RE:Someone prove this wrong pleaseGenesis cloud mining contracts to retail folks have been proven to either be mostly break even to slightly lose money over the length of the contract. This is a fact and you can google numerous articles and youtube videos explaining this.
Now IMHO the reason why HIVE was created instead of simply doing an IPO of Genesis is that Genesis is likely utilizing HIVE as an investment vehicle to now mine the much larger market of retail stock investors. The $9m purchase price for the first data center of 2,301 GPU's is a ridiculous overpayment if these are indeed Radeon RX570/580 level cards (retail $u300 each) and thus overpaid by over 8x value. A monthly u$144.5k monthly service fee for these 2,301 GPU's is distorted expensive considering the minimal level of actual care required.
IMHO Genesis is using HIVE to issue financings for tens of millions at a time in order to sell equipment at grossly inflated values to HIVE (aka ignorant retail stock investors) AND to add insult slap on a lucrative recurring revenue stream in service fees. The real money is being made by Genesis in this nature. They don't care if HIVE stock eventually collapse because they got issued 69m shares at just 13c deemed value. Genesis has already reduced their net risk and exposure to zero with just selling the first Iceland dara centre.
I do not believe HIVE can make much, if any, money from mining ETH after service fees and depreciation, amortization of initial capital to buy the data center GPU's. The level of mining difficulty has increased dramatically ever since ETH exploded from $10 to the July 2017 high of nearly $400, and a lot less coins get mined compared to say the first half of 2017. The only saving grace would be if ETH exploded in value from $300 to $10,000+ but even in that scenario you are better off just purchasing ETH cryptos directly.