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What is Actually Behind Cloud Mining Services? Results of a little investigation Image from https://www.bitdegree.org/ Last two months were exceptionally bullish for BTC that recently 2019 high of $13k on Wednesday, 26 June. According to Google Trends data, bitcoin-related search queries since March and the number of daily active addresses hit , which is comparable with the end of 2017. hit tripled 1 million The majority of influencers and traders support the version that crypto-winter is over and the market finally entered a bullish phase, while in regulation provide optimism regarding maturing of relatively young digital assets market. steps Investment funds representatives an additional price growth opportunity in upcoming , that would significantly reduce the supply of coins to the market. see Bitcoin halving Newcomers to the cryptocurrency industry usually start to explore possibilities to mine Bitcoins and other digital currencies driven by various reasons, the major one is FOMO. Discovering that buying, launching, and support operation of mining hardware is a rather complex task, crypto-enthusiasts draw attention to cloud mining services that offer to buy hashing power remotely. Such an approach looks like an easy way to obtain Bitcoins as no other attempts from the end-user are required. However, people usually associate cloud mining services with SCAM since a lot of such services cheated their clients and stole money. Seems that this problem is really huge: even intervened one case and officially GAW Miners CEO for ‘Hashlet’ Ponzi Scheme. In this article, we investigated cloud mining services to answer the question: could a fair cloud mining service exist? SEC indicted For this purpose, we studied public information regarding seven cloud mining companies. The main points of research were business transparency (proof of hashing power, customer support) and trustworthy and reputation of a legal entity behind the service. The table from my original document Cryptouniverse Website of this service catches the attention of the potential customer by a professional-grade video with girls and champaign which doesn’t look like a business presentation but seems to be a report on a private party on a mining farm. The key moments regarding mining process, that are in focus of any mining engineer (observation of data center, equipment layout) almost missed. But, assuming that the main aim of this video is just to impress newcomers in crypto space, it all makes sense. The company made a statement that currently operates ~20 megawatts of mining hardware, but verify it (at least on a basis of information from this website) is impossible. However, it is possible to check the performance of a legal entity thanks to the of the UK companies. The legal entity of the Cryptouniverse, was created by two partners — Lajos Balog and Eva Bondar. How they are related to this cloud mining service? Further research has shown that they are just nominee persons in this company as well as in a lot of others. public registry MIOTECH IMPEX LP According to , Eva Bondar is involved in at least completely different companies, Balog acts as a partner. The registration address is used by . According to all facts, mentioned above MIOTECH IMPLEX LP is an ordinary . Probably, the balance of the company is zero (but these data wasn’t uploaded to the registry). Is Cryptouniverse a scam project? We don’t know exactly. However, all the mentioned facts possess a lot of questions to this company. For example, who will be responsible if Cryptouniverse one day stops to withdrawing money according to customers requests? Endole fifteen 1640 companies shell company Virtual Mining Farm Virtual Mining Farm offers unusual bitcoin mining approach to its customers: instead of selling the hashing power this service collects “bitcoin deposits”. This website claims that it is “Proof-of-Stake”-like mechanics where staked coins participate in consensus and mining new coins. Of course, the Bitcoin network has nothing to do with PoS consensus as it is running at Proof-of-work (PoW), so such “bitcoin staking” offer is an evident deception. The Virtual Mining Farm website does not contain any information about mining facilities or the company behind the project. Combining all facts, it looks like an ordinary . Evidently, the target audience of this project is newcomers into the cryptocurrency industry — easy to fool users. No doubts that the service itself is a scam. Ponzi scheme CCG Mining The CCG Mining website claims that the project has own mining facilities as well as offices in six counties and respectable behind. Moreover, there is a statement: