Cloud Mining: How Bitcoin Cloud Mining Contracts Work

Cloud mining, also called Bitcoin cloud mining, is an arrangement in which you rent Bitcoin mining hashrate from a provider for a set period. Hashrate is the number of hash attempts that Bitcoin mining machines make each second. The cloud mining provider runs the machines in data centers, and you receive the BTC your rented hashrate mines in return for fees that cover the hashrate and its electricity.

How Does a Cloud Mining Contract Work?

A cloud mining contract is a type of Bitcoin mining contract in which a provider sells you an amount of hashrate for a stated period. Hashrate is sold in terahashes per second (TH/s). One TH/s means a trillion hash attempts every second. Providers call the contract an order, a plan, or a subscription, but the parts are much the same.

A cloud mining provider handles everything physical. It runs Bitcoin mining machines built on ASICs (application-specific integrated circuits), keeps them in data centers, and sends their hashrate to a mining pool. The buyer never touches a machine.

An ASIC is a chip built for a single task. A Bitcoin ASIC computes the SHA-256 hashes that Bitcoin mining requires. A mining pool is a group of miners that combine their work and split each block reward in proportion to what each member contributed.

A cloud mining contract’s fees cover the hashrate itself and the electricity that runs it. Some providers quote both fees per TH/s per day. An order usually starts with an upfront payment priced in US dollar terms. How the ongoing costs are charged depends on the provider: some build electricity into the price paid upfront or into the hashrate price, some bill it by actual power use, and some charge further service fees at intervals during the term.

When a cloud mining contract’s term ends, the rented hashrate stops and nothing remains to hold or sell. The buyer paid for a time-limited share of a machine’s output, not for the machine. At least one provider also did not let buyers cancel an order once it was confirmed, and it did not refund fees after the contract expired.

Beyond the hashrate, the term, and the fees, a typical cloud mining contract also spells out three things:

• The payout schedule says how often the mined BTC is credited, for example once a day.
• The delivery commitment states how much of the promised hashrate the provider aims to keep online, for example at least 95%.
• The pause and termination conditions say when the contract stops running before its term ends.

How Hashrate Rental and Hosted Mining Differ

Hashrate rental is the core of cloud mining. Besides contracts sold for a fixed term, hashrate is also rented for shorter periods on hashrate marketplaces. On one hashrate marketplace, the buyer names the mining pool that will receive the hashrate and funds the order in BTC or another supported currency. The buyer then sets a price per unit of hashrate, a total spending cap, and how long the order runs, in hours or days.

Hosted mining is related to cloud mining but works differently. In hosted mining, a hosting company deploys miners for its customers in its own data centers and runs them for service fees that cover power, monitoring, and maintenance. The customers keep the right to use those miners.

Sources do not agree on whether hosted mining counts as cloud mining. One reference source lists hosted servers as a form of cloud mining. In that source, a hosted server is a dedicated physical or virtual mining server that a customer leases from a provider. At least one provider that sells both services reports cloud mining and miner hosting as separate service lines.

What Renting 100 TH/s of Hashrate Looks Like

Renting 100 TH/s in a cloud mining contract means renting part of a real machine. Bitmain’s specifications list its Antminer S21 XP, a Bitcoin mining machine built on ASICs, at 270 TH/s as of October 2026. At that rating, 100 TH/s is about 37% of one machine.

A 100 TH/s share of an Antminer S21 XP draws about 1,350 watts (W) of power. The S21 XP’s efficiency is about 13.5 watts for each TH/s of hashrate, written as 13.5 W/TH. A lower W/TH figure means a more efficient machine. Over 24 hours, 1,350 W adds up to about 32.4 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity.

On the Bitcoin network, 100 TH/s is a very small share. Blockchain.com estimated the network’s total hashrate at about 1,010 exahashes per second (EH/s) as a 7-day average in mid-October 2026. One EH/s equals 1 million TH/s, so 100 TH/s is about one ten-millionth of the network.

The share of the network that a rented 100 TH/s represents is not fixed. Network difficulty is the measure of how hard it is to find a valid block. Bitcoin resets it every 2,016 blocks so that blocks keep arriving about every 10 minutes. When network hashrate grows, difficulty rises, and the same 100 TH/s mines less BTC than it did before.

What Are the Risks of Cloud Mining?

Is Bitcoin cloud mining legit? Some providers run real machines and deliver the hashrate they sell. US regulators have also charged or warned about sellers of Bitcoin mining arrangements. The label “cloud mining” cannot tell one kind of seller from the other, and it says nothing about whether the BTC mined will cover the fees.

A cloud mining contract can pause or end when the BTC it mines no longer covers its electricity. In November 2022, after the BTC price fell, one provider suspended some of its cloud mining products because the BTC those products produced each day was worth less than their daily electricity fees. Those contracts paused and were extended by the days lost. Terms differ between providers on whether a contract pauses or ends at that point.

Some cloud mining agreements let the provider amend its terms by publishing the change. If a cloud mining provider shuts down, its contracts end with it.

The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced an enforcement action in Litigation Release No. 26448 on December 17, 2025, against the founder of a Bitcoin mining business. The SEC alleges that the founder committed fraud. The SEC further alleges that the business sold hosting agreements for far more mining rigs than it was actually operating. The SEC’s December 2025 release also alleges that the founder raised over $95.6 million from about 6,400 people.

The SEC calls the products in its December 2025 case hosting agreements, not cloud mining contracts. The SEC’s allegations in that case are not court findings.

The Texas State Securities Board’s page on crypto scams, as of October 2026, describes a mining case among its examples. According to the board’s page, a firm called Bitcoin Trading & Cloud Mining Ltd. promised large returns from what the page calls “mining” at three computing centers. The page says the videos of those centers on the firm’s website were edited stock footage. The same page describes these warning signs:

• A sales pitch promises large returns and presents them as certain.
• A scheme promises people a return plus commissions for recruiting others to sell the offer.
• A promoter gives no physical business address and no details on the firm’s finances or staff.

Cloud mining operators can be hard to check from the outside. The Texas State Securities Board warns that images or videos can make a firm look legitimate without proving anything about its operations, so photos or videos alone do not confirm that the machines exist or that the full hashrate is delivered.

How Cloud Mining Differs from Owning Hardware and from a Digital Bitcoin Miner

Owning a Bitcoin mining machine puts every decision in your hands. You buy the machine, pay for its electricity or for a host to run it, choose the mining pool, and deal with its noise and setup.

A digital bitcoin miner from GoMining is a miner issued on blockchain networks that carries its own mining power in TH and its own energy efficiency in W/TH. Its mining power in TH reflects the miner’s average hashrate. GoMining’s digital miners are backed by real mining power in physical data centers. A digital bitcoin miner can be sold on public NFT (non-fungible token) marketplaces, where a sale depends on finding a buyer.

A digital bitcoin miner’s rewards are paid daily in BTC, according to its TH, from a mining pool that GoMining presets and the holder can switch. A digital bitcoin miner also carries costs. Its holder pays a daily maintenance fee, covering electricity and equipment service, that is deducted from its BTC rewards.

A digital bitcoin miner’s rewards also vary, and the maintenance fee is deducted from whatever those rewards turn out to be. GoMining’s documentation names network difficulty as the main factor in their size and says the reward amount depends on the BTC price.