Over on the r/CryptoScams subreddit, user u/MadMillwrightDan has put out a warning about the Herominers mining pool. The guy's got no illusions — his money's already gone and he admits part of the blame is on him — he's the one who picked a pool where the miner has zero control over the coins they mine or what happens to them. The point of the post is different, though: to get through to the people mining on Herominers right now, or just sizing it up. Get out before you get burned.

According to him, the scheme unfolded in stages. First, the pool simply stopped paying out — users' unpaid balances kept piling up and growing. Then it went dead silent for about a week. And after that, it started making up rules that let it keep you mining away — basically free to quietly use other people's hardware. And when someone finally does get through to the mods, they cook up a reason and ban them on Discord or any other platform where they can be reached.

According to user u/UpbeatFix7299, who's got the top 1% commenter badge, the only thing to take away from this story is a lesson. Rich people don't spend their days telling random strangers how to get rich quick — they're off enjoying their money.

User xuncx kept it short with a meme of a reply — "Oh no! Anyways" — the story surprised no one and can't surprise anyone anymore.

The most substantive answer came from u/Few_Mention8426. In his words, profitable mining doesn't exist — not on a home PC, not in the cloud — and it'll only get worse after the next halving. Without free electricity, even trying is pointless — and even with free power, it'd take years for the hardware to pay for itself. Certain altcoins can still be mined in theory, but the profit gets eaten up, so that's a dead end too. Bitcoin is now only within reach of big companies with their own infrastructure. Cloud mining platforms, in his words, are either predatory, structurally money-losing, or straight-up scams — often Ponzi-style. And one thing that really gets him: there are still people on Reddit defending well-known cloud miners — apparently they just haven't been burned yet.