@mike
I agree with @crimsonroze above. There are many things to take into consideration. Especially your time horizon for selling the coins that you mine.
First and foremost is your electricity costs. More and more industrial miners are moving to areas of the globe that have essentially free internet. They pay below $0.02 USD per kilowatt hour. So they will gladly mine with revenue generation at $0.021 USD per kilowatt hour because they make a profit and it drives out other miners, thus lowering the increase in difficulty.
They also know what their time horizon is for selling out. Most miners have very distinct levels that they are waiting to sell at because they have their own ways of figuring out likely price points. In fact, many people that I've spoken to mine for a loss or breakeven today because they are waiting for the right time to sell which will lock in profits.
If you're in an electric haven, you have a good shot. If you've got "balls of steel" and are quite confident in your price floors for bitcoin in the coming months, you've got a decent shot.
All of this information comes with the following disclaimer: Never risk more than you can afford to lose.
Couldn't agree more with most of what you've said. I wish I had an electric haven at my disposal. I am a homeowner with 13 cents per kwh, which to me is quite high. I am running a bill of around 90 a month give or take some depending on what I have running.
This is with 1 rig - 4 gpus, 7 blizzard asics, 4 gridseed asics. Not much running and it costs a decent amount per month, but if I could bring that down to 2 cents per kwh then there is absolutely nothing to lose. You will almost never not hit ROI at that point because your power is just about free.
I was thinking of purchasing solar arrays / wind generators to scale up to around 1 megawatt of power and then expand my operations from there, but none of that comes cheap and with profitability declining every day I don't think it's feasible for the little guy.
