he is in.

But take a look at this clip, “Bitcoin Q&A. Feb 2017” – Andreas Antonopoulos, and see what he has to say in regards to cloud mining services;

Interviewer: If they are leasing mines and actually making money from the mining, then it’s from the *inaudible* because people can either buy their own hardware and do mining or they join up with larger organizations, we’ve got fastest machines in warehouses processing, and type of share in a mine. And the…

Andreas Antonopoulos: Yeah, 95% of cloud mining schemes are scams. They are straight up Ponzi schemes and the reason is there is no effective way to prove whether the money you’re making comes from the mining share that you’ve invested in or simply from the money that the people after you are investing into the same scheme, which is what a Ponzi is.

Cloud mining in itself is almost always a Ponzi. I have not seen a single one that I will trust yet and I’ve seen hundreds of examples of them collapsed. So if they’re making money from mining, but they’re not actually running any hardware, they just put some money in and money keeps pouring out every month, I would take a 95 to 5% bet on that myself that it’s a Ponzi scheme.

And there you have it from Mr. Andreas Antonopoulos. And these are my three reasons as why I do not feel it is a benefit to cloud mine. Number one, too difficult to make a profit, too difficult to make a profit. Number two, there is no profit-loss sharing. Number three, it can all be a Ponzi scheme. It can all be a Ponzi scheme.

I do hope that you have found this video a benefit, any good that you have found in this video it is from Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta’ala, any mistakes in this video, it is all on me. I ask that you forgive me and make a du’a for me. Please do– if you found benefit in the video, like it and share it.

That’s one of the best ways that you can support this project, Islam and Bitcoin. If you haven’t done so already, go over to the Islam and Bitcoin website and sign up to our newsletter where you will be kept up-to-date on all the latest news when it comes to Islam and Bitcoin.

Thank you for checking out this video today. I leave you in the way that I greeted you, As-salamu alaykum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh. Masalamah.

PLEASE KINDLY SHARE THIS ARTICLE IF YOU’VE FOUND BENEFIT IN IT

Assalaamu Aleikum everyone. Many of you are wondering, should I cloud mine? And if so, should I use a popular cloud mining service like Genesis Mining or Eobot Cloud Mining? Today’s video blog post will take a look at both cloud mining services. I’ll share my Genesis Mining review along with Eobot as well.

If you’d rather not watch the review by video or read the blog post below, and you’d like to get straight to the answer of, should I cloud mine with either Genesis Mining or Eobot Cloud Mining, then the answer is, no. You should not cloud mine with either. Why? Because cloud mining with Genesis Mining or Eobot Cloud Mining is not profitable.

Now if you’d like more detail as to how I arrived at such a conclusion, then please take a look at the video below.

We’ll look at what both cloud mining services have to offer, the cost of their cloud mining contracts, how much Bitcoin they payout, cloud mining altcoins, and finally, my overall verdict on why I do not think you should cloud mine with either cloud mining service.

Again, you can watch the video or read the video transcript below. You can use the menu feature in the video to jump to different sections of the video insha’Allah.

Video Transcript

Islamic Principle – Things are Permissible Until Proven Otherwise

As-salamu alaykum and thank you for checking out this latest video on Islam and Bitcoin. Today’s topic of discussion is Should I Cloud Mine. That seems to be the popular question so, we’re going to get into that today.

Now, keep in mind I am not going to address this from the Sharia aspects meaning is it halal or is it haram to cloud mine? I won’t do that. I won’t get into that aspect of it simply because I do not know. I do not know. I’m a student of knowledge, I’m learning. And once my knowledge of this subject matter grows if I find out differently, I would let you know.

However, with that being said, I am operating under the Islamic principle that things are permissible until proven otherwise. Things are halal and permissible until proven otherwise. This is the basic Islamic principle that we operate on and that is what I am doing here today.

So, as of now, no one has said that it is haram and I will make the assumption, I’m going off of that principle that it is permissible until proven otherwise. It is not for the Muslim to make things haram and then work backwards to try to figure things out. That’s not what we do in Islam. At the same time, this is a deen of ease, it’s not a deen of burden. We don’t make things unnecessarily difficult for ourselves.

At the same time, this doesn’t mean that we just are lazy in wanting to seek out knowledge and say, “Well, I haven’t heard anyone say it’s haram and I’m not going to do my part to study and find out. I’m just going to keep doing what I want to do.”

We don’t do that. It’s for the Muslim to simply operate on the principle that things are permissible until proven otherwise while at the same time, doing their due diligence to go and study and learn on the matter so, that they may not only benefit themselves but benefit others.

And this is the approach that I am taking and as I continue my studies in Islamic Finance, if I come to find out any difference, if I come to find out that cloud mining is actually haram, insha’Allah I will make another video and share that with you. It is not my intention to misguide you or myself – audhubillah (I seek refuge in Allah) astaghfirullah (may Allah forgive me). All right, so, with that being said, let’s get right into it.

What You Will Learn in Today’s Video

Now, as I’ve said in the past, I have experience with cloud mining. So, I thought it would be best to make this video, share my experience with you. For those of you, you brothers and sisters out there who are contemplating whether you should step into cloud mining or not. I think if I share with you my experiences, I hope that by doing so, this will be a benefit to you.

So, we know out there that there are a number of cloud mining services that are being offered. I’m taking a look at my notes right now and I see we have companies out there like Game Bitcoin, Genesis, Eobot, HashFlare, Hashing24, MineGate, MinerGate, BitMiner.

There are a whole lot of companies out there when it comes to cloud mining services and many of you are like, “Well, who’s good, who’s not? Who’s fake, who’s not? Who has the best prices? Who has the best rates? Where am I going to get the best return of investment?” So, insha’Allah my intention is to share with you my experience with the hopes that this will hopefully be of benefit to you and answers some of those questions.

