Was mining always this difficult to get into?

[Radientgurkin]

Well it seems with the current price hurdle we’re stuck at. Mining equipment may become more easily acquired temporarily until the price starts to climb again. Now is probably the time to buy.

I don't know, the stuff right now is still ridiculously overpriced. The Avalon's 821 price didnt surprise me but i mean, no point imo to buy >year ROI. There are better places to put your money in >.>

I guess its a gamble. If the price comes back to 20k plus. It would be nice to already have the equipment. IDK

I agree its great to be ahead of the game. This is a very common thought. However, experience from 2017 showed a side effect from that exact development.

With a rising crypto/Bitcoin price, more newbies consider mining. With more HW getting into mining the difficulty goes up. if you add the rising media coverage the growth feeds on itself.

Summary:  Crypto bull cycles = exponential rise in hashrate difficulty

[A.Delaney]

At some point something has to give. If BTC stays at its current price level and difficulty continues to rise each month. There has to be a tipping point. Difficulty can’t continue to rise every two weeks without the price following and money is still made. You might as well unplug and buy BTC for whatever your monthly mining cost are. The affects of low price and high difficulty are already starting to show. Unless Bitmain is trying to dump every S9 they have. This is the first time in a while that you have had the opportunity to place an order for days without them being sold out.

[QuintLeo]

Limited availability on the 14/16nm node mining gear HAS made it quite a bit harder to get into mining than prior to that generation.
There are no "price wars" any more, like the S5/SP20 price war that helped drive Spondoolies towards bankruptcy.

I don't see this changing anytime soon unless prices collapse a LOT harder than the current "back down to ballpark November" range.

BTC isn't even CLOSE to catching up on network hashrate vs price climb since it hit it's last lows in the $200 range, the capacity to MAKE enough ASIC chips to make enough miners with just hasn't been there, and as miner builders start moving to the 7/10 nm node that's going to get worse.