choose a reliable partner. Of course, for an experienced customer, all this looks like an ordinary advertising trick. UK company We decided to verify company details and explore the history of its operation. The public registry of UK companies reveals that registered at 85 Great Portland Street W1W 7LT London United Kingdom is dissolved. The status “dissolved” means that the company no longer is active, and its operation is terminated. By the way, this address is used for another companies so evidently, no real office is there. Thus there is not even a shell company behind. Is this a scam? Let the reader answer this question himself. CCG Mining LTD 5698 Genesis Mining Genesis Mining seems to be one of the oldest cloud mining services. The company is registered in the offshore zone — British Virgin Islands (BVI), so in case of a problem, it will be not easy to solve it using a court or other legal mechanisms. A lot of can be found on the Internet, including one-sided contract termination, surprisingly high fees and many more. Of course, it is impossible to check out all these reviews, but information background around the company is definitely negative (in terms of independent opinions). negative reviews Hashflare First regarding the activity of this company in media come back to 2015. At 2018 company business activities (as well as withdrawal of funds), but the website still works and attracts new customers. However, a lot of and can be found on the Internet there mostly regarding the refusal of money withdrawal under different reasons. The Reddit users even going to the court to oblige the UK company behind the project to return the money. However, how much money you can get from the company with of authorized capital registered on the nominees from Dominicana, which are as directors of many similar shell-like companies? publications finished SCAM alerts negative reviews considered 2 GBP “working” ECOS The company is relatively new to the market and is registered in a rather exotic jurisdiction — Armenia. All appearances that it is connected with the fact that the Armenian government recently launched the special economic zone for the blockchain companies. We made a little research and found the and government-issued document, which appoints ECOS as of this zone. According to information found in media, this company performs a fully-compliant mining activity with (surprisingly!) zero taxation and decreased other costs. The shared by the project creators claims that the combination of several specific conditions allowed to built mining project that is profitable on this unstable market. Seems that it is the first mining project controlled by the government operating in the especially created economic zone. Looks like a smart plan — when others are hiding their identity and taxes in shell companies, these guys went all-in in transparency and optimized conditions for the comfortable operation. ECOS publication an official company-operator public statement MyCoinCloud MyCoinCloud does not publish any information regarding the legal entity behind the project. Bulgaria is mentioned as a country where the project was launched. The proof of mining equipment comes down to several mediocre photos. The reviews on the Internet are completely different and are both positive and negative. The complete absence of any information causes bewilderment — will a serious and reliable business project hide from its clients like that? Of course not. We found out that the majority of cloud mining companies are represented by shell companies in the UK or offshore jurisdictions registered on nominee directors. So, where is the truth? It means that nobody is responsible for any fraud caused by such projects. A good example of such a problem was a termination of operation of the Hashflare company followed by unsuccessful to return money to customers. It is surprising, but no service could provide real proof of ownership of mining equipment. attempts I found a free economic zone in Armenia is a really curious object for further investigation. However, it looks better than shell UK company with 2 GBP of capital registered on Dominican nominee directors. The mining industry now is like an ordinary business so any approaches to cut the costs without exposing core processes to legal or safety risks look great. Probably, profitable mining business can exist in the form of public-private partnership as it allows to decrease taxes, provide legal and other kinds of support and make such project more trusted in the community. It is truly important since cloud mining is mainly considered as a fraud than as serious activity.

What is actually behind Cloud Mining services?