So, today’s video is going to be rather long. So, I’m going to ask that you bear with me. It’s going to be a long video because I’m going to take a look at two cloud mining services in detail. Two cloud mining services in detail.

One of those services I have actually used and I’m going to share with you my experience with that particular on cloud mining service as well. So, let’s not delay any further. Let’s hop right into it right now. Let’s jump right into the first cloud mining service that we’re going to cover today.

Eobot Cloud Mining Services (no longer operating)

Ok. So, first up on the list is Eobot Cloud Mining Services. Here we are at their home page, you can take a look here and see all the cryptocurrencies that they cloud mine and I do think that is quite a bit actually.

Scroll on down the page and you’ll see here that they say that they have over 600,000 users. I do think that is a lot also. Let’s go ahead and log in and get to the dashboard page so we can actually see what is going on there.

Ok. So, here we are at our dashboard also called our Account page. And the first thing that you will notice is that the user interface is really clean and easy to understand and you can see all the different coins that you can mine for, Dash, Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, Zcash. Look here even Gold. You can even cloud mine for Gold, Subhan’Allah. Who would have thought that you can do that? But there you have it, gold it is.

If you go up top here you see where it says Mining and right next to it is BTC. This is to show you what you are currently mining for. At this present time, we’re mining for Bitcoin. Now, once you purchased your cloud mining contract with Eobot, you can change up what you would like to mine for any time by simply selecting that coin in this dropdown menu. So, I’m going to click on Dash. We see now that it has changed what I am mining for; my focus is now on Dash.

Now, let’s just say you want to mine for a multitude of coins. You can click here on Diversify in the dropdown menu. And what this will do is – let’s see here, I’m going to select Bitcoin, Ether and let’s say Monero. Now, what this will do is it will go ahead and randomly choose one of these coins that you have selected and mine one of those coins randomly every 10 minutes. So, that’s pretty cool if you like to do that.

Eobot Account Page and Products List

Let’s go back to the Account page. Ok, so now we are back at our Account page. One thing I wanted to point out is that you’ll notice that you see the prices for the coins, the purchase price underneath the respective coin. This is showing you the price in real time. So, at the time of the making of this video, Dash sits at a little over 100 USD.

If you don’t want to see the currency designated in USD, it does have a few options here you can change out the – how the currency is shown on the page. BRL, I believe would be Brazil, so, you see here it is now changed out – how the currency is shown on the page and that’s pretty cool.

Another thing that you can do here is let’s just say you don’t know what a particular coin is. You know nothing about that coin. You can actually click on it and they actually have a page here where you can actually read up on what the coin is about.

You can see here they even have the home page that you can visit. They even will show you the market capitalization of that coin. And if you scroll on down, it will show you the market rates for that coin in different currency. Show you what the value of that coin is, the purchase price for that coin in different currencies. So, I think that is pretty cool and we go back to the Account page.

Let me go ahead and scroll down here. You will notice at the bottom of the page here you’re going to see a pie chart. This is showing you your portfolio and how many coins you have in your portfolio. Now, if you notice it says that BTC that my portfolio is made up of 91.4% Bitcoin and 8.6% Doge.

Now keep in mind I am not cloud mining with Eobot at this time. I’m not cloud mining at all with them. What happens is when you log in you automatically get Doge every day just for logging in to the site. So, this just shows the Doge that I have received simply for logging into the site.

When it comes to BTC Bitcoin, again, I’m not cloud mining with Eobot. I’ve been able to earn, I can’t say earn, get Bitcoin by utilizing this right here, Faucet. And I’ll show you more about this later.

Right here, this is just showing you by a click of a button you can check out your deposits, withdrawals and everything else here that is on the ledger. You can even exchange between different coins so, that is, that’s what you can do here and that’s pretty much it for the– your Account page.

Let’s go ahead and take a look at the Product’s list. Ok. So, here we see all the services that they offer under the Products tab with Eobot. Let’s go ahead and click on Cloud Mining. Now, on the Cloud Mining page, here is what you will find all the information you need to know as to how cloud mining works with Eobot.

You see right here that you can purchase a five-year or a 24-hour cloud mining package with Eobot. So, you can mine for as long as five years or as little as 24 hours if you so, choose. You can also purchase a contract using Bitcoin or any of the cryptocurrency that they work with. You can even use a credit card to purchase your cloud mining package.

The cloud mining packages that they offer, again, they mention a five-year contract, you see that right here on their five-year contracts. This is how many contracts they have sold thus far. And this right here is showing the available supply of mining contracts they have that were mined at the SHA-256 algorithm. They have 2,600 contracts that will mine at the 4.0 TeraHash and 4000 contracts that mine at 3 TeraHash with the SHA-256 algorithm.

If you scroll down some more you will see they have a cloud mining calculator where you can go ahead and plug-in your numbers here, choose the crytocurrency of your choice, and then they will provide you with an estimated daily payout that you will potentially receive. The same thing here, they will show you your potential estimated monthly payout with your mining contract.

Now, if you scroll down they give you more examples. So, here, this is showing you that if you mine with the SHA-256 algorithm at 3 TeraHash, let’s just say you purchased your mining package with Doge and you paid this amount. Well, then you can expect to receive this amount in your monthly mining payout. And it would take you this length of time, 100 months, just to break even. How about that?

Now, scroll down the page even more and you’ll see that it will give you another example again mining at the SHA-256 algorithm, this time using 4 TeraHash again, using Doge as our example. If you purchased your contract using Doge and you purchased this amount, then you can expect this amount here as your monthly payout and this would indicate how many months it would take for you to break even. Anything above this we can assume will be profit. All right?

Now, let me scroll back up the page, and let’s talk a little bit about purchasing a contract using a credit card. Let’s click on that. All right. Now, one of the things that I do not like with cloud mining services is that you know when you’re purchasing using a bank or credit card, they ask you all of this information, all your personal information and I am not a fan of that.

