Sort:  

I'm 99% sure of a scam. Withdrawals page was down then back up again now but can't withdraw....Can't believe I got stung on this, but lesson learned I guess...

Some key things I found after realising my error:

BTC address for the sierrahash - quickly dropped from 49BTC to around 8BTC. Got back up to 12, then 4x 1BTC withdrawals to CkCYmVScaJByuKPKr1w8HegyWdAtuV9x7 when no one else could withdraw

• Article claim it was a scam from December 5th (wish I saw this first!): https://www.scambitcoin.com/sierrahash/

• sierrahash registered details from Whois. I found a fuzzy matching search and found that there have been plenty of these before that were registered in Mayfair - London (must be a place for trading houses so good cover). Will be always using data and reputation checker site going forward!

• The Facebook page is closed down and some others are talking about it on Twitter.

• I've tagged the address for being linked to the scam here. Also worth bookmarking!

The lesson learned here is not to buy in to anything like this with your own cash.

Next one of these I see will be a highly promoted post from me with a full review of everything I've found out whilst realising my BTC is gone for good about how they work.

I hear ya! I've had a few contracts with mixed results myself. Had a really good one for Dash a while back, but the latest adjustment in Dash has rendered it useless. Been looking for a BTC contract, but been hesitating as the price and difficulty is likely to change dramatically over the next few months.

I like that this offer is completely free though. Worth collecting some BTC for free to decide if you want to cash out or reinvest in more mining. Personally, I'll see how the mining goes and make a call when I've enough to buy more hash power or take some free coin. Either way sounds like a winner though.

There is a disclaimer that user can not use the free mined bitcoin to buy more hash. But let me know what you get in a few weeks. Curious even though it feels like a scam.

I think your suspicion was correct! I just put some BTC into this and it's showing me 10% returns per day. Cannot be right or legitimate.

I've updated the post to warn others

Will do. I think I'm going to make the minimum deposit to be able to withdraw. I'm wondering how they are returning 10%-16% per day myself though....

Might require further investigation....

Thanks for pointing all these pitfalls out. This is the kind of post one needs rather than the promotional ones. It is very difficult to figure it out because there are some huge returns on some crypto coins. Just have to be careful where to invest.

No worries. The withdrawal page actually was down for a few hours this afternoon, so it looked like it had shut up shop already. Good thing with that was that it led me on to tons of links and discussions about how it is apparently a high-yield investment program (HYIP).

The withdrawals page is open again now so maybe not, but I'm already convinced this is a total scam and only a matter of time before someone ends up carrying the can.

On the bright side, they are paying me what they said they would so already cashed out some BTC and have built up more. It'll take me 10 days to get my money back, so I'm going to revisit this post to update where I get up to on it.

I'm also going to create an information post talking about these HYIP ponzis as I found tons of information that might not be widely known today and may help others avoid them.