Today I would like to take you on a journey through software outsourcing in Ukraine. We’ll cover the large and small IT outsourcing companies in Ukraine, their services, primary industries they cater to, and their preferred marketing strategies. Top IT Companies. Ukraine Market Overview Let’s research the software development in Ukraine and the industry’s most prominent representatives. Every outsourcing development company falls under one of the categories: Ukrainian companies; International outsourcing establishments in Ukraine. Top Of The Large Ukrainian Outsourcing Companies Among the leaders of IT software outsourcing in Ukraine in 2018 that are renowned on the international arena are: SoftServe (Lviv-based, 4500+ employees); Ciklum (Kyiv-based, 2000+ employees); Infopulse (Kyiv-based, 1500+ employees); ELEKS (Lviv-based, 1000+ employees); Sigma Software (Kharkiv-based, 800+ employees); Intellias (Lviv-based, 800+ employees); Miratech (Kyiv-based, 700+ employees); N-iX (Lviv-based, 700+ employees). These top IT outsourcing companies have establishments for outsourcing in Ukraine: EPAM (USA-based, 5500+ Ukrainian employees); Luxoft (Switzerland-based, 3500+ Ukrainian employees); TEAM International Services (USA-based, 300+ Ukrainian employees). They concentrate the outsourcing software development in Ukraine in: Kyiv, Lviv, Kharkiv, Dnipro, and Zaporizhzhya. Most of these companies employ hundreds of specialists and work on six-figure projects for international corporations. Few of them would be interested in a small-time startup contract. If your budget is only 10,000 to 15,000 USD, and you have 2 to 3 months to get your idea off the ground, I suggest you steer clear of large providers and hire an outsourcing team of a smaller scale. IT Outsourcing In Ukraine. Small to Medium-Size Companies Let’s discuss the prospective nearshore software development partners for startups, their services, and the best ways to learn more about them before signing the contract. Small outsourcing companies are harder to find, as the media rarely mention their names. Clutch.co, GoodFirms.co, and UpWork.com are the best websites for selecting a Ukrainian web application development company with 250 employees or less. To develop a list of 100 top outsourcing companies in Ukraine, I used these criteria: Ukraine-based headquarters Up to 250 employees The development services range including: Web development; Mobile development for iOS and Android; UI/UX Design; Quality Assurance. The corporate website traffic analysis for the hundred companies using SimilarWeb and SEMrush indicated that less than 25% of Ukrainian IT outsourcing vendors possess monthly traffic of 250+ unique users. The average traffic rate is 20 to 50 users per month, most of them come from direct jumps. These numbers prove that 75% of small Ukrainian IT companies do not use the corporate website to attract new clients. The in-depth traffic research of the remaining 25% of Ukrainian IT outsourcing vendors demonstrated common trends: Ukrainian IT vendors utilize two traffic generation strategies: Organic traffic generation through frequent content posting on multiple platforms; Offshore software development services advertising to attract clients seeking software outsourcing partners. January and February are the lowest traffic months, which means the low workload for IT vendors. As a result, this time of year is perfect for starting a new project at a low rate or getting discounts for the ongoing projects. Most companies are willing to negotiate a price when they have no other pressing tasks. 5% of the researched 100 companies spend over $1,000 on advertising per month. The cost per click (CPC) varies from $3.5 to $27.5. Only 10% of the chosen vendors get over 1,000 of organic users per month. Only 35% to 60% of organic leads belong to the target audience. Target regions include the USA, Canada, Australia, and Western European countries that make up the vast majority of Ukrainian outsourcing providers’ clients pool. For over 75% of small Ukrainian IT outsourcing vendors UpWork and personal connections are the only available customer acquisition channels. With these numbers in mind, let’s take a closer look at the companies from the top 25% of the list. For this analysis, I have chosen seven vendors: Yalantis (Kyiv and Dnipro-based, est. 2008, 150 employees); RubyGarage (Dnipro-based, est. 2013, 150 employees); Cleveroad (Kharkiv and Dnipro-based, est. 2011, 150 employees); SteelKiwi (Odessa and Vinnitsa-based, est. 2011, 100 employees); FreshCode (Zaporizhzhya-based, est. 2014, 110 employees); GBKSOFT (Kyiv and Zaporizhzhya-based, est. 2011, 100 employees); IT CRAFT (Kharkiv-based, est. 2001, 150 employees). I concentrated on the companies that are based outside Kyiv, as regional development agencies offer lower rates. They get fewer clients, though their quality is on par with the capital-based companies. Startups should look for partners with up to 150 employees offering a full range of web app development services. I have selected these outsourcing software development companies because they have significant experience and employ enough app developers in Ukraine to suit the startup’s needs. All seven of the providers outsource iOS development, produce turnkey Android and Web solutions, and offer ongoing support and maintenance