It means that you cannot be anonymous. No, anonymity for you and the reason is because they have to follow AML and KYC compliance laws. AML simply stands for Anti-Money Laundering and KYC is Know Your Customer. Again, if you’re purchasing using a credit card, they’re going to ask you all of your personal information. I am not a big fan of that.

Let’s go back to Products tab. Ok, so, now let’s visit the Faucet link. And this is the page that will allow you to receive free Bitcoin. I know a lot of people like that. Let’s just go ahead and wait for this page to load. It should’ve been showing me some time of advertisement, but it did not. Hey, it is what it is. Ok, so, the Faucet is really simple.

All you’re going to do is it will pop-up and show you some information here and you will type in right here so, Taco Tuesday, that is what I need to type in. So, let’s go ahead and put that in, Taco Tuesday. And now let’s click on Get Faucet Reward and there you have it.

So, I was able– oh, Dash, they gave me Dash. So, oh that’s right because I selected Dash as my– as what I’m mining for. So, that is the faucet. It gave me the faucet in Dash. So, that was a surprise I didn’t realize it did that. And so, here that is it for faucet.

Eobot Mining

Let’s go ahead and take a look at another link. All right, so, now let’s take a look at My Pool and see what this is all about. All right so, Eobot offers you the opportunity to rent a cloud miner to join a mining pool.

Now, you can either utilize, you can mine a mining pool that Eobot runs or you can join another mining pool that’s independent of Eobot. Here are the respected contracts that you can purchase to do that.

And let’s just say you wanted to join a mining pool that was run by Eobot, you’d just go back to Products tab, go down to Pool Information and this is where you will find information that will tell you the different pools that are run by Eobot and they also provide you information on where you need to– what’s the servers that you need to point to in order to start mining with their mining pools.

So, again, you can utilize their mining pool or go independent and use your own. So, that is another option for you right there.

Let’s go back up to the Products tab, all right so, let’s take a look at the Redeem page and this should wrap it up for mining. We’ll talk about some other things. Now, the Redeem page, Eobot interestingly enough actually, it seems like they allow you to purchase mining rigs.

So, you can purchase a mining rig, it gives you the specs here what that rig is and they will go ahead and ship it to you, shipping and handling is free and yeah, once you get it, you can mine it in your own homes.

So, I guess there are people out there who are still doing that. Maybe they are mining old coins and not necessarily Bitcoin but I thought that was interesting that they offer you that option.

Ok, the only two that we haven’t talked about was Cloud SETI and Cloud Folding. Cloud SETI is where you’re able to install a particular software on your laptop and by running that software, you will be helping the SETI team or the Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence Team.

You’ll be having them for aliens. I don’t believe in aliens; I think that’s all a sham. But if you do that you will earn great coins for doing this. Let’s see, Cloud Folding is where you’re able to let’s say mine for Curecoin utilizing your computer as a tool to help Stanford University help find cures for Alzheimer’s, Huntington’s, Parkinson’s and different types of cancers.

Again, you would be installing a particular type of software on your computer and they will send your computer equations to solve and these particular equations help them do research when it comes to fighting these particular cures.

Eobot Public Audit Page

So, let’s go now over to the Resources tab. All right, so, under the Resources tab, the only two links that we’re going to check out is Social and Audit. If we click out on Audit you will see here that they have a public audit page where they show you their account holdings of the cryptocurrencies that they have.

So, if you look up top here, they will show you the total number of Bitcoin they have in their holdings. This is how much they have in their hot wallet and this is how much they have in their cold wallet known as cold storage.

So, you scroll down, you see here they have 614 Dash total. Thirty-three (33) of those Dash sit in a hot wallet, 592 are in cold storage. So, that’s pretty good right there. You can click on this link here and it even takes you to the blockchain.info where you will see the total number of coins they have. Let’s see if we can– all right, so, they have 116 Bitcoins in cold storage. So, let’s go back here, all right so, that’s that page.

Let’s go back to the Resources tab and click on Social. Now this page is interesting. You are able to look at other people who use Eobot cloud mining services. So, if I was to click on let’s see, I want to pick somebody here, who should I click on? Let’s say I click on this let’s pick on the first person here.

We are able to see what this person is mining. mining Bitcoin, we’re able to see the total amount they have made so, far, 133 USD. If we scroll down, we can see that this person has 99% of their portfolio in Bitcoin, it says here they have 132 Bitcoin. That’s interesting, very interesting.

Let me go back to the social page. Let’s see I just want to click one more person to see if it shows anything different. Let’s click this person right here. So, we see this person is mining for Monero, same thing we look up here. Looks like- what is this? What currency is that? Is that Japanese, it must be Japanese.

So, yeah, and it shows here that they’re mining Zcash and Monero and Ether so, their wallets, I’m sorry, their portfolio is broken up into different cryptocurrencies and I think I don’t know what the term is for the Japanese currency but I think that is, Japan.

So, I think it’s a bit interesting that they would do that. I don’t know I don’t know if I mean again, no privacy, why would you want to show that? But hey, that’s what they’re doing with that Social link there.

Frequently Asked page is pretty explanatory, straight forward, they cover general questions for you. They also cover questions on cloud mining as well as software and miner questions, probably looking to do pool mining with them. So, that is that when it comes to Eobot.

Genesis Mining – Dashboard

So, let’s go ahead and hop into the next cloud mining services and this service I’ve actually used. So, let’s hop into that cloud mining service and take a look at that right now. Ok? So, we’re going to take a look at Genesis Mining.

This is the actual cloud mining service that I used. I’m going to go ahead and log in to my account. We’ll take a look around inside. I’ll share with you some of the features of Genesis and then talk a little bit about my experience with using Genesis Cloud Mining service. Let me go ahead and log in so, that we can get started.

