CEX.IO, one of the leading bitcoin exchanges and cloud mining service providers, has announced the temporary suspension of its cloud mining services. They can attribute this policy change to the sudden and drastic drop in bitcoin value in the past weeks. The suspension is set to begin at the next bitcoin mining difficulty increase and it is unclear how long the suspension will continue.
Jeffery Smilth, Chief Information Officer of CEX.IO, stated that this is a forced temporary measure, and
“…as soon as we get an opportunity to upgrade mining hardware, or come to more efficient terms with energy suppliers, cloud mining process will be automatically resumed.”
CEX.IO based their decision on falling bitcoin prices and increasing mining difficulty, making cloud mining less profitable. As stated in their Terms of Use, CEX.IO has the authority to suspend cloud mining in the event that maintenance costs exceed mining revenue:
“Mining with using User’s Gigahashes can be stopped by CEX.IO if the amount of the Maintenance Cost exceeds rewards for each mined block or if the mining is economically inexpedient.”
CEX.IO operates a large mining pool through Ghash.IO, once the most powerful in the network in therms of total hashrate. Currently, they opperate at 42 PH/s, or about 12% of the total network hashrate. Users who have purchased cloud based mining power will retain ownership during the suspension, and will automatically resume once the suspension has been lifted.
Although the cloud mining services will be suspended, CEX.IO will continue to operate as a bitcoin exchange platform, trading cryptocurrencies and fiat money.
Nick Lello 
ctrolner 
But *why* does ghash.io show pool speed at 44PH/s with shares being mined every 10 minutes ? Seems fishy….
ghash.io isn’t strictly cloud mining. 44PH/s is the aggregate hash rate of miners attached to the pool (using their own hardware.)
Nearly exactly my point; CEX have announced they’ve stopped mining — they haven’t , they have stopped charging maintenance and paying shares… they ARE still mining ; and in the process using equipment that they’ve ‘sold/leased’ to users of their service.