Cool, I'm glad you mentioned the spreadsheet comparing the pools. I check it every day, and shift accordingly. As you said, Antpool has been on top for several weeks.

I'm interested in your point of view - maybe I need to look at it differently. It's an interesting conversation to have, anyway. To me, it doesn't look like a good time to buy hashflare contracts (with new money or with mined money), but I said that already.

If your decision depends largely on expectation of big BTC gains this year, why not just buy some bitcoin now while the price is relatively low? What's the advantage to mining it instead?