Ok, so, we are not inside my dashboard page here at Genesis. The first thing you will notice is that the user interface is clean and easy to understand with your main tabs being here in the left column and everything else to the right. What you’re looking at here where you see it says Bitcoin, Litecoin, Zcash, et cetera, et cetera.

This is just showing you what contracts you have purchased with Genesis. If you notice here, you will see that everything is zeroed out so, zero (0) TeraHash for Bitcoin, same for Litecoin, Dash. Monero and all the other coins.

That is simply because I am not mining with Genesis at this moment so, everything is zeroed out. But if you had purchased a contract with Genesis, you will see numbers here that indicate the hashing power of your contract. Let me scroll on down the page.

Here are links for your Mining Allocation tab and if you want to upgrade your hash power, we are going to get into that in a little bit but I want to scroll on down here, and let’s take a look at the earnings chart here for Bitcoin.

Your dashboard page will also show you what your earning payouts are, and they are denoted– denoted here in US dollars, I don’t know if that changes depending on your country. But for me here I’m seeing a USD.

If you look at this line here, we move across, you will see that it is pretty flat. No movement up and down whatsoever, and again, that is because I am not mining anything at this moment with Genesis.

But if I was, you would see some upward movement in that line indicating your daily payout. If you scroll down the page, we will see that you have earnings chart or charts for the other coins as well. So, Litecoin, you will see Dash, you will see if you scroll on down earnings chart for Ether which is Ethereum, Zcash, and Monero, Monero as well.

So, your dashboard page will provide you, again, your earnings chart for your different currencies that you are mining as well they show you the contracts that you have purchased.

Genesis Mining Page

All right, let’s go ahead and take a look at the Mining Allocation tab. Ok, so, here we are at the Mining Allocation page. First thing I will do is close this as we don’t need that. So, on this page you will be able to choose your mining algorithm.

So, you see here you can choose Bitcoin, Zcash, Litecoin, and the like. We have Bitcoin selected so, if you are mining with the Bitcoin algorithm, you can scroll down the page and also take a look at other coins that you can mine using the same Bitcoin algorithm.

So, you see here we have Litecoin, Doge, Zcash, Dash. Now let’s just say you want to allocate your hashing power to a multitude of coins. You can do that with Genesis Mining.

So, what would you do is, let’s just say I want to also mine for Dash while mining for Bitcoin at the same time. I would take my cursor, put it over the zero there and hover it there and scroll the wheel on my mouse and change the allocation there.

So, 25% now is mining, being mined for Dash, 75% for Bitcoin unless you say I wanted to add Zcash into the mix so, I’ll do the same thing, hover over that zero, scroll the wheel on my mouse. So, now, I’m mining 25% Zcash, 25% Dash, and 50% for Bitcoin. So, that is an option with Genesis that you can do that and you can do that with other coins as well.

So, one thing you should know though is when you choose a mining algorithm, let’s choose Ether. Let’s choose Ether and let’s scroll down the page. You notice that when you choose an algorithm, it will then tell you what coins you can mine with that algorithm.

With Ether, you can only mine these three. It should be Ether, Bitcoin, and Zcash, So, if I was to click on Monero, same thing, it will tell me what other coins I can mine using Monero, and there you have it right in front of you.

Let’s take a look at Dash which uses the X11 mining algorithm, you’ll see here that you can mine a whole number of cryptocurrencies. So, Curecoin, Monero, Zcash, so, many coins, Litecoin, Bitcoin and of course Dash itself and obviously you can always as before change the algorithm amount, I’m sorry, the allocation amount of what you would like to mine.

So, there you have it, so, Genesis does allow you to pick a particular mining algorithm and then choose, as we show down here, the allocation amount that you would like to mine for the different coins of your choice.

Genesis Hash Power and Price

So, with that being said, let’s go ahead and move on over to Upgrade Hash Power. Ok, so, here we are at the Upgrade Hash Power page and this is where you are able to upgrade your hash power after you have purchased a cloud mining package with Genesis.

But I think I’m getting a little bit ahead of myself. So, let’s go back over to the Pricing page at Genesis to take a look at how much you would have to pay for a cloud mining package. Let me scroll down the page here by default, it seems like they have it as set, looking at Ethereum packages but we want Bitcoin.

Ok, so, here we go. Now, if you notice here, they have the Gold package, Platinum, Diamond, and a Custom plan. All prices you see here are in USD. Now, let’s start with the Gold plan. If you start with the Gold plan at $30 USD you will get 200 GigaHash power.

If you bump it up to the next level at Platinum for 350 USD you get 2,500 GigaHash of power which really translates to 2.5 TeraHash. Now, if you want to go up a notch further, you’re looking at 1,950 USD, that’s almost 2,000 USD for 15,000 GigaHash which is 15 TeraHash.

Now, one thing that you always want to pay attention to is the hashing power. Whenever you’re looking to purchase a cloud mining contract you are always looking at the hashing power. Why? Because you want to make sure that whatever you purchase your hashing power would be enough to tackle the difficulty rate on the Bitcoin network.

So, let’s go over to Blockchain info. We’re going to look at the hash rate. Let’s see what is the current hash rate of Bitcoin network right now? Today is– what is today? Today is the 20… it’s showing that– I guess it’s the 23rd of March is the last update here.

So, on the 23rd of March, the hash rate on t the Bitcoin network was 4.1 TeraHash, 4.1. So, let’s go back here and look at this again. So, that means if you want to make, if you want to have any chance of earning a profit when it comes to mining, you need to make sure that your mining power, your hashing rate would be higher than 4.1. That is the only way that I see you’ll be able to make a profit.

Downside of Genesis Mining

So, obviously, keep paying $30 USD for 200 GigaHash or even $350 for 2.5 TeraHash. This is not going to cut it. This is not going to do it. And this is one of the downsides that I see with Genesis. I just think their packages are just too expensive.

Who here are the average person is really going to spend close to 2,000 USD for 15,000 TeraHash? I just don’t think the average person is dropping that much money or has that much money to spend in cloud mining.

