What's the difference between cloud mining vs actual hardware cryptocurrency mining?

Well to be perfectly frank there are many versions of cloud mining that does, at its core, rely on actual hardware like GPU to mine currencies. essentially what cloud mining is is that you purchase (or rent) a hardware from a particular cloud mining provider which instead of traditionally creating a rig and delivering it to your doorstep, instead sets up the rig at their mining site (like a warehouse open space) that is optimised for mining purposes. Why this is somewhat better than a personal at home hardware GPU mining rig is that mining rigs consume alot of electricity, and in Singapore electricity isn't exactly very cheap as compared to overseas. Not only that, the heat they produce is tremendous, and if you want to make sure your rig lasts, you have to cool it, hence noisy fans. you won't be getting a good night's sleep if you have a running rig in your home 24/7.

That's why cloud mining is getting more and more popular now. Firms like mining rig club offer a space in their warehouse - you "rent" their rig, they run the mining software and rig in their space, and you get passive income from this running of the rig, after taking away the management costs of the rig system by the team. You get to enjoy better electricity costs via economies of scale (aircon, cheaper electricity bills as they are a firm, not a personal home eg.) and you get a bigger piece of the pie from your mining activities.

So unless you are an avid tinkerer of hardware and a crpyto extraordinaire, you would find it difficult to turn a profit setting up your own mining rig at home. Cloud mining provides a form of diversification like REITs or stocks that payout a % return from your initial rig investment, so it stands to be rather lucrative if you feel crypto will perform!