 Welcome to the Daily Decrypt! The currency competition is on! I'm your host, Amanda, and today's episode is brought to you by EvergreenCoin. Pool mining, or contract mining, is when you pay somebody else to run and maintain cryptocurrency mining hardware on your behalf. You and the service provider then share in the profits earned by the hardware. Contract mining is popular, and as all popular things, it has attracted its own share of scammers. To tell us more about how to navigate the exciting seas of contract mining, and avoid the scams at the same time, I've reached out to Charlie, who is a researcher and writer at Crypto Compare. First, Charlie tells us why mining contracts are popular, and why he himself owns some. Mining isn't for faint-hearted. It's not easy to do to get up and running. You're not technically savvy. It's not something that you should be doing. That's why mining contracts are a good idea. It allows people who don't have the ability to set up their own miner, to get involved, to go out and get the experts to do it for them. The only way to get into the mining game is to go to somebody who's got access to cheap electricity prices, access to huge economies of scale, and buying power when they buy the equipment. Then you can go and buy a share in there. Mining operations, and hopefully earn a little bit of a profit. Charlie told us that in his search for the best mining contracts, he encountered some unsavory actors. Basically, there's quite a bit of skull-duggery going on in the industry at the moment, where people knock up fake companies and pretend that they're going to mine Bitcoin or cryptocurrency on your behalf. And then run off with your money. The problem is as well that quite a few affiliate sites are promoting these companies, which means that they gain momentum, they gain more users. And it's essentially a Ponzi scheme that is bound to crash and bounds to lose people money. So with a number of affiliate sites promoting scammy mining contracts, how can you spot the scams? Charlie reported that there are a couple telltale signs in particular. They do fake videos with some dodgy guys dressed in suits trying to look very professional. And it's a little PR, and trying to pull the wool over people's eyes. Charlie says that the more a contract provider will show you about their operations, like with videos, pictures, even agreeing to have a real video conference call with you, the more likely it is that they are legitimate. He reported having good experiences with the mining provider's hash flare and hash coins, and an especially good experience with Genesis mining. So once you've found a good one, what should you expect when buying a mining contract? You get a couple of clauses in contracts. So what it says, you pay an upfront fee for a contract, and that's the cost that you pay to buy the bigger hashes or mega hashes. And then there's a fee per day that's deducted. Charlie says to make sure that the length of your mining contract matches your profitability expectations. So for example, if your Dash or Litecoin contract will pay for itself in nine months, make sure you don't accidentally buy a cheaper contract that's only for three or six months. Furthermore, Charlie also encourages you to examine the fine print of your mining contract to see if, for example, it terminates should the per day fee ever exceed the profitability. It's a high-risk business to be in and so giving your money to a high-risk business means you could lose it all. Charlie says that even with a legitimate mining contract, profitability is ultimately determined by the value of the coin or coins that you choose to mine. In other words, you can mine a million shit coin, but if those coins are truly shitty, they may not hold their value. So with all of this due diligence and risk management, does miner Charlie still recommend pool mining to those who are interested in it? Mining is fun. It feels like you're doing something. It feels like you're at the forefront of sort of a conduit. You're out there digging in the dirt, earning some hard-earned cryptocurrency. That sounds like a yes. Today's episode is brought to you by Evergreencoin, a new cryptocurrency which utilizes both proof of work and proof of stake mining in an effort to cut down on the total energy cost of securing its network. Evergreencoin also sets aside 2% of every block reward for its foundation, which is currently working to develop a solar-powered proof of stake miner. You can learn more about the coin and its foundation's efforts in renewable energy at Evergreencoin.org or at the Bitcoin Talk Forum link in the description. You can find more crypto-compare guides about shopping for mining contracts in the description below. And please, if you yourself know of any good resources or reputable mining contract companies, do share freely of your knowledge in the comment section. Thank you. Have a good day. Thank you.