Now, you might say, “Ok brother, but let’s go over to the Custom Plan.” All right, well let’s do that. So, let’s just say we slide this across and you know we can choose what we want to spend. I think I think most people will probably be able to afford 75 USD.

I think the average person maybe they will spend 90, Ok, maybe a little over 100, 105. As we can see here that still gives us 0.7 TeraHash. You still don’t even make 1 TeraHash.

Let’s just see how much you would need to spend to go beyond 4 TeraHash, come on, let’s keep– 5 TeraHash right there. Ok, 700 USD, 700 USD for 5 TeraHash power. I do not think the average person really has this much money to spend. So, therefore I do think it would be difficult to make a profit. I just think it would be difficult to make a profit with cloud mining with Genesis because of that.

But let’s go back and take a look at the page where we left off at the Upgrade Hash Power page. Now, let’s just say you purchased a contract. You’re good. You’re like, you know what? I spent my 700 USD and I’m mining a 5 TeraHash but let’s just see what happens, the difficulty rate increases and this is where you will, you come to this page and you will therefore select to upgrade your hashing power.

I will slide the bar across and we can see the number, the dollar amount changes above, Ok? So, right here, 300 USD, and I’m going to purchase an additional 2 TeraHashes of power.

And again, the reason why somebody would do this is because they realized that the package that they purchased, the hashing power is not enough for them to make a profit with mining. So, therefore that person would then upgrade and pay more money for more hashing power.

I think this is a very dangerous position to be in because it could end up being that you put yourself into like a vicious cycle of putting in money to continuously upgrade your hash power and in the meanwhile, the Bitcoin network, the hashing rate, the difficulty changes every 2,016 blocks.

I didn’t mention that.  So, roughly every two weeks, every 2,016 blocks, this hash rate will change, the difficulty rate will change. Maybe it will go up, maybe it will go down.

But regardless it seems that, by and large, it continues to go up. So, you would therefore end up purchasing more hash power if indeed you realize that your current package is not making you a profit and like I said, I think you get into this dangerous circle of continuously putting money into purchasing more hashing power and you’re not able to make a profit. This is what I see is a downside to Genesis Mining.

But you know, let’s just say you’re fine with it and, who knows, maybe you might be that maybe you’re that person making profits. So, hey, good for you. You can do the same thing here with Litecoin if you wanted to upgrade your hashing power, very self-explanatory like before.

You would pay this dollar amount here that we see and you would receive this amount of hashing power, you can look over to the right-hand column here. And once you move the bar over to your left, it will go ahead and indicate here your order summary of what you’re getting ready to purchase.

So, let’s just say I decided to upgrade my hashing power for Bitcoin and Litecoin over here it’s telling me that I’m spending 300 from Bitcoin, 780 USD to upgrade from Litecoin. I simply scroll down the page. I am able to purchase using a credit card, Bitcoin, Dash, Litecoin, and Doge.

So, I can purchase using a credit card or with cryptocurrency. And yeah, like down the page as well you can upgrade your hashing power for Ether, you can do the same thing for Dash and Monero. So, there you have it when it comes to upgrading your hash power and also taking a look at the– the packages, the pricing packages when it comes to Bitcoin.

Payouts and Earnings

Now, let’s take a look at the Payouts. So, we can see what I earned when I was cloud mining with Genesis. Ok, so, here we are at my Payout page and this is where you will see the daily payouts that you will earn if you do have a cloud mining package with Genesis.

As we can see here, the last date that I receive the payout was on September 17th, 2015 in BTC, Bitcoin, and this was the payout amount right here. Now, if we look at this column, we notice here September 17th, if we move down the column, we see the 16th, the 15th, the 14th, 13th, 12th, 11th, going all the way moving backwards.

We see that each day I was receiving a payout in BTC and here in this column would be the payout amount. Again, going backwards, we can see each day my payout amount, generally speaking, was larger than the previous day. Some days were different. If you look at this day here my payout amount was larger than the day before. It was larger.

Now that’s– it doesn’t always happen that way. Normally, as we see the days move ahead, we move from the 9th, I’m sorry, September 9th to September 10th going the 11th. We notice that every single day, the payout begins to decrease, and why?

Because this means that the difficulty rate on the Bitcoin network increased and my cloud mining package, the hash power that I purchased was not able to keep up with the changing difficulty rate on the Bitcoin network, so my payouts were getting less.

Now, let’s take a look to see when I started mining, I’m going to go back, let me click on page seven, seven pages back, let’s go 10 pages back, 10 pages of transaction or payouts. 13 let’s go back– just bear with me as I go all the way back here.

All right let’s go to 16, scroll down, 19 pages back- Ok, and 22 should be the end. Ok, let’s do this 22, all right there you go. Ok, so, if we see here, October 24th, 2014 that was the first day I started my cloud mining, and again payout was in BTC and this was the amount.

And if you go back and look at my last payout, we will definitely see that this amount is higher more than my last payout. I’m going to go up one page here just to show you something.

Now, remember we talked about with Genesis it provides you the option of allocating your hashing power so, you can mine other currencies. Well back in the day, if you notice here, you see where the address where it starts with L then the next, the next one starts with 1, L is Litecoin, 1 is Bitcoin so, I was mining both for Litecoin and Bitcoin back in the day.

So, yes, you can just see as you look on down it every single day, I was getting a payout in Litecoin and Bitcoin. Let me bounce back or jump back to the very last day of mining, my cloud mining. Again, being September 17^th, so this lets you know that I was cloud mining for almost one entire year.

Almost one entire year I was cloud mining for and as you can see, every day I received a payout, it diminished as time went on. And again, that happened because of the difficulty of the Bitcoin network.

