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Due to the mark ups charge by ASIC manufacturers, economies of scale allowing people with deep pockets and ASIC manufacturers setting up large farms at a cheaper price than consumers, exponential difficulty increasing, and scams (pre-orders never shipping or shipping late, in stock orders shipping late, cloud mining ponzis).

http://bitcoindifficulty.com/

I still earn money at it just less then I used to earn.


To be sure I have been very lucky with small pools and high variance falling in my favor over the last month.  If this was not true I would not have been able to give the above answer.

Mining is still very profitable for those with cheap electricity (and deep pockets).  People have added 30 petahash to the network since the last difficult change.  They are not doing it just for love of mining.

Its just us that live in parts of the world with electricity at 20 cents/kilowatt hour or higher who can no longer make a profit.

The vast majority of PHs added to the network aren't from people. They're from massive mining operations. Home mining is just a drop in the bucket ocean.

Realistically and just plain reality, at this point and with those massive mining farms in China, KNC, Bitfury, Mega Big Power, and countless mining operations, customers that don't buy several pentahash of efficient cheap ASICs and don't have a sweetheart deal with a hosting or electrical company will not profit at all.

I could easily see 2015 as an end game to all small time mines, and the realization from even the big time miners that they too will have to completely shutdown operations due to costs and difficulty.  It'll be at this point, that the network hash rate will drop, difficulty will decrease exponentially, the home miners will be able to mine again, and we start this whole song and dance once again. 

fixed

The big time miners can just add hash power if they find themselves becoming unprofitable. They can source equipment much cheaper than normal consumers, they run their farms with the cheapest electricity available, and at cold locations that severely cut down on operating costs.

In other words, if the big time miners become unprofitable, that means the little guys are even more so unprofitable. I don't see any situation where the big time miners will shut down their operations to the point that consumers will become profitable. I think the belief that difficulty will come down to the point consumers will be more profitable than the big time miners is a pipe dream.

Making decent profit here running 100 T/hash.

Strato

Did you factor in the costs of the hardware and expenses? What manufacturer did you order from, at what price, how much is your electricity and operating costs (cooling/Internet/Ethernet cables/routers/PDUs/C13 to C14 power cables/etc), and how long have they been running?

Moar details please. :)

What people are you talking about? It's like you are pointing at people, inside a football stadium.
If you are not specific the logic becomes flawed in the sense you are trying to generalize a person who buys 1 asic and a person who buys 1000 asic.

Buying an asic in 2014 and expecting a 90day roi is not realistic, for a person mining in there home at least, but it's realistic for someone who has a farm that has ROI'd.

Today, with this difficulty and this many manufacturers it's very rare. Unless you are not at home and already have an established earning income from previous investments.
You think someone with 15TH/s doesn't earn enough to re-invest in more efficient miners to keep up with the difficulty increase? The real question is at what point will the gigantic farms not be able to add 10PH/s to the network from their locations.


There are miners like him all over this forum. I am pretty sure he didn't buy 100th/s at once. You should check out the show your mining rigs thread there are plenty of nice farms there.

After a farm has paid for itself, there's surprisingly little profit left. Spend some time playing with one of the mining calculators. Because of continuously increasing difficulty, even farms that pay for themselves in a few months only result in modest profits after that point.

First hand experience is better than the math with margin of error on calculators or speculation
Some people local to me mine and have some electric costs where you would be surprised they are still making what they are.
If these people with established farms only had surprisingly little profit left they wouldn't be able to keep reinvesting to keep earning this modest profit you speak of  ;D