HashOcean: Another Cloud Mining Scam?

In the world of cloud-based bitcoin mining, you never know what you are going to get. Most operators should be scrutinized and researched thoroughly before signing up as there are definitely some legitimate operations. However, there are quite a bit of shady practices as well in the cloud mining space. Recently, a lot of discussions have been aimed at the company HashOcean whose website has been down for a while now.

Also read: Blockchain Technology: Making Smart Guns Smarter

Is HashOcean Telling the Truth? 

HashOcean is a cloud mining firm that was created in 2014, and claims to have six mining farms located around the world.

The company has said throughout its time of operation that the business was very transparent and one of the largest cloud mining facilitators worldwide.

However, just recently, the site has been down, and many are claiming that HashOcean is a fraud or has performed an exit scam.

At present, according to Bitcoincloudmining.org, the company has a bad reputation for not paying. The San Francisco-based cloud mining business has supposedly been hacked according to many posts, believed to be written by the owners.

The response supposedly created by the HashOcean team states the “domain has been hacked and sold, this was beyond our control.”

Alongside this, the company claims the official HashOcean YouTube, Facebook and Twitter accounts have also been compromised.

Explaining the issue across several forms of social media the HashOcean team allegedly writes:

“We have had to take the unprecedented step now to admit defeat, the hackers have won, and Hashocean is no more. Our domain and our Data Centres were not directly linked but to be sure our members investments were protected we have been forced to cease all mining operations with immediate effect and transfer all remaining BTC (Approx $3,500,000) to a new secure wallet as we can’t be 100% sure the hackers won’t be able to get access to your investments eventually.”

According to the written statement that came from the so-called core HashOcean team, the company is supposedly processing withdrawal orders on a first-come first-served basis.

The firm states, however, when the “secured funds are gone, they are gone.” Which seems to establish there is only so much bitcoin to pay out to its customer base.

There are also large swaths of users say they are not getting paid, according to social media reports.

Despite this, there are some who say they are getting payments. One customer writes, “It looks like HashOcean is currently refunding members, I got refunded of my 591$”

Yet most reports look as though they have not been paying out, and users complaining can be found complaining of fraud by just googling the company’s name.

Throughout this mess, it seems many phishing sites and replica HashOcean pages have been created. One website called “HashOceanS” has appeared, offering a similar cloud mining experience.

The so-called member of the original HashOcean team says they are not associated with any of these mock websites and tells customers to be careful.

The team member writes via Bitcointalk.org:

“The company didn’t have anything related to us. HashOceanS Be careful. We are trying to solve all the current issues. Many people started to claim that we were scammers/scammed 700,000 users! We would like to let you know that the domain is the only case, because the domain was transferred to another account, in case we changed the domain,we will transfer all the users/powers, We are Working Hard to get everything Back Normal in the next 48Hours, Keep Calm & Daily payout will be executed as usual.”

Unfortunately, in the cloud mining space, these types of occurrences are all too common. It’s very hard to say what is legitimate and what is not, even when a company operates without issues for years. Some of these operations claim to have very large data centers as well, but some of these claims have been proven to be false.

Business Insider got an inside look at a trusted and reputable cloud mining operation — Genesis Mining. According to Genesis co-founder Marco Streng, cloud mining operations have a “major trust issue.”

Streng tells Business Insider:  

“They don’t ever even own their own mining facilities. They just take pictures from other companies, Photoshop them, then pretend they are theirs.”  

It’s not officially confirmed whether or not HashOcean is a scam, or if it is a legitimate operation that was hacked. Yet many customers seem to be very unhappy, and the topic of the hack has got a lot of users worried.

Bitcoin.com will keep our eyes peeled as more of this story unravels. We recommend using due diligence when researching a cloud mining operation and to be careful of phishing sites and operations that seem too good to be true.

What do you think about HashOcean? Do you feel it is a scam, or a legitimate operation that has issues with hackers? Let us know in the comments below.

Images via HashOcean’s archived media, and Pixabay.

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