[AgentME]

Depending on the cryptocurrency's proof-of-work algorithm and new-ness, it can be profitable to mine in the cloud. I've done it briefly in the past. But generally it's not profitable.

In every cryptocurrency (the popular and functional ones anyway), there's a set global rate of mining rewards. All miners compete for a slice of that reward, so as more people mine, each individual miner gets less reward. (This causes an equilibrium to be reached where more people mine until it's no longer profitable for more people to start mining. If mining becomes unprofitable, some miners will drop out, and the remaining miners will each make a little more.) If masses of people realize that cloud mining for a particular cryptocurrency is profitable, then what generally happens is that lots of people pounce on cloud providers to mine, it becomes barely profitable, and then people operating their own hardware that's cheaper than cloud providers come in and push the mining rewards down to where it's no longer profitable for people to cloud mine.

Because cloud mining is never profitable in the long run, most cloud mining that happens is fraudulent activity using stolen cloud accounts or payment info. (If you're not paying for it, then making any amount of money from it is profitable.)