Ok, so, that should do it for Genesis. So, that wraps everything up. I think we– I was able to show you all the key important things you need to look at and pay attention to when it comes to Genesis. Now, what I would like to do is sort of wrap everything up and just give you my overall take of cloud mining.

Pros and Cons with Eobot and Genesis

Ok, so, there you have it. We took the time to cover Eobot and Genesis Mining. Insha’Allah getting into the nitty-gritty of it all, hopefully, you found that beneficial. Now, let’s talk about the pros and the cons.

As for the pros, the positives of cloud mining is, number one, you don’t have to own the mining rig, someone else can own it for you. Number two, you don’t have to run up your electricity bill. Number three, your home won’t be blazing like a volcano with all the heat from all those mining rigs running in the background, in your house there.

The other thing is you get to mine for all these different altcoins and it even gets to mine for gold, Subhan Allah, gold. So, those are all the positives. Those are the pros when it comes to cloud mining.

So, now, if somebody comes to me and says, “All right, brother, well, with that being said, if you have to do it all over again, would you cloud mine? Would you do it?” I would say to that person, “No. I would not.”

And the reason being, and this is where we get into the negatives, the cons of cloud mining. The reason why I would not cloud mine again is because, number one, reason number one, is I think it’s too difficult to make a profit. I think it’s too difficult to make a profit.

My experience with Genesis Cloud Mining was that I wasn’t able to make a profit. Never mind make a profit, I wasn’t even able to break even. I didn’t even break even. And I think, I just think I just don’t think you’re going to make a profit with cloud money.

If you have that much money to put into cloud mining, just go ahead and buy the Bitcoin outright. I have had more success in purchasing Bitcoin outright than cloud mining.

So, number one, I think it’s too difficult to make a profit in cloud mining so, that’s why I wouldn’t do it. Reason number two, the second negative or the second con, the second reason why I wouldn’t cloud mine again is because there’s no such thing as profit-loss sharing.

And what do I mean by that? I mean let’s just say you are to purchase 700 USD contract for 5 TeraHash. So, you purchased your contract and you’re mining, and let’s just say, the difficulty of the Bitcoin network jumps up to 7, 8 TeraHash meaning that your 5 TeraHash mining contract, your cloud mining contract is obsolete, it’s not doing you any good.

It’s not like the company turns to you and says, “You know what? We know that you purchased a 700 USD cloud mining package, about $500 worth of your package you’re really made some profit. You made profit, we made profit.” Because keep in mind, these companies are also making– they’re making money off of you when you purchase their services.

So, it’s not like the company says, “Ok, at the $500 mark you made money, we made money and you know what, we’re going to give you $200 back because your cloud mining package now is obsolete. It’s not doing you any good.” They don’t do that. What do they do? They keep all the money.

If the difficulty rate goes so, high that your cloud mining package becomes obsolete, they keep all the money so, you lost, you lost. So, this is the second reason why I wouldn’t cloud mine because there’s no such thing as profit-loss sharing. It would much better if you did that. We both make money and we’re happy. But that’s not the case.

Third reason why I wouldn’t– I would not cloud mine is because at the end of the day, at the end of the day it could all be a Ponzi scheme, really. It could all be a Ponzi scheme. At the end of the day, you and I don’t know if these companies really exist and they’re doing what they say that they are doing.

Unless you and I are there to like you know go to that company, open up that door and take a look around and see if they got cloud mining rigs in there, oh, I see one there or one there as well. Unless you and I can do that, we are none the wiser, we’re going on trust. It is all trust.

And for all we know, some of these companies maybe many of these companies can simply be collecting money from a multitude of people and when they said that they’re giving you your daily payout, they’re just giving you a little bit of money back from somebody else and keeping the rest as a profit.

Heck, it could be that they’ve given you your own money back. They might be giving you your own money back, little by little, drop by drop and then at a certain point say, “Oh, I’m sorry your cloud mining services is obsolete, we’re keeping the rest of your money.” It could be a Ponzi scheme.

But don’t take my word for it, I want you to check out these video clip from a– I call this person a Bitcoin guru. His name is Andreas Antonopoulos. Andreas Antonopoulos. So, I want you to check out this video clip and see what he has to say about cloud mining services.

I just don’t want you to take it from me. I want you to hear from someone else who is a professional in the Bitcoin arena. So, let’s check out this clip real quick.

Female Speaker: If the invasive mines and actually making money from the mining, then it’s from the laity because people can either buy their own hardware and do mining or they join up with larger organizations, we’ve got fastest machines in gray houses prices saying and type of share in a month. And the…

Andreas Antonopoulos: Yeah, 95% of cloud mining schemes are scams. They are straight-up Ponzi schemes. And the reason is there is no effective way to prove whether the money you’re making comes from the mining share that you’ve invested in or simply from the money that the people after you are investing into the same scheme, which is what a Ponzi is.

Cloud mining in itself is almost always a Ponzi. I have not seen a single one that I will trust yet and I’ve seen hundreds of examples of them collapse. So, if they’re making money from mining, but they’re not actually running any hardware, they just put some money in and money keeps pouring out every month, I would take a 95 to 5% bet on that myself that it’s a Ponzi scheme.

Female Speaker: Yeah.

Male Speaker1: Because they just keep on selling mines, off the good of- you’re mine, you’re saying you’re making money, you’re putting out the good word that you’re making money and it’s probably got a value of two mines to one. So, every two people that did buy a new mine, the payout is like a premium.

Andreas Antonopoulos: Right. It’s the greater fool. It’s the basis of all Ponzi schemes as long as you can find greater fools to join on the backend to promise the same returns that the previous people made. So, yeah, if it was very easy to do this and you put money in and risk free, you’re making money every month that should raise a gigantic red flag in your mind.

Male Speaker1: A word to the wise might be, not, GET OUT RIGHT NOW! But, you know, like, be aware of what’s likely down the road. Make money…

Andreas Antonopoulos: They run out of greater fools…

Male Speaker1: Well, make money while you can.