after launch and deploy. Each of the seven companies has completed 100+ projects for clients from all around the world, including the USA, the UK, Canada, Australia, Germany, France, Switzerland, Belgium, Austria, Denmark, Israel, UAE, Sweden, and more. Over the last four years, UpWork competition has seen a dramatic increase along with the availability of vendors willing to offer low rates. As a result, Ukrainian companies looking for clients exclusively through UpWork waste an opportunity to get more orders. The web and mobile application development company shortlist I have chosen for the analysis concentrate their efforts on turning websites into customer acquisition tools. Yalantis, RubyGarage, SteelKiwi, And Cleveroad Overview To attract the target audience to their websites, these companies utilize blog articles and detailed case studies. Their blog posting plan includes 2 to 4 longreads per week. Articles are then posted via LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and independent platforms, like Medium. Posting frequency is 5–6 articles per week. The companies acquire backlinks to increase corporate websites’ domain authority. The backlink cost varies from $100 to $500, depending on the resource authority and the number of links acquired. The articles are aimed at industry representatives and offer business solutions. For instance, most of the Yalantis’ posts cover Mobile development for Logistics, Real Estate, Healthcare, and E-Commerce industries. FreshCode, GBKSOFT, And IT CRAFT Overview These companies’ customer acquisition strategy is two-fold and includes both organic traffic growth and advertising. Monthly advertising budgets exceed $2,000 and can vary depending on the need for new clients. Cost per click (CPC) is over $6. These IT vendors specialize in Web development. Most clients are startups in need of MVP development with an average budget of $7,000 to $15,000. At the same time, the companies’ portfolios include high-profile clients, like KPMG, Intel, and Pepsi. These companies on my software companies list possess experience in developing small to large-scale projects for: Real Estate; Education; Business Analytics; E-commerce. Advertising campaigns lead potential customers to: Website pages offering Application development outsourcing services (Web or Mobile); Programming languages expertise; Specific types of applications and products development. Landing pages offering niche services and unique projects development. Every two months on average, the vendors test marketing hypotheses and launch new landing pages for advertising and social media traffic. To attract organic search traffic, the FreshCode, GBKSOFT, and IT CRAFT update blogs and publish articles via social media and industry-specific platforms. Backlinks are bought to improve corporate websites’ domain authority. These vendors do not limit themselves to attracting organic traffic, compared to the previous four. They publish 3 to 6 longreads per month. Ukrainian IT Outsourcing Market In a Nutshell Ukraine is among the top IT outsourcing countries though the vast majority of the contracts are reserved for large companies. Only 25% of the small and medium-sized IT vendors actively seek to increase customer acquisition scope, while others settle for freelance marketplaces with low rates and cutthroat competition. Today we have identified several leading companies working on their online presence through corporate websites, SEO, and SMM. How To Find The Right IT Outsourcing Provider in Ukraine? There are many ways to reach the full stack development company you are interested in. You can use: Google search; Business platforms, like Clutch or GoodFirms; Social media outreach through professional profiles; Networking and personal recommendations. If you have no time to spare, there are two more efficient ways to outsource web application development. Reach out to the web development company’s CEO or CTO via LinkedIn or Facebook. This way you can talk directly to the top manager without going through the sales department first. Outline your project’s requirements, timeframe, and budget to quickly get an answer about whether the outsource web development company would be interested in developing your idea. Visit IT trade shows and conventions to network with local agents of outsourcing companies from all over the world. Face-to-face communication will allow you to explain the particular requirements of your project and exchange contact information with a promising offshore software development company or ten. I recommend you read our on choosing the perfect IT software outsourcing company to make an educated decision before you hire software developers. 6-step guide Ready To Try IT Outsourcing In Ukraine? Did you enjoy our quick foray into the outsourcing development market in Ukraine? If so, share the article on social media and subscribe for updates! While you wait for a fresh batch of IT insights, check out our previous posts, you might find them equally useful. FreshCode blog I am considering writing an article on online marketing free and premium tools, so let me know if that is something you would want to learn from FreshCode experts. Original article IT Outsourcing Companies Of Ukraine: Overview published at freshcodeit.com .

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