My Experience with Cloud Mining. Opinions Welcome

I suspect that one way or another, anyone on Steemit is interested in cryptocurrencies.
Being a late arrival, I tried to navigate through the jungle of offers and seductions of easy or immediate high returns. For better or worse, I did not succumb, but will elaborate on this on a future posting.

Considering time, budget, infrastructure and lack of technological expertise concerns, I opted for Cloud Mining. After research I decided on Genesis Mining and, up to now, have few regrets. They did have some technical issues some days ago, but they handled it very responsibly, I think. I also opened a minimal account with EOBOT.

Now, EOBOT is an interesting story. It has been around for some years, and is definitely not a scam. Nevertheless, I'm not yet convinced it is actually a mining cloud. Yes, you can start with pennies, obviously without the expectation of becoming a millionaire. Furthermore, it has a newbie friendly interface with a choice of many coins, gives you a DOGE a day if you log in, plus something little on a daily basis from its faucet. All this is good, coupled with a cryptomoney rotator on the top of the page to make you feel that money is constantly coming your way.

At the same time, it has one of the highest, if not the highest entry price per GHS, high exchange commissions and claims that you recover your investment in approx. 21 months of your 5 year hash contract (used to be 18 months and used to be unlimited contract). This, as well as the fact that it foresees your daily, monthly and yearly income, irrespective of the crypto you are mining, is what has me thinking that all the money numbers wildly turning are just a show and the end result of your investment has been precalculated.

In the small print, EOBOT claims that all this activity should be seen as educational, recreational etc. Of course, the idea of a mining cloud is purely speculative, not (only) recreational. After all people invest money in order to make money. But that is perhaps beyond the point. EOBOT, I found, is a good and cheap way to enter into the world of cryptocurrencies and mining, but not something you can see as a project in the long run. See it more as an educational step. It will not steal your money, but there are other ways out there to make it work more profitably for you.

Of course, I may be totally wrong. Opinions and dissenting views are always welcome.