Male Speaker 2: But you’re making money at the expense of a greater fool. I wouldn’t engage in that at all. You know it doesn’t matter that you’re making money at the expensive of…

Male Speaker1: Yeah.

Male Speaker 2: Yeah.

Male Speaker1: Yeah.

Female Speaker: Yes.

Male Speaker2: All right, good question and I think that applies to…

Andreas Antonopoulos: Yeah, and that’s one of the things that I’ve realized through my visits here in Southeast Asia has been that Ponzi schemes, pyramid schemes, multilevel marketing schemes are much, much more prevalent here than there are in the West.

And part of the reason for that is because investors with experience of sniffing those things out in the West have 50 years of experience.

In the East, investments by the middle-class and consumers is relatively new and so, that experience doesn’t exist. Unfortunately, the only way to learn that lesson is by being burned yourself through investing in one of these schemes. And people are gradually learning that. That makes them very profitable, these scams.

Male Speaker2: Yeah, I can back up anecdotally, we have our Bitcoin 101 class in English and then we also have it in Indonesian. And when we had the class in Indonesian, lots and lots of people show up with these questions about this mining pool or this coin or this you know we have that MMM thing going on for a while and now OneCoin, and it seems to be much more per capita prevalent in the Indonesian-speaking population so…

Well, there you have it from the Bitcoin guru himself and that is going to conclude our video for today. Insha’Allah you found the video of benefit. Any good whatsoever that you have found in this video all that is from Allah Subhanu Wa Ta’ala. Any mistakes or errors in this video is all on me, astaghfurlah, I ask that you make du’a for me and forgive me.

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Video Transcript

Assalaamu Aleikum! My name is Andre Rishi and thank you for joining me for this Q and A session on the Islam and Bitcoin website. Check out the shirt, I got the whole Islam and Bitcoin shirt. You gotta like that, right?

Alright, so let’s just get right into it today. I’ve been getting questions from many of you out there hitting me up asking me certain questions and I thought to myself, instead of writing everyone back individually, I’ll go ahead and create a video and answer the questions here so, sometimes we find that one person, if one person has a question, there are many others out there who have the same questions. So, let see if we can get in and then tackle those questions.

3 Questions We Will Discuss

So, three questions that we are going to tackle today. Question number one, is Bitcoin halal? That’s got to be the most popular question like, “Come on brother, I just want to know is it halal or is it not halal? Is it halal or haram? What is it?” That’s question number one.

Question number two, where can I buy bitcoin in KSA or the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia? That is a question that came up.

And the third question is, is mining bitcoin halal? Making income from mining bitcoin, would this be considered halal?

So let’s go ahead and jump right into it. In case some of you don’t know, I had a wonderful interview with a young lady Suraya Zainudin, Suraya Zainudin (Bitcoin in Malaysia with Suraya Zainudin). If you go to the Islam and Bitcoin website and check out podcast number three, I had a wonderful conversation with our sister over there in Malaysia and we talked a lot about the… if we can say, legality of Bitcoin when it comes to Islam. She wrote like a really great article. She writes wonderful articles where she covers this as well, again, whether Bitcoin is halal or not.

If you go to the website there where I had the podcast with her and check out the show notes, you will see links that lead to some of the articles that she has written. Inshallah you find that to be very helpful.

Is Bitcoin Halal and Haram?

But you know, for purposes of this Q and A video, let me go ahead and just say I am not a scholar. I am a student of knowledge. But I’m going to go ahead and share with you what I have found so far in regards to whether Bitcoin is halal or haram.

Alright, know this, know this, from everything I’ve seen so far, everything I’ve see so far, no one has said that it’s haram, no one.

I haven’t found anyone that says it’s haram. I have run across an article from a brother, I believe is a scholar and you please – you’re going to have to forgive me I do not remember this brother’s name.

But he did mention that he considers Bitcoin makrooh. He considers Bitcoin makrooh. And for those of you who do not know what makrooh means, it simply means, disliked. And the reason he said that it’s disliked is because of the volatile price, the volatile nature of the price when it comes to bitcoin.

It goes up and down and such– it can do so in such, such dramatic sweeps that he felt that the risk, the risk is very high. And I would agree. The risk is high and this is not something to just sort of jump into without doing your homework.

I do suggest, I’m not a financial adviser. I’m not trying to pretend to even be one. But I do suggest that you do your homework if you’re looking to step into the Bitcoin arena and you’re thinking of purchasing some bitcoin.

I would suggest that, you know, if you’re going to go out there and buy some bitcoin, start very, very small, maybe $3, $5, $10, $20 the most. I’m here in the United States so I’m going buy US currency. But just really, really buy in small portions.

Play around with it and see how it feels to you. There is a learning curve to Bitcoin. This is not something that’s very easy for the everyday person to step into. It’s just not. It’s not there right now. But that’s my suggestions.

So, in regards to, is Bitcoin halal? As I’ve said, I haven’t found anyone that says it’s haram and I found one scholar who says it’s makrooh. I’m still doing some research. I’m still putting some feelers out there to see if I can interview people who are in the world of Islamic finance who can, give us some concrete answers.

If you know of anyone that I should take a look at, please do go ahead and you know leave that information in the comments down below. I’ll be more than happy to see if we can get them on the Islam and Bitcoin Podcast.

How to Buy Bitcoin in Saudi Arabia

Alright. So, let’s move right along to the next question. Question number two comes from a brother in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and wanted to know, where can I buy or where can I purchase bitcoin in Saudi Arabia?

Well, there’s a website called Local Bitcoins. And even before I get into that, let me just say, regardless of whether you are in Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bangladesh, Canada, wherever you may be, make sure that you really do check out what the local laws are in regards to Bitcoin and digital currency as a whole before you step into getting involved in this new technology.

