Genesis for cloud mining has been a good experience for me. BTC returns have been great. ETH returns were nice, but have slowed by nature of the Ice Age, until they swap the contract to another coin for the remainder of the term. While some cloud mining companies have higher prices and have handled challenged poorly, Genesis has handled adversity well and endured skepticism to continue expanding operations, while not screwing their customers over.

The overall profit for cloud mining takes many months to see as difficulty changes. You have to consider what you're giving up to pay for mining.

Sometimes holding your coins with liquidity might be better than spending them/losing their appreciation potential for a slower gainer. Slow and steady can win the race, but if you lock up $13K on a contract, you could've diversified a lot and made much more than the contract would, even if the contract is worthwhile. With that said, I think a certain portion of your crypto portfolio should have some mining in it. It is good because it also forces you to learn about the process, which can make you more money in the future.

What gets me is when YouTubers claiming to be experts copy and paste some numbers into some profit calculators and assume they'll keep making roughly that amount forever. Difficulty usually always rises and affects that current snapshot's profitability much more than you'd think. The best way to assess this is to look at the charts and people's payout amounts over time to see in real numbers that your output goes down...sometimes faster that "projected". The output can improve, but not often, and not for too long. Look back for months and years, not just the last few weeks.

At this rate, I have no qualms with "lifetime" BTC contracts, which run until they're no longer profitable. Two year contracts for other coins can be fine too, if you do the proper analysis and are confident that the coins will be around and still valuable then. Returns will slow over time if you don't add hashpower to keep up with it, but you can network with friends and online to get referrals so your efforts do that for you for free. The price of BTC will also fluctuate so your x BTC per day may be worth more or less. I like it for average total cost purposes. If you bought a 20 TH Genesis mining contract for ~$2500, and are confident that you'll earn more than BTC over time (which is almost a guarantee), then you essentially bought your BTC for that price versus the market rate of $4,600 now. If lifetime contracts pay out perhaps 1-3 bitcoin over time, then you're in great shape if the BTC price stays at levels that keep this economical.

In sum, time will tell. Cloud mining is relatively hassle free vs doing it yourself. There is no equipment to buy, maintain, feel the heat and hear the loud noise from, pay electric bills for, and have to constantly upgrade to remain profitable. Also not much potential downtime.