You want to make sure that you cover your bases and that you don’t do anything that’s considered illegal by your country. So, I definitely suggest that again that you do your homework first before you, dip your feet into the water as we say here in the West when it comes to Bitcoin.

Now, there is a website– going back to the question. There is a website called Local Bitcoins, they’re at LocalBitcoins.com. And as you can see here, there is a website called Local Bitcoins and what it does is the website pairs you up or allows you to find people that are in the same, potentially the same city where you live, definitely within the same country, same city, maybe in the same town where you are that are willing to trade for you or are willing to sell you bitcoin.

And it just so happens that Saudi Arabia, they do have, they do have people there or you do have the means to purchase bitcoin through potentially meeting some people there who are willing to sell bitcoin to you.

So, there’s different ways to go about doing that. I recommend that you, visit the website and check it out. I’m looking at it right now- that you visit the website checking out, check it out, again, it’s LocalBitcoins.com, just put in Saudi Arabia and you’ll see that you do have the means to do that in KSA.

Another means that you have is that there’s a website called Coin ATM Radar. Again, it’s Coin ATM Radar. This is a really, really cool website that shows you different bitcoin ATM locations around the world.

So, you go to this website, punch in your location, it’ll tell you if there are bitcoin ATMs in your area that will sell you bitcoin. And it just so happens that there happens to be a bitcoin ATM in Saudi Arabia. And I was actually shocked when I saw this. It looks like it’s at a place called Jubail, I have no idea if this brother or the brother who asked is anywhere near this place. And forgive me from saying the name wrong, Jubail.

So, if you go ahead and as you can see here, I’m looking that the website here. It gives you information on who is the maker of the machine, Lamassu. It’s a Lamassu ATM. I think Lamassu and Genesis I think are two companies that manufacture bitcoin ATMs.

But the website would get into telling you what’s the location of the bitcoin ATM, what type of, what direction the ATM machine works, meaning can you just purchase bitcoin or can you sell your bitcoin and get cash. I mean it looks like this bitcoin machine is a one-way machine, meaning you put your money in and you get bitcoin in return. It also tells you the fees. It gives you the phone number… does it here? Actually, I don’t see the phone number of the location but I’m pretty sure you can find them and check it out. So, yes, so you can get bitcoin in Saudi Arabia. All right? So, that is super awesome.

Is Bitcoin Mining Halal in Islam?

All right. So, moving along to question number three, bitcoin mining. So, a brother reached out to me and asked, hey, is it halal to earn money off of mining? And he mentions something here. Let me see if I can go and read over my notes really quickly. He mentioned something along the lines of saying, hey, if I’m mining bitcoin is it like I’m just doing nothing and collecting money just by doing nothing?

As far as I know, again, I am a student of knowledge, I’m not a scholar. As far I know, in Islam, if you provide a service to someone so long as it’s a service that’s on the up and up. Now, we’re making the assumptions that everything is legal, everything is cool. But if you’re providing someone a service then you are allowed to charge for that service and then there’s nothing wrong with that, again, so long as what you’re doing is halal.

So, bitcoin mining, how that works is, you’re actually not doing– it’s not like you’re not doing nothing. You’re actually, there is work involved. So, in Bitcoin, you need a particular computer which uses a– you need a particular amount of hashing power.

Now you may have a mining rig setup at home which means you invested in purchasing the rig, setting it all up, you’re paying your electricity to keep the computer up and running. If you’re a miner, that means you’re most like to be leaving the computer on, your mining rig I should say, you’re leaving your mining rig on 24/7 so that way you can process information, verify information in the blockchain in return you are able to earn a reward for doing that.

So, you are providing a service if you are mining bitcoin and hence you get a portion of, or you can get a portion of bitcoin for your services. And also, when users of the network are using Bitcoin, you charge a fee for that service.

Again, you are allowing the network to function. And as– and since you’re doing such a great thing for the Bitcoin community, you get compensated for it. So in Islam, this is allowed. It’s allowed in Islam. This is not something where that involves usury or anything like that. You’re simply getting paid for providing a service. Again, your mining rig is up and running. And you are even providing the electricity.

Now, what if you say, well brother, I’m not– I don’t actually have a mining rig, I’m actually, I invested in a mining pool and I signed up to a cloud mining. So, I pooled in with everyone else and a company, it’s maintaining the mining rig for me. They are providing me electricity for the mining rig, I just put in some money to sort of help out with that.

Well, same thing, you are an investor in that and you’re helping out, you put in your share, whatever that share is again using US currency maybe you put in $100, maybe you put in $20, maybe you put in $1000. I don’t know. But whatever your share is, you get a certain percentage back.

And it’s the same thing because you are helping. You are also paying to maintain that mining rig. You are paying for the electricity. You are paying to maintain the network and you get compensated back in some way, shape or form in the form of bitcoin. So, this is something that to my knowledge is allowed in Islam because again, you’re providing a service.

Thank you for Reading, Please Share.

So, that’s the three questions that we have today. I’m hoping I was able to answer those questions thoroughly. I guess that I don’t want to keep this video too long. If you like this video, please like and share it. Leave a comment down below.

Also, please note that when it comes to me responding to comments, I normally respond to comments that are on the Islam and Bitcoin website, not so much on YouTube. Please check us out on my Facebook, share us on Facebook, Twitter or any website that you frequent. Always take a look at the Islam and Bitcoin page and if the mood hits you, I always say, hey, donate to the cause.

Alright, so that’s it for my three questions today. If you have any more questions, please go ahead and contact me on the Islam and Bitcoin website. We do have a page here, contact page, going ahead and bring that up right now and boom! There it is. So, you see it here is the contact page, go ahead and drop me a message.

I will do my best to include – when I make the next Q and A video. Insha Allah, your question will be one of the questions that I answer. So everybody take care and again, thank you.

Assalaamu Aleikum Warahmatullahi Wabaraktuh Ma’salama (May peace be upon you